Shuffle Festival, London
There’s a lot of film and even more festival at this vibrant east London event, whose attractions include an experimental woodland restaurant and a “migration pavilion”, as well as talks, music, comedy and outdoor screenings. The theme is “movement, migration and place”, which translates in the film programme into immigrant-centric titles like Brick Lane (29 Jul) and Four Lions (Fri), and far-flung meditations on displacement such as Beasts Of The Southern Wild (31 Jul) and Star Trek IV (1 Aug).
Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, E3, Fri to 1 Aug
The Ecstasy Of Wilko Johnson + Q&A, Nationwide
Most people diagnosed with inoperable cancer get their affairs in order; Wilko Johnson went on tour. Refusing any treatment, the ex-Dr Feelgood guitarist accepted his fate with admirable dignity and an apparent lack of fear or regret. The same couldn’t be said for his fans. Johnson’s energy and individualism, onstage and off, have established him as an all-round decent human being and won him generations of admirers, not least rockumentarian Julien Temple, who already chronicled the Dr Feelgood story in his great 2009 documentary Oil City Confidential. Temple’s fascinating new film, following Johnson’s supposedly final months, is far more than a music doc, bringing emotional drama, unpretentious metaphysics and playful archive footage to a story which – it’s no spoiler to reveal – has a surprisingly feelgood ending: Johnson is still very much with us. So is Temple, at these select Q&A screenings.
Various venues, to Fri
Summer Of French Cinema, Nationwide
There’s still a decent amount of French cinema making it across the channel, but this initiative gives screen time to some new films you’d otherwise have trouble finding, many of them from renowned directors. Patrice Leconte, for example, whose new comedy Do Not Disturb follows Christian Clavier seeking a moment’s peace; or Xavier Beauvois, who follows up Of Gods And Men with The Price Of Fame, a farce revolving around stealing Charlie Chaplin’s corpse. Neither is their best work, admittedly. More promising are La Vie Sauvage, about a family who attempt to shun civilisation; and Alix Delaporte’s The Last Hammer Blow, a coming-of-age tale with a healthy dose of Mahler.
Various venues, Bradford, Brighton, Cambridge, Oxford, Liverpool & York, to 3 Aug, picturehouses.com
London Indian Film Festival
Most of the time it’s only a certain type of south Asian movie we get to see: Bollywood and its regional equivalents. This festival shows you the other sides to India’s vast film industry. There’s new Bengali arthouse (Labour Of Love); provocative indie youth dramas (M Cream follows teens in search of a mythical hash); social realism (slum childhood tale The Crow’s Egg); and political drama (the acclaimed Court). There are also documentaries, including Death Of A Gentleman, which reveals test cricket to be no less corrupt than Fifa, and comical crowd-pleaser Meet The Patels, in which an Indian-American man searches for true love, conditional on parental approval.
Various venues, to 26 Jul
