Deep Focus: 26 May - 1 June 2025
Wanda and Beyond: The World of Barbara Loden launches at BFI Southbank, Graeme Arnfield comes to the Barbican, and the ICA's Rivette season comes to a close...
Demy’s Donkey Skin closes the Fashion in Film Festival at The Rio.
Monday, Les Enfants du paradis screens at the Institut Français. Regent Street Cinema’s Monday Matinée makes the most of the Bank Holiday by screening George Stevens’ Giant. The Garden Cinema has Kurosawa’s Stray Dog. Some Like it Hot is at the BFI Southbank.
Tuesday, Ben Rivers Urthworks films, Slow Action, Urth and Look Then Below, screen at the ICA with the director in conversation with Mark von Schlegell to celebrate the release of a visual novel based on the trilogy. Phantom Thread is on 70mm at The Prince Charles Cinema. BFI Southbank has Vanilla Sky in NFT1 with an introduction by Tom Cruise season programmer Kimberley Sheehan. Close-Up continues its mini Antonioni retrospective with L’eclisse.
Wednesday, Fashion in Film Festival continues with the Ogawa Productions directed The Magino Village Story: Raising Silkworms introduced by Becca Voelcker at The Barbican. The ICA’s In Focus on Fatemeh Motamed-Arya continues with Here Without Me. Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco is at Prince Charles on 35mm. BFI Southbank has Rossen’s The Hustler, starring Paul Newman, in NFT1.
Thursday, before it’s wide release on Friday, Ben Rivers’ Bogancloch has a preview screening at Bertha Dochouse, followed by a Q&A between the director and Stewart Lee. A Long Take highlight, Graeme Arnfield: Zero-Gravity Resistance, a performance lecture sharing Arnfield’s research into labour disputes and privatized space travel, lands at The Barbican. The BFI hosts Nicky Hamlyn: Cycles of Time, a programme of the structuralist filmmaker’s “radical, experimental use of different moving-image technologies,” with Hamlyn in conversation with BFI National Archive curator William Fowler. Histoire de Marie et Julien continues Rivette season at the ICA. Synecdoche, New York is at Prince Charles.
Friday, John Schlesinger’s Darling, starring Julie Christie and Dirk Bogarde, begins a short run at the Institut Français and other cinemas, celebrating its 60th anniversary. Black Debutantes Shorts Programme: Performance Pains has Julie Dash’s Illusions on 16mm alongside Ngozi Onwurah’s Flight of the Swan and Mati Diop’s A Thousand Suns; Mai Zetterling’s Amorosa is over in NFT2. Fashion in Film brings Into the Garden of Chimerical Delights to the Barbican, a silent shorts programme exploring the “unusual connections between women, flowers, and insects, from 20th Century filmmakers.” We’re agnostic on whether video games are a visual art form, but pro late-night screenings, so we’re telling you that Dream Emulator is screening Dark Souls speedruns at the Rio from 11:30 — zine included with ticket.
Saturday, the ICA’s Rivette season heads into its final weekend: Maria Casares stuns in Robert Bresson’s Les Dames du bois du Boulogne, cited by Rivette as defining “an entire generation of French cinema,” before Ne touchez pas la hache screens on 35mm. Peckham Experimental Prototype Cinema of Tomorrow presents Donna Deitch’s Desert Hearts at Atlas Cinema. Test Pattern enjoys a belated UK Premiere as part of BFI’s Black Debutantes.
Sunday, it’s June - the BFI’s new slate kicks off with Los Olvidados in NFT1 as part of Wanda and Beyond: The World of Barbara Loden; while Three Paths to the Lake opens Complicit: The Films of Michael Haneke. The ICA’s full career retrospective of Jacques Rivette comes to a close with his final work, 36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup. The Fashion in Film Festival also winds-up, with Demy’s Donkey Skin screening at the Rio.