Press room

On Wed May 3rd, Barbican Cinema will also host a New Release ScreenTalk with director Davy Chou interviewed by critic Wendy Ide following a preview screening of Return to Seoul.

Also throughout the month the Barbican hosts ScreenTalks and Live Events across the curated programmes including: Cinema Restored, which brings fresh restorations of global art cinema to London audiences; Experiments in Film, which focuses on vibrant cinema and pushes at the mainstream boundaries of what we think film is; Science on Screen, where reality and fiction come together in a season of films and talks uncovering connections between science and cinema; Architecture on Film, a bi-monthly film series offering an expanded and dynamic view of how architecture and the city are represented through the moving image; and Snapshots: Caribbean Cinema Up Close, a collection of films from across the Caribbean giving UK audiences insight into the evolving identity of contemporary Caribbean cinema.

 

New Release ScreenTalk

Preview: Return to Seoul (15) + ScreenTalk with director Davy Chou

Korea 2022, Dir Davy Chou, 119 min

Wed 3 May, 6:30pm, Cinema 2

In this emotionally charged and vibrant film, a young French woman returns to Korea for the first time since her adoption. Return to Seoul follows Freddie (Park Ji-min), who, on-a-whim, travels to Korea, where she's persuaded into seeking out her biological family.

A transient search for identity, this beautiful portrait of Korea reveals a passionate search for belonging in a place that is foreign.

Film critic Wendy Ide hosts a ScreenTalk with director Davy Chou after the screening.

 

Cinema Restored

Non-Aligned Film Archives present: Unknown Suriname / Dja Dja Srnaam (Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms & LOSON)

Wed 3 May, 6:15pm, Cinema 1

In The Sky’s Wild Noise

Guyana, 1983, 29 min, Victor Jara’s Collective

A Battle Restored

Netherlands, 2022, 17 min

Oema foe Sranan (Women of Suriname)

Netherlands & Suriname, 1978, At Van Praag

This screening is focusses on the recently restored 1978 documentary Women of Suriname (Oema foe Sranan). Produced by the activist film collective Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms and LOSON (The National Organisation of Surinamese Organisations in the Netherlands) in the period shortly after Suriname’s independence, the film follows four women who, through their personal stories, reveal a history of neo-colonialism, imperialism and discrimination in Suriname and the Netherlands.

This event is followed by a discussion presented by the researcher and filmmaker Luna Hupperetz and the actress, singer and former member of LOSON Nadia Tilon, moderated by Annabelle Aventurin.

 

Experiments in Film

Je reste photographe (12A*) + Screentalk with Ananias Léki Dago

Ivory Coast– Ghana - France 2023, Dir Ananias Léki Dago, 67 min

Thu 4 May, 6.30pm, Cinema 2

Ananias Léki Dago inherits a trunk containing a lifetime of work from the late Ivorian photographer Paul Kodjo, the most significant photographer of the time in the newly independent Côte d'Ivoire.

This intergenerational dialogue links two people who have in common not only a love for photography but also the fragility of an artist's life. Je reste photographe follows Ananias through his travels as he throws himself body and soul into a long work of research, reconditioning and conservation of the negatives of Paul Kodjo.

Following the screening, a conversation will take between Mark Sealy (Autograph ABP), photographer Eileen Perrier and the film’s director, Ananias Léki Dago.

 

Science on Screen

War of The Worlds (12A) + Presentation by Philip Ball

USA 2005, Dir Steven Spielberg, 112 min
Tue 9 May, 6:10pm, Cinema 2

What starts off as a divorced father (Tom Cruise) looking after his children (Dakota Fanning) for the weekend, turns in to what could be the end of the world. Steven Spielberg’s big budget epic is a contemporary adaptation of H. G. Wells' sci-fi classic novel, bringing it into the present day whilst preserving the original paranoia and humanity.

This screening is followed by a presentation in which Philip Ball (author of The Beauty of Chemistry: Art, Wonder, and Science) compares the evolving scientific understanding of the likelihood of alien life forms, with the public perception of aliens.

 

Experiments in Film

The Gift (15) + Discussion with Jasmina Cibic, Owen Hatherley & Lucy Reynolds + Reception

UK & Austria 2021 dir Jasmina Cibic, 28 min
Thu 11 May 2023, 6:30pm, Cinema 2

In her most recent film, artist Jasmina Cibic seeks to explore the relationship between political gifting of culture and the development of European identity. The film moves between several iconic buildings each conceived as a gift and renders these into a stage set for a dystopian drama addressing culture’s role as a Trojan horse for political interest. Cibic's film features architect Oscar Niemeyer’s French Communist Party Headquarters in Paris, the Palais of the Nations in Geneva, the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw and Mount Buzludzha Bulgaria.

The event explores the film's central themes, with a discussion between Jasmina Cibic, writer and journalist Owen Hatherley and researcher, curator and artist Lucy Reynolds. Additionally, audience members are invited to an informal reception in the cinema lobby to celebrate the new book in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art MAC Lyon and Film London.

 

Snapshots: Caribbean Cinema Up Close

One Hand Don't Clap (12A*) + Q&A with Director Kavery Kaul

United States 1988, Dir Kavery Kaul, 92 min

Wed 17 May, 6:15pm, Cinema 2

In this preview of the 4K restored electric documentary directed by Kavery Kaul, One Hand Don't Clap ​​​​explores the importance of Calypso music and the community around it. In the run up to the crowning of Trinidad's 1986 Calypso Monarch, iconic Calypsonians such as Calypso Rose and Lord Kitchener discuss their early careers to a beloved genre of music. Focusing on the history and the intergenerational aspects of Calypsonian culture, this film features live performances of songs such as Pan in A Minor and Solomon.

Following the film, the director Kavery Kaul will take part in a Zoom conversation hosted by curator of the Snapshots: Caribbean Cinema Up Close, Patrice Robinson.

 

Architecture on Film

Reichsautobahn (U*)

Federal Republic of Germany 1984, Dir Hartmut Bitomsky 91 min

Tue 23 May, 6:45pm, Cinema 1

Initiated in 1933 as an agent of employment and national unification, a “cultural monument” to modernity, purpose and progress, the socio-political Autobahn project needed selling to a population for whom its infrastructure was so new as to be alien.

Far from a conventional chronology, in Reichsautobahn ‘one picture answers another’, as Bitomsky choreographs the multitude of Third Reich produced films, propaganda and cultural artefacts, alongside interviews and a fiercely probing voiceover, to reveal the complexities, imaginaries, and contradictions, of a project of social as much as industrial engineering.

This screening will be introduced by Tom Wilkinson (writer, historian, and History Editor at the Architectural Review).

Curated by the Architecture Foundation