Deep Focus: 9 - 15 June 2025
BFI's Film on Film, SAFAR Film Festival, and The Nickel Cinema launches...
Presented by Violet Hour, Nietzschka Keene’s The Juniper Tree screens at The Castle Cinema on Tuesday.
Monday, the Barbican screens Lucio Castro’s Barcelona-set End of the Century followed by a discussion with author Ryan Gilbey to mark the release of It Used to be Witches: Under the Spell of Queer Cinema. Elena Gorfinkel introduces Sentimental Educations: Barbara Loden’s Classroom Films at BFI Southbank. The Garden Cinema hosts Lebanon in the UK: Diaspora shorts as part of their New Lebanese Cinema: Reclaiming Storytelling season, followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers. Majlis Film Club presents True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital… at Metroland Cultures, Abenour Zahzah’s film chronicling Frantz Fanon’s early career in colonial Algeria. Come kick it! a programme of shorts from LA, Berlin and London is at Atlas Cinema. A Goofy Movie screens at The Prince Charles Cinema.
Tuesday, Violet Hour returns to The Castle Cinema with Incantations, a double bill of Nietzschka Keene’s The Juniper Tree following Peter Rose’s short, Incantation. Birkbeck Cinema hosts Queer Cinema for Palestine 2025 - No Pride in Genocide, an evening of works by “queer, Palestinian, and allied artists,” followed by a Q&A and panel discussion hosted by Birkbeck Institute of Gender and Sexuality. Whose Is This Song?, a documentary exploring melody, pride, memory and rivalry across the Balkans presented by Old Mountain Assembly is at Atlas Cinema. Haneke’s adaptation of Joseph Roth’s The Rebellion screens at BFI Southbank.
Wednesday, London has a new cinema: The Nickel Cinema opens with Cecil B. Demented following a video blessing from John Waters — tickets available at the time of writing, but move fast. At Cine Lumiere Watch Out for Zouzou opens the SAFAR Film Festival, the UK’s leading festival of independent Arab cinema. Thomas Brasch’s Angels of Iron screens at the Goethe-Institut.
Thursday, a certain theme in today’s screenings. DYKE TV: The Early Years, a curated supercut of the “bold, raw and highly dykey” show for lesbian voices, politics and culture is at the ICA. Across town, Divas Do Film presents Madonna: Truth or Dare on 35mm downstairs at The Prince Charles Cinema; Park Chan Wook’s transposing of Sarah Water’s Fingersmith to colonial Korea, The Handmaiden, is upstairs. Bye Bye Love, Isao Fujisawa’s Godardian portrait of a “queer partnership in crime,” is at the Barbican as part of their Queer 70s season. Hail the New Puritan is Pink Palace’s offer at the Rio. Bound is at Finsbury Park Picturehouse. The BFI’s Film on Film Festival gets underway with WR: Mysteries of the Organism. More chastely, Little Ida and Harvest: 3000 Years, also at the festival, both still have tickets available.
Friday, the latest instalment in the Late Tapes series, Rubberists 2, “a homage to the porn sequel, and a tribute to the textures, rituals and aesthetics of rubber fetishism,” returns to the ICA. Stud Life, an exploration of London’s black queer community set in the mid 00s is at the Rio, presented by Never Watching Movies and followed by a Q&A with director Campbell X. Fangs, an Egyptian remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is at the Barbican as part of SAFAR. A Meeting Place’s final show at the Atlas Cinema is A Film From Lampedusa. BFI’s Film on Film has Dancing with Crime on nitrate, Lubitsch’s The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, and the Newman-helmed Hud on Cinemascope.
Saturday, Viral Video: AIDS, art and activism 1983-1994, a programme combining AIDS activist work from the LUX and London Community Video Archive collections is at LUX Waterlow Park. Film on Film’s highlights include screenings of Blanche Fury; Buńuel’s Un Chien Andalou and Partie de campagne on nitrate; Sound and Image 2: The Visual Documentary; The State of the Union: The American Newsreel Collective; and The Killing projected from a print from Kubrick’s personal collection. Away from the Southbank, Jenin, Jenin, Mohammad Bakri’s 2002 documentary on the razing of the Palestinian refugee camp by Israel, screens in the Barbican’s cinema 1 followed by a Q&A with the director as part of SAFAR.
Sunday, The Set, introduced by season curator Alex Davidson, continues the Barbican’s Queer 70s season. Atlas Cinema hosts Flesh Witnesses: entanglements of the Korean and Vietnam wars, a double-bill of The Flesh-Witness and Talking to the Dead that marks the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon and the 80th anniversary of Korean liberation. Near Orouët, Jacques Rozier’s well-observed hangout movie, following three women’s summer vacation at the French seaside is at Institut Francais. Film on Film closes out with a fresh 35mm print of Rosselini’s Journey to Italy, Finye, Souleymane Cissé’s “clear-eyed satire of the injustices of post-colonial Mali,” and Hard to Handle, the James Cagney-starring pre-Code comedy.