Press room

barbican.org.uk/whats-on/cinema 

Festivals, Seasons and Special Events:

• Emerging Film Curators:
  Pink Mirrors: Exploring South Asian Queerness + ScreenTalk
• Emerging Film Curators:
  Taste: Hong Kong Identity in Food and Film + Discussion

Regular Programme strands:

• Architecture on Film: London Premiere: Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel
• New East Cinema: January + ScreenTalk with director Andrey Paounov and writer Alex Barrett
• Silent Film & Live Music / London International Mime Festival: The Unknown
• Family Film Club

Event Cinema

• Met Opera: Fedora
• Royal Opera House: Like Water for Chocolate
• National Theatre Live: The Crucible

Barbican Cinema is delighted to begin the New Year with the second and third parts of the Emerging Film Curators Lab programme: Pink Mirrors, Exploring Asian Queerness, curated by Harry Singh, a vibrant selection of shorts exploring South Asian Queer journeys of self-discovery; and Taste: Hong Kong Identity in Food and Film, curated by Philip Ho, Aston Law and Vicgina Law, which celebrates Hong Kong’s colourful variety of cuisine with a mouth-watering selection of foodie shorts. 

The 2022 Emerging Film Curators Lab, supported by Arts Council England, is a free career development programme designed to give young people a chance to establish themselves in the UK cinema exhibition sector and to widen the range of voices and perspectives on screen.

Other highlights this month, to help fend off the January blues, include a Silent Film and Live Music screening of The Unknown (as part of the London International Mime Festival 2023); this circus-set melodrama is one of the great silent films and is evocative and outrageous in equal measure. With live accompaniment by Stephen Horne, on piano, and Martin Pyne, on drums.

Architecture on Film presents the London premiere of Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier’s Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel, an intimate portrait of this iconic New York hotel which shows its transformation from artistic refuge to luxury hotel, in the city’s endless quest for gentrification.
Further highlights this month include a New East Cinema screening of atmospheric Bulgarian film January and ScreenTalk with director Andrey Paounov and writer Alex Barrett, this is the debut feature from the documentary filmmaker; and Family Film Club continues to show the best in classic and contemporary cinema for younger audiences.

Event Cinema screenings in January include ROH Live: Like Water for Chocolate, a new full-length ballet; a Met Opera Live production of Fedora; and National Theatre Live: The Crucible.

Festivals, Seasons and Special Events:

Pink Mirrors: Exploring South Asian Queerness (18*) + ScreenTalk with photographer Sunil Gupta, Bitten Peach performer ShayShay and director Shiva Raichandani hosted by drag icon Mahatma Khandi.
Thu 19 Jan, 6.15pm, Cinema 2

Curated by Harry Singh, this is a vibrant and daring selection of shorts exploring South Asian Queer journeys of self-discovery, desire, protest and the making of community.

From BOMgAY (India 1996), an explicit look at the gay underground scene of 1990s Mumbai, to present-day London in Peach Paradise (UK 2022); this is an unapologetic celebration of LGBTQ+ South Asians whose stories are often untold, misrepresented (if at all) and side-lined. 

Presented through a selection of subterranean shorts, the program provides an insight into the hidden gay underground of urban India, a humbling solidarity within the transgender community and it also considers how Queer South Asians in London continue to elevate one another in the pursuit of ‘paradise’.

Followed by a ScreenTalk with photographer Sunil Gupta, Bitten Peach performer ShayShay and director Shiva Raichandani hosted by drag icon Mahatma Khandi.

Taste: Hong Kong Identity in Food and Film (12A*) + Discussion
Sat 28 Jan, 2pm, Cinema 2

Curated by Philip Ho, Aston Law and Vicgina Law, this programme celebrates Hong Kong cuisine and its people on film with a selection of foodie shorts.

Dim sum, char siu, sweet and sour pork, egg tart, black sesame soup… Hong Kong is known for its colourful variety of cuisine.  This is a programme of animations and live action shorts that tell the stories of the food, culture and the people of Hong Kong.

This screening will be followed by a discussion with special guests (tbc).

These projects were developed as part of Barbican’s Emerging Film Curators Lab
which is supported by Arts Council England.

Regular Programme strands:

Architecture on Film:
Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel (15) (LC) London Premiere
Belgium, France, Netherlands, Sweden & Qatar 2021, Dirs Amélie van Elmbt & Maya Duverdier, 90 mins
Wed 18 Jan, 6.45 pm, Cinema 1

This is an intimate stay at NYC’s mythical Chelsea hotel through a portrait of its last remaining residents, and ghosts of those past, as the building is transformed from artistic refuge to luxury hotel.

With delicate poetry and objective empathy Dreaming Walls accompanies the hotel’s handful of holdouts as they live amidst the noise and chaos of construction, as the iconic countercultural residence – immortalised by Warhol’s Chelsea Girls, Dylan Thomas, William Burroughs, Patti Smith and more – has its storied interior gutted to make way for a very different clientele. 

Merging rich 16mm with historic archival fragments, and lingering, guided by a charismatic octogenarian choreographer, amongst its final tenants, this is an ode to the Chelsea, to the people who make places, and the onward march of urban change.

Curated by the Architecture Foundation: www.architecturefoundation.org.uk

New East Cinema:
January (15*) + ScreenTalk with director Andrey Paounov and writer Alex Barrett
Bulgaria, Luxembourg & Portugal 2021, Dir Andrey Paounov, 110 min
Tue 24 Jan, 6.05pm, Cinema 2

Five men caught in a limbo between life and death, past and present, communism and capitalism, known and the unknown, try to resolve a mystery, which slowly devours them.

Inspired by the eponymous play by Nobel Prize Nominee Yordan Radichkov and reinterpreted for world audiences by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Andrey Paounov, this is a bold fiction debut of a director who has made a name by exploring, with a sense of humour, the existential absurdities of the post-socialist state in the language of cinema.

Silent Film & Live Music / London International Mime Festival 2023:
The Unknown PG
USA 1927, Dir Tod Browning, 75 min
Sun 29 Jan 2023 3pm, Cinema 1

The famously versatile Lon Chaney (The Man of a Thousand Faces) is Alonzo the Armless Wonder, uses his feet to perform a circus knife-throwing act. But Alonzo keeps dark secrets: he is not the amputee he pretends to be, and is in fact a killer on the run from the police.

With enormous cunning, he keeps his true identity, and his arms, hidden from the world. To act on his infatuation with the circus’ beautiful bare-back rider Nanon (Joan Crawford) would be to give himself away…

A story of uncontrollable passion (like no other) The Unknown builds to a grand finale that is truly breath-taking in its intensity. Burt Lancaster, for one, was impressed: he praised Chaney's performance in this film as the most emotionally compelling work ever committed to celluloid.

The Barbican is pleased to welcome back musicians Stephen Horne, on piano, and Martin Pyne, on drums, to accompany this film live.

Family Film Club
11am every Saturday, Cinema 2

Family Film Club returns on Sat 14 Jan with its signature blend of new films from all over the world, archive classics and the best releases. Young audiences will be able to enjoy silent film with live piano accompaniment, shorts programmes back by popular demand and international gems rarely seen on the big screen; as well as the regular monthly pre-film workshop on the last Saturday of the month.

Full programme to be announced early Dec.

Event Cinema:

Met Opera Live in HD: Fedora
Sat 14 Jan, 5.55pm, Cinema 1

Umberto Giordano’s drama returns to the Met repertory for the first time in 25 years. Packed with memorable melodies, show-stopping arias, and explosive confrontations.

Fedora requires a cast of captivating voices to take flight, and the Met’s new production promises to deliver. Soprano Sonya Yoncheva sings the title role of the 19th-century Russian princess who falls in love with her fiancé’s murderer, Count Loris, sung by star tenor Piotr Beczała. Soprano Rosa Feola is the Countess Olga, Fedora’s confidante, and baritone Artur Ruciński is the diplomat De Siriex, with much-loved Met maestro Marco Armiliato conducting.

Director David McVicar delivers a detailed and dramatic staging based around an ingenious fixed set that, like a Russian nesting doll, unfolds to reveal the opera’s three distinctive settings — a palace in St. Petersburg, a fashionable Parisian salon, and a picturesque villa in the Swiss Alps.

Royal Opera House Live: Like Water for Chocolate
Sun 22 Jan, 2pm, Cinema 3

Christopher Wheeldon’s new full-length ballet brings the magic realism of this famous modern Mexican novel to The Royal Ballet, live on screen.

A modern Mexican classic of magic realism provides the basis for The Royal Ballet’s new full-length work, reuniting Artistic Associate Christopher Wheeldon with the creative team who transformed Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Winter’s Tale into dance, composer Joby Talbot and designer Bob Crowley.

The ballet is inspired by Laura Esquivel’s novel – a captivating family saga where the central character’s emotions spill out through cooking to influence everyone around her in startling and dramatic ways. In this co-production with American Ballet Theatre, Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra also acts as musical consultant for Talbot’s newly commissioned score, and Wheeldon has worked closely with Esquivel to reshape her richly layered story into an entertaining and engrossing new ballet.

National Theatre Live: The Crucible (12A)
Thu 26 Jan, 7pm, Cinema 1

A witch hunt is beginning in Arthur Miller’s captivating parable of power with Erin Doherty (The Crown) and Brendan Cowell (Yerma).

Raised to be seen but not heard, a group of young women in Salem suddenly find their words have an almighty power.  As a climate of fear, vendetta and accusation spreads through the community, no one is safe from trial.

Lyndsey Turner (Hamlet) directs this contemporary new staging, designed by Tony Award-winner Es Devlin (The Lehman Trilogy). Captured live from the Olivier stage at the National Theatre.