Deep Focus: 16 - 22 June 2025
Bleak Week at PCC, The Chelsea Girls comes to BFI Southbank, and Atlas Cinema takes a bow...
D.A. Pennebaker’s Daybreak Express screens at Atlas Cinema as part of the shorts programme Tracks of the City
Monday, the Prince Charles Cinema’s Bleak Week season gets properly underway with screenings of Shame, Friedkin’s Sorcerer, The Last Laugh, Cronenberg’s The Shrouds (if you fancy trying the returns queue), and Castration Movie Anthology I: Traps introduced by Jaye Hudson of TGirlsonFilm. Atlas Cinema’s final week begins with the European premiere of Aunt Jiang. As part of the Rebel Radio season, the Barbican screens Breaking the Silence: Pirate Radio, Black Media, and Voices of Resistance, a double bill of TV documentaries exploring the tensions of Black pirate radio in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. The Regent Street Cinema’s Monday Matineé is Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII.
Tuesday, screenings of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and The Proposition, both on 35mm, as well Nil By Mouth and Alan Clarke’s Scum are today’s offerings at Prince Charles’ Bleak Week. Atlas Cinema presents Tracks of the City, a programme of four shorts exploring the New York City subway system, including works by D.A. Pennebaker and Barbara Hammer. UFOs, Monsters and Utopias - Three Queer Shorts, a programme of Portuguese works is at the ICA. At the BFI, Coppola’s The Rain People is in NFT2 as part of the Wanda and Beyond season, while Time of the Wolf is in NFT3 as part of its Haneke season.
Wednesday, Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, introduced by BFI Flare’s Wema Mumma is at the BFI Southbank. Kennington Bioscope returns to The Cinema Museum with Joe May’s Asphalt. Threads, When The Wind Blows, Children Of Men and Come And See are today’s particularly (post)apocalyptic Bleak Week slate at the Prince Charles. Winner of the Sheffield Doc Fest Youth Jury Prize, the Barbican screens Haiyu, a portrait of singer Mariem Hassan and the exile of the Sahrawis people, followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.
Thursday, the ICA has the UK Premiere of The Tripytch of Mondongo, Mariano Llinás’s 5 ½ hour Borgesian, ouroboric contra-portrait of the Argentine art group. Nina Menkes Queen of Diamonds is at the BFI. Rio Cinema’s Pink Palace film club screens Dance With A Stranger. Atlas Cinema has a Juneteenth screening of Wattstax following the short Black Soul, curated by JWASHFILM. Richard Fleischer’s 10 Rillington Place is on 35mm at the Prince Charles as part of Bleak Week, introduced by Censor director Prano Bailey-Bond.
Friday, Peckham Experimental Prototype Cinema of Tomorrow brings Hellraiser to the Music Room, celebrating South East London’s Hellmonument. Category H’s Goth Summer continues late-night at the Rio with a double bill of The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue and The Lost Boys. Straw Dogs is on 35mm at the Prince Charles as part of Bleak Week, followed by a screening of Bleak Moments, with a Q&A with director Mike Leigh. Women and Cocaine brings Dancing Lady to The Cinema Museum. Haneke’s Hidden screens at the BFI.
Saturday, confirmed last week before selling out NFT3 in under an hour, The Chelsea Girls, Warhol’s “singular work of 1960s expanded cinema,” has been bumped up to NFT1 — Elena Gorfinkel introduces. The Windrush Caribbean Festival presents Menelik Shabazz’s Burning an Illusion, alongside a programme of shorts and a post-screening Q&A at the Rio. Rooted Resistance, a programme of four short films that “bear witness to the deep ties between nature, memory and survival across the Arab region” is at the ICA, continuing the ongoing SAFAR Film Festival.
Sunday, Atlas Cinema bows out with Knitting, a “tense triangle of love, loss, and uneasy sisterhood” in China, curated by The Knot Collective. Considered India’s first queer film, Badnam Basti (Neighbourhood of Ill Repute) is the Barbican’s latest offering as part of their Queer 70s season, following Unspoken silences: reclaiming colonial archives of Palestine, a programme addressing memory and colonialism as part of SAFAR Film Festival. The BFI has the UK Premiere of a new 4k restoration of the Chow Yun Fat’s Hong Kong 1941. To celebrate pride month, Hackney’s Love Affair Basement screens a double bill of Alexis Langlois’s sapphic shorts Terror, Sisters! and The Demons of Dorothy.