Press room

Barbican Cinema:
Jan 2021 Cinema on Demand and digital offerings    

The Barbican Cinema Curators continue to offer bold and engaging content on Cinema on Demand and Read, Watch & Listen, while the Cinemas are closed during lockdown.   

Throughout January Barbican Cinema on Demand presents two documentary features: the UK virtual cinema premiere of Coded Bias (USA 2020), with a recorded ScreenTalk with Silkie Carol (Director of Big Brother Watch UK), Ravi Naik (UK data rights activist), and Director/Producer Shalini Kantayya, moderated by Wendy Mitchell (Contributing Editor, Screen International); and a run of the Oscar-shortlisted Women of the Gulag (Russia/USA 2018), also including a ScreenTalk with director Marianna Yarovskaya.

Cinema on Demand is pleased to be the exclusive UK venue for the ground-breaking Coded Bias, which explores the fallout after MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini discovered that most facial-recognition software propagates bias. After she makes her discovery that algorithms misidentify women and darker-skinned faces, she decides to investigate further. The more she explores, the clearer it becomes that there is an intrinsic bias within technology that is slowly encroaching on all human lives. 

This shocking discovery leads her to push the US government to create legislation to counter the effects and far-reaching dangers of the issue. Joy Buolamwini's work brings to light an important modern day civil rights issue. 

Women of the Gulag tells the compelling and tragic stories of six female survivors of the Gulag.

While Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn’s volumes The Gulag Archipelago, published between 1973-1975, largely tells of the men caught in Stalin’s camps and settlements for 'crimes against the state', this acclaimed film features six women, all in their eighties and nineties. They tell their stories while going about their daily lives in the remote villages of the Urals, suburbs of Moscow and in the breakaway Republic of Abkhazia.

Other digital highlights this month include a workshop with the School of Noise about the hidden world of Foley sound and effects. Participants will discover how ordinary household objects can be used to create sound effects and will get to meet a professional Foley artist.
(Available from Sat 30 Jan, for free at Barbican’s Read, Watch & Listen).

Cinema on Demand is available to audiences across the UK with a rolling four-week programme of titles and events that reflect the Barbican’s international cinema programme.

Barbican Cinema on Demand is supported by the BFI FAN Resilience Fund, awarding National Lottery funding, and the Mayor of London's Culture at Risk business support fund.

JANUARY 2021 LISTINGS

New East Cinema: Women of the Gulag (15*) + recorded ScreenTalk with director Marianna Yarovskaya
Barbican Cinema on Demand
Available to stream: from Mon 4 Jan – Sun 31 Jan
Pay per view: Full: £6.00 | Young Barbican: £4.00 | Barbican Members £4.80

Coded Bias (#) + recorded ScreenTalk with Shalini Kantayya (Director), Wendy Mitchell (Contributing Editor, Screen International), Silkie Carlo (Director of Big Brother Watch UK)  + Ravi Naik (UK data rights advocate)
Barbican Cinema on Demand
Available to stream: from Fri 15 Jan - Fri 12 Feb 2021
Pay per view: Full: £10.00 | Young Barbican: £4.00 | Barbican Members £8

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