Press room

Year-round, and throughout the programme, Barbican Cinema presents a rich and varied selection of global rarities including experimental films and archive restorations, special events, plus screenings within seasons and festivals. 

From October through to December this strand of programming can be found in Rewriting the Rules: Pioneering Indian Cinema after 1970, the Jarman Award, this year’s London Animation Film Festival, plus regular special events, Experiments In Film and Cinema Restored sceenings.

LISTINGS

OCTOBER

Season

Rewriting the Rules: Pioneering Indian Cinema after 1970
3 Oct – 12 Dec

Rewriting the Rules: Pioneering Indian Cinema after 1970 is a three-month long cinema season featuring the innovative work of a new wave of filmmakers in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, whose films were socially minded and politically committed

Over the weekend of Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 October, to mark the eve of the Hindu Festival of Lights, Diwali, and the Sikh celebration Bandi Chhor Divas, visitors can enjoy events from across the Barbican’s varied, interdisciplinary programme with a spotlight on Indian arts and culture, with free entry to The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998 in the art gallery. 

In the Cinemas curator Shai Heredia will introduce (in a pre-recorded video message) a special programme of experimental shorts This Bit of India.

This Bit of India 15* + Introduction by curator Shai Heredia

Sat 26 Oct, 4pm

Cinema 3

This Bit of That India 
India 1972, Dir SNS Sastry, 20 min
 
This Bit Of That India is a layered refection on youth culture, diversity, progress, education, technology and sexuality. The film juxtaposes documentary moments that celebrate individual freedom with a theatrical performance of Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, as a metaphor for repression and conformity.

Memory: Record/Erase
India 1996, Dir Nalini Malani, 10 min

Memory: Record/Erase is pioneering video artist, Nalini Malani’s first use of stop-motion animation, a technique that now characterises her practice. Thematically, the animation explores the construction and layering of memory suggested in the film’s title, while addressing the social status and roles of women.

Memories of Milk City 
India 1991, Dir Ruchir Joshi, 13 min
 
A fourteen-minute cine-poem, Memories of Milk City catches Ahmedabad at a time of transition, peeling away layers of textures, gestures and sounds, tripping over a culture and a language at war with themselves.

Sudesha
India 1983, Dir Yugantar Film Collective, 34 min

Sudesha tells the story of a woman who is a village activist in the Chipko Forest Conservation Movement in the foothills of the Himalayas. In this area, people depend entirely on the forest for their daily needs, but the forests have been destroyed by powerful timber traders—and along with the forest, the livelihood of the people has been threatened.

Cinema Restored

Der Kampf um den heiligen Baum (The Battle of the Sacred Tree)

Germany 1995, Dir Wanjiru Kinyanjuim, 82 min, in English, Swahili with English subtitles 

Thu 31 Oct, 6.45pm

Cinema 3

Based Barbara Kimenye's short story and shot entirely in Kenya by Wanjiru Kinyanjui, the Kenyan writer, poet and filmmaker, with a local cast, Der Kampf um den heiligen Baum (The Battle of the Sacred Tree) celebrates African storytelling and invites viewers to explore cultural identity and tradition. The film’s dialogue alternates between English and Swahili, enriched by the soundtrack of Senegalese musician Mamadou Mbaye.

Special Event
Sin Wai Kin – New Work Preview & ScreenTalk with Sin Wai Kin and Lotte Johnson (12)
Jarman Award 2024
Mon 4 Nov, 6.30pm
Cinema 2

An evening introducing three new interconnected works by Sin Wai Kin on themes of time, reality and human nature. Sin Wai Kin, renowned for their boundary-defying approach and multidisciplinary artistry, presents here a series of fresh works that challenge conventions and explore the intersections of identity, technology, and human experience. With a distinctive style that blends visual aesthetics, narrative experimentation, and emotional depth, Sin Wai Kin’s films are a testament to the evolving landscape of modern cinema.

The Film London Jarman Award is presented by Film London with support from Arts Council England.

NOVEMBER 

Experiments in Film
Efforts of Nature V1 (18)
Tue 5 Nov, 6.30pm

Cinema 3

A selection of old and new experimental films and spoken word looking at the human body as a place of pleasure, illness, and as a site for transcendental experiences. 

The programme includes moving image and spoken word work by Marthe Peters, Jerry Tartaglia, Marlon Riggs, Xiaolu Wang, Pedro Pietri, Anne Charlotte Robinson and Morgan Quaintance.

Efforts of Nature V1 is the sixth and final iteration of an expanded screening programme arranged by Morgan Quaintance, that both includes and expands from his film of the same name. 

Festival
London Animation Film Festival
Fri 22 Nov - Mon 2 Dec

LIAF is the UK’s largest and longest-running animation festival, dedicated to screening the best of the world’s independent films and celebrating the diversity and creativity of this unique art form. One of the regular festival programmes - Disrupting the Narrative - is co-curated this year with Osbert Parker - BAFTA and Emmy nominated Director and Ambassador for FLAMIN at Film London.

Monday 25 Nov, 6.15pm
Cinema 2

Disrupting the Narrative: When Worlds Collide (15*) + ScreenTalk

Running time: approx 100 mins total (70 minutes screening + 30 minutes Screentalk)

Disrupting The Narrative: When Worlds Collide takes viewers on unexpected journeys across London, Libya, South Africa and beyond into personal histories and deep into emotional landscapes of the heart. Documentary and avant garde experiments collide with innovative C.G. stop motion and hand drawn animation techniques to explore coming of age stories about people, places, gentrification, migration and the beauty of bodies in motion. 

Special Event

One Second & ScreenTalk (12A) with Dr Jie Li and Dr Chris Berry
China 2020, Dir Zhang Yimou, 105 mins, in Mandarin with English subtitles

Thu 28 Nov, 6.15pm

Cinema 1

Zhang Yimou's One Second looks at the journey of a man living against the backdrop of China's political upheaval, showcasing Yimou's mastery in portraying human resilience amid historical turmoil. This exploration of the Cultural Revolution’s impact, focusing on themes of memory and redemption intertwine with those presented in the new book Cinematic Guerrillas: Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China by Dr Jie Li, (Columbia University Press) and recipient of the 2024 Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award.

Following the event there will be a reception in the foyer, that all audience members are welcome to join.

DECEMBER

Special Event / Relaxed
The Stimming Pool (12A) + ScreenTalk with filmmakers
UK 2025, Dirs The Neurocultures Collective (Sam Chown Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles, Lucy Walker) and Steven Eastwood, 70 min
Mon 9 Dec, 6.30pm
Cinema 3

The Stimming Pool  is a unique film exploring a world shaped by neurodiverse perspectives. The narrative unfolds through an autistic camera, capturing diverse subjects navigating environments both challenging and comforting. Characters, some concealing their autism, others thriving in their communities, share a common goal: finding a space free from societal norms—the Stimming Pool.

Special Event
Sine Screen: Precarious Landscapes
Tue 3 – 15 Dec

Precarious Landscapes is part of Sine Screen’s Vulnerable Histories series, exploring marginal histories in East and South East Asia, and seeks to reimagine cinema’s relationship to our landscape through a politicised, decolonial experimental lens. Sine Screen is a female-led emerging screening collective dedicated to showcasing independent cinema and moving images works from East and Southeast Asia.

Precarious Landscapes 01
Tue 3 Dec, 6.30pm

Cinema 2

Experimental films from Thailand, Vietnam, China and Korea, that look at how we relate to the land around us, through mythical, decolonial and sensory lenses. 

Becoming Alluvium
Vietnam 2019, Dir Thao Nguyen Phan, 16min

Khmer folk tales, local lore and stories about reincarnation are told through vibrant watercolour animations and observations of daily life telling stories centred around the ebb and flow of the Mekong River, which runs through Tibet, China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Letters from Panduranga 
Vietnam 2015, Dir Nguyễn Trinh Thi, 35 min

A letter exchange between a man and a woman about Government plans to build Vietnam’s first two nuclear power plants in Ninh Thuan (formerly known as Panduranga) - right at the spiritual heart of the Cham indigenous people and threatening the survival of this ancient matriarchal Hindu culture - inspire this essay film.

The Red Filter is Withdrawn 레드필터가 철회됩니다
Korea 2020, Dir Minjung Kim, 11 min

Director Kim Minjung delves into the violent history of Jeju’s uprisings and massacres from 1948. The camera follows the traces in the landscape, sometimes transformed by a strident, distance-creating red light, accompanied by a commentary by avant-garde filmmaker Hollis Frampton. 

Look On The Bright Side 
China 2023, Dir Yuyan Wang,16 min 

Starting with materials filmed in LED factories in southern China, the film weaves together recycled footage from social networks to portray a community living under the pervasive influence of ever-lasting light. 

A Room with a Coconut View 
Thailand 2018, Dir Tulapop Saenjaroen, 28 min

Local corruption becomes intertwined with the history of Thai cinema, as tourist Alex begins to question his own subjectivity, and how images have been used to mediate his understanding of the world.

Precarious Landscapes 02 + live performance
Sun 15 Dec, 5.25pm
Cinema 2

Experimental and narrative short films from Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, explores myth, fantasy and growing up in a time of crisis and change. The programme will be preceded by a sound performance by Zhao Jiajing, a London-based composer and interdisciplinary artist whose work seeks to evoke cross-sensory imaginations.

It’s Raining Frogs Outside
Philippines 2021, Dir Maria Estela Paiso,14 mins

As the apocalypse looms, a young Filipino woman is forced to return to her childhood home in the province of Zambales. There, as frogs rain down from the sky, she confronts traumatic memories that condense into a surreal fever dream.

Tabula Rasa 

Thailand 2018, Dir Taiki Sakpisit, 20 mins

The remains of an abandoned temple hidden among the hills of Chainat province are haunted by the myth of the wandering spirits of dead soldiers from the wars and a solitary monk who seeks tranquillity within the emptiness of space.

Golden Dragon 
Cambodia 2023, Dir Boren Chhith, 17 mins

When Vicheka wakes up in a hospital in the coastal town of Sihanoukville, he tries to piece together the reason for his visit. Overwhelmed by his dreams, memories and the rapidly urbanising landscape of his birthplace, a conversation with a local nurse helps him to begin navigating this pivotal moment in his life.

Lemongrass Girl 
Thailand 2021, Dir Pom Bunsermvicha, 17 min

According to Thai superstition (and prevalent to this day), a virgin can ward off rain by planting lemongrass upside-down underneath an open sky. As clouds begin to gather, a young production manager on a film set is tasked to carry out this tradition. As her fellow female co-workers shy away from the duty, she is left with no choice but to take on the burden of becoming the lemongrass girl.

Pyroclasts are Eloquent Storytellers 
Indonesia 2022, Dir Riar Rizaldi, 21 mins

For many humans who live around the most active stratovolcano in the world, Mount Merapi, this geological entity is a symbol of a contingent future. The film delves into the psyche of the mountain as well as examines the practice of prophecy performed by people who live around it with their multimodal approach to worldviews.

Special Event
Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum Presents…
Sat 14 & Wed 18 Dec
Cinema 3

The artist Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, whose Barbican Curve show It Will End in Tears runs until 5 Jan, has selected two films which expand upon the themes explored through her work, including Alfred Hitchock’s classic tale of obsession and voyerism, Rear Windowand Woman of the Dunes, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s masterful mix suspense, sexual tension and social commentary.

Woman of the Dunes (15)
Japan 1964, Dir Hiroshi Teshigahara, 141 min

Dec 14, 2.30pm

Cinema 3

Rear Window

USA 1954, Dir Alfred Hitchcock, 114 min

Wed 18, 6.20pm

Cinema 3

Cinema Restored
Sarah Maldoror’s Carnaval Trilogy
Tue 17 Dec, 6.30pm
Cinema 2

Across the last few years, the life and work of Sarah Maldoror (1929-2020) large body of work has been finding its way back into the public consciousness, due to restorations and the tireless work of her daughters Annouchka de Andrade and Henda Ducados. Here, the Barbican will screen three films – though not envisioned as a formal trilogy - made between 1979 and 1980, that capture May Day celebrations in Cape Verde and the preparation for carnivals in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. In doing so, Malodoror’s camera captures the energy, spirit and joy that these celebrations create, but also the role they play in establishing a sense of community in the direct aftermath of independence. With thanks to Annouchka De Andrade.

Fogo, l’île de feu 

Francia - Capo Verde 1979, Dir. Sarah Maldoror, 33 min

A vibrant portrayal of the May Day celebrations in Cape Verde, highlighting the island’s cultural resilience and historical importance.

Cap-Vert, un carnaval dans le Sahel 

Francia - Capo Verde 1979, Dir Sarah Maldoror, 28 min

A captivating look at the colourful preparations and celebrations of Cape Verde’s unique carnival traditions.

À Bissau, le carnaval 

Guinea-Bissau 1980, Dir Sarah Maldoror, 30 min

An insightful glimpse into the festive spirit and cultural expression of Guinea-Bissau’s carnival, reflecting the joy and unity of its people.