23rd Nov 2012 - 1st Dec 2012
Sallis Benney Theatre
www.cine-city.co.uk/
The surgical reconstruction of the hymen, hymenorrhaphy, is an increasingly common practice in Tunisia. In a country considered a model for the rest of the Arab-Muslim world on how to modernise, it is still essential for a bride to be a virgin on her wedding day. Belgian-Tunisian director Jamel Mokni conducts interviews with various groups in Tunisia, including women who lost their virginity, a hymen reconstruction surgeon, young people, activists and intellectuals, offering a multitude of perspectives on this sensitive topic.
We hope to welcome director Jamel Mokni for Q&A following the screening
Near the port of Antwerp lies Doel, a village about to be razed to make way for an expansion of the harbour. While Doel slowly dies, Emilienne Driesen, an elderly widow stolidly refuses to leave the only house she's ever known.
Starkly, beautifully filmed in black and white over six years, life seems to be carrying on as normal around Emilienne's kitchen table. But when her friends leave, the village priest dies and the demolition begins, her last stand is a way of making sure that, at least, her lost home will be remembered.
Rountable discussion with Sridhar Rangayan, Campbell Ex, Stephen Kent Jusick and Brian Robinson.
How does cinema create and sustain queer public cultures? LGBT film festivals have become a staple of the international festival circuit and some gay films garner success at the British box office. But around the world, LGBT film screenings have been sites for homophobic violence and some critics say the spaces for diverse views of queer life are limited in mainstream gay cinema. What do we want from queer film culture? What kinds of spaces might queer film screenings create and what role can they play in public life? Join film-makers, activists and curators from New York, London and Mumbai in discussion.
The Mumbai International Queer Film Festival began in 2010––the first officially recognised LGBT film festival in India and a landmark for South Asian queer culture. Aiming to promote visibility for Indian LGBT communities, to explore complex realities and to celebrate Indian queer life, the festival screens films by new Indian filmmakers alongside the latest queer films from around the world. Festival director Sridhar Rangayan has curated a programme that presents a snapshot of the vibrant queer cinema emerging in India.
An intimate and sensitively filmed love story between one of Scandinavia's most highly regarded modern painters and a young Brazilian dancer. Desperately searching for true love, they meet on Skype but though they can’t communicate in any language, decide to meet and try to fall in love. This is the beginning of an unpredictable love story, humorous and warm but with undertones of control and domination. An award-winning documentary about the search for a life where someone loves you – regardless of how difficult it can be to love one self.
A new collaboration between film-maker John Rogers and artist Bob and Roberta Smith (Patrick Brill), provides a unique insight into the working processes of one of the UK’s key contemporary artists.
Filmed over three years from the artists’ studio in Leytonstone to Brooklyn. Walsall to Ramsgate, MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN ART is an absorbing exploration of the concept of collaboration. The overriding message is that art belongs to everyone and still has an important role to play in society. John’s previous feature documentary THE LONDON PERAMBULATOR screened in CINECITY 2009.
Followed by Q&A with Bob and Roberta Smith and director John Rogers.
A documentary thriller from the days of the Cold War. Two ex-friends from the now defunct East Germany meet up after many years. One was once a dissident, the other spied on him for the Stasi. One went to prison and one did not. A gripping, unsettling story told through two ordinary people, of how a dictatorship like the GDR could spin so effective a web and control its population so completely. Winner of the Prix Europa 2011 for the best feature length documentary.
Followed by Q&A by director Heike Bachelier
Daniel Paul Schreber spent nine years in a psychiatric clinic and then in 1903 published what is still regarded as the most famous autobiography ‘written from the inside’ about schizophrenia, paranoia and megalomania. Schreber believed that he was in contact with God through the Writing-Down Machine, a precursor to the typewriter, and that only his transformation into a woman could save the world. Simon Pummell (BODYSONG) interlaces documentary, fiction and animation in an original and challenging way. Interviews with psychoanalysts, dressed in fin de siècle suits, are juxtaposed with fragments from Schreber’s prose, his typewriter floating through space like a glowing planet, and performances by the Dutch actor Hugo Koolschijn, who portrays the tormented Schreber.
Post screening panel presentation and discussion organised by Cinemas of the Mind, the Arts Forum of Psychotherapy Sussex. Simon Pummell, the director of SHOCK HEAD SOUL, Professor Ian Christie, a film historian, writer and broadcaster and Dr. Clive Robinson, a Consultant in General Adult Psychiatry will join a post screening panel discussion. This will be chaired by Helen Taylor Robinson, who conceived and developed the idea of SHOCK HEAD SOUL with Simon Pummell. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis and has lectured and published on Film and Psychoanalysis. The members of the panel have all been closely involved in the making of the film.
A dentist by trade, Jorge Mario has lots of hobbies but one real passion: cinema. Making dozens of home movies, he has gone on to create thrillers, documentaries and westerns on Super 8. Now 70, he wants to re-make his magnum opus, the Super 8 revenge western ‘Winchester Martin’. Struggling to find a cast, he co-opts his patients and local butcher into becoming celluloid bandits, never losing his joy for making movies. Though the idea of non-professionalism can (sometimes) carry negative connotations in our culture, an amateur - deriving from the Latin for love - is someone who loves what they do and Jorge Mario has infectious passion aplenty. AMATEUR is a warm, affectionate documentary and a homage to a disappearing popular cinephilia.
Angel, César and Marcos are identical 11-year-old boy triplets in Cuba who share a single passion. They want more than anything to be professional ballet dancers. Teachers at Cuba's world-renowned National School of Ballet believe that all three have the potential but no-one can remember a trio of identical boys making it to a professional ballet stage anywhere. Each triplet wants to be chosen for a role in a major production at Havana's Grand Theatre. It could be the start of his career.
A highly engaging documentary exploring a child's eye view on personal discipline, determination and hunger for professional success in the context of Cuba's surprising international impact on the formation of male ballet dancers.
We hope to welcome director Sylvia Collier for a Q&A following the screening
