Sheffield Doc/Fest
The UK’s biggest, busiest documentary festival has something of an expanded feel to it this year. There are quality new docs galore, of course, but there are also some enticing “augmented” events. A Virtual Reality Arcade (6-10 Jun), for example, where you can put on a headset and explore different worlds. There’s also added music: Michael Nyman performs his audio-visual War Work live, and soul doc Mavis! (as in Staples) screens in the Botanical Gardens (both 6 Jun). Elsewhere, subjects range from Chernobyl (The Russian Woodpecker, 7 & 8 Jun) to Elvis tributes, homosexuality in Islam and Monty Python.
Various venues, Fri to 10 Jun
DW Griffith: Cinema’s Great Pioneer, London
No film-maker represents a greater challenge to history than Griffith. He is revered for practically writing the vocabulary of modern cinema, and reviled for using it to such contemptible ends. Griffith’s 1915 epic The Birth Of A Nation almost overshadows everything else he did. It is a masterpiece of form and an atrocity of content, with its heroic depiction of the Ku Klux Klan and horrendously racist portrayal of African-Americans (many played by white actors in blackface). Its screening here (25 Jun) is followed by a roundtable discussion, intersecting with a UCL conference on its centenary. Elsewhere, there’s a chance to see his other, more palatable works, such as the atoning follow-up to Birth, Intolerance (24 & 27 Jun); Isn’t Life Wonderful (a proto-neorealist expat tale, 19 & 21 Jun); and 17-minute short The Rose Of Kentucky (26 & 28 Jun) – which, ironically, cast Klansmen as the villains.
BFI Southbank, SE1, Fri to 28 Jun
The Damned: Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead, London & Leeds
Onstage anarchy, bust-ups, lineup changes (past members include Lemmy and Jon Moss of Culture Club) and bizarre turns (like Captain Sensible’s smash hit Happy Talk), the Damned’s history, as told in Wes Orshoski’s new documentary, is more entertaining than most. Enlivened further by comments from Pink Floyd, Sex Pistols and Blondie, and the fact that key members – who’ll appear during this screening tour for Q&As – hate each other, still.
Prince Charles Cinema, WC2, Wed; Crouch End, Arthouse, N8, Thu; Hyde Park Picture House, Leeds, Fri; various venues to 20 Jun, damneddoc.com
Secret Cinema Presents Star Wars, London
Last year they built a whole 1950s American backwater in which to stage their immersive Back To The Future event, complete with its own funfair, high school, radio station and even a farm, all populated by scores of cheery, in-character actors. Some 75,000 people came to visit. So who knows what Secret Cinema have planned for everyone’s favourite Star Wars movie? Will they turn Willesden into Cloud City? Recreate Dagobah in Epping Forest? Their “secret” Mos Eisley Cantina-themed nightclub offers a foretaste but, as usual, everything except the film is firmly under wraps here, and punters are expected to keep it that way. But we do know the ticket price: a pretty steep 78 Galactic Credits.
Secret location, Thu 4 to 27 Sep
