A Woman’s Work, London
Monthly film night A Woman’s Work looks at women in film through the eyes of renowned speakers, male or female. In the past they’ve had Carol Morley and David Nicholls; this time it’s writer and performer Alice Lowe, who’s talking about the spectacle of powerful women brought down to size in general, and her fascination with Glenn Close in particular. Close has given us at least two iconic screen antiheroines: her scheming, fan-fluttering marquise in Dangerous Liaisons and a bunny-boiling mistress in Fatal Attraction.
ArtHouse Crouch End, N8, Tue
Belfast Film Festival
This city festival seems to have something for everyone – from the highest to the lowest of brows. Or more specifically, from a dry, existential Swedish comedy (A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence, 18 Apr) to a remake of The Holy Mountain made from clips of dogs (Doggiewoggiez! Poochiewoochiez!, 24 Apr). It’s a good chance to top up on future international releases and catch some grade-A cult and trash cinema, but there’s some remarkable new local work too, such as I Am Belfast (Thu), Mark Cousins’ experimental love letter to the city, with a David Holmes score (both will be attending), and new post-apocalyptic rural thriller The Survivalist (25 Apr). On the events front there’s Eraserhead with a live soundtrack (22 Apr), Murder By Decree in a Masonic lodge (18 Apr), a live read-through of The Big Lebowski (25 Apr) and a Blazing Saddles night (18 Apr) with fancy dress, live country music and, of course, beans.
Various venues, Thu to 25 Apr
Alchemy Film Festival, Scottish borders
The “experimental film and artists’ moving image” label sounds rather cumbersome, but this is the sort of outward-looking, voyage-of-discovery event you rarely find outside Britain’s big cities. It’s worth making a detour to if you’re after something stimulating and strange yet accessible. Highlights include the world premiere of Ettrick (Thu), Jacques Perconte’s hallucinatory, digitally refracted survey of the Scottish Borders landscape, and Guy Sherwin’s live cinematic performance using projected images (Fri). There are also 10 free moving image installations in disused buildings and spaces around town, including a new work by Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair, and a “caravan obscura” in Wilton Lodge Park.
Various venues, Thu to 19 Apr
London Independent Film Festival
Independent film has become such a broad category, you could be talking about an Oscar-winner like Whiplash or a student film made for five quid on a laptop. This event tends towards the latter end of the spectrum – hopefully in a good way, as someone has already sorted the wheat from the chaff for you. It’s a rare platform for new films with budgets under £100,000, which means mostly shorts, horrors and comedies (like The Last Sparks Of Sundown, Fri, in which American brothers inherit an English country pile). But there are also dramas (British opener Solitary, Thu), documentaries (Garnet’s Gold, 25 Apr, follows a quixotic Scottish treasure-seeker), and even a second world war movie (The War I Knew, 24 Apr). You never know, one of them might be a future Oscar-winner.
Shortwave Cinema, SE1, Thu to 26 Apr
