AWAN partnered with The Arab Film Club to present Another Reality: Genre Shorts by Arab Women Filmmakers, here at the Garden Cinema, a programme curated by Sarah Agha. AWAN is the UK’s only contemporary multi-arts festival dedicated to showcasing inspiring works from Arab female artists.
Sarah discusses the shorts with their respective directors, and the growth of genre cinema in the Arab world more generally, with input from our audience.
The films screened were:
Ladies Coffee (2024) by Amal Al-Agroobi, The Call (2023) by Riffy Ahmed, and In Vitro (2019) by Larissa Sansour.
SCALA!!! is a historical document as unselfconscious and feral as its subject. A ragged collage of testimonials and artifacts of the legendary Scala Cinema, which operated from 1973 – 1993 as a mecca for cinephiles, misfits and outsiders – from queer Londoners to punks and new romantics.
It is also not infrequent for The Garden Cinema to be compared to the Scala of, though we are admittedly more demure, and compliant with rules and closing times. Still, we proudly embrace this comparison as a badge of honor. As their more puritanical heirs, we are thrilled to screen this amazing documentary and pay tribute to the Scala’s legacy of celebrating independent film and embracing outsider culture.
Directors Jane Giles and Ali Catterall joined us at the Garden Cinema to discuss the film and the venue with journalist Saskia Baron and our audience members who chipped in with comments and anecdotes! Tune in to this journey through time.
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We discuss new forms of storytelling, genre, Afrofuturism and conversations around storytelling amongst the Black diaspora with writer Irenosen Okojie who curated the Black To The Future festival. We are very pleased to be showing two of the programme’s films here at the Garden Cinema. We strive to expand the reach of the films we show and look forward to introducing new and original work to our members and visitors.
Every winter Mikma and her family travel by foot from their village deep in the Himalayas of Nepal to sell local medicinal plants in urban markets. This year, construction of a new highway to China has begun in their roadless valley, and things are never going to be the same.
The documentary film Baato, distributed by Tull Stories, is at once a sensitive portrait of a family that has thus far existed largely apart from the trappings of modernity, a fascinating chronicle of the epic journey they embark on each year, and a penetrating depiction of the culture and politics of Nepal.
The Garden Cinema’s Joe Bond talks to co-director Lucas Millard during a satellite Q&A following a screening of the film.
We were joined by director Dionne Edwards, producer Georgia Goggin and editor Andonis Trattos, the team behind Pretty Red Dress, a BFI-distributed gem of a film currently showing at the Garden Cinema for a post-screening chat with our audience.
Join us to delve behind the scenes of this wonderfully nuanced and upbeat film, as we chat about filming in South London, Natey Jones’ gracefulness on screen, casting Alexandra Burke, the tussle between masculinity and femininity and the script development process.
We welcome all comments, input and recommendations!
Writer-director Carolina Cavalli’s darkly comic feature debut, which received its world premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, is a deliciously satirical character study of a twentysomething looking for purpose… and maybe also a friend.
We had the opportunity to chat with Carolina over zoom about the film, her previous work, her time studying in Paris, audience expectations and the particular role of childhood friends in the lives of expat children!
Amanda will be screened from 9 June at the Garden Cinema.
We chat to a panel of producers, actors and directors about the current film scene in the Arab world, what is means to be an “Arab film”, what the sources of funding tend to be, the themes and genres that appeal most internationally, the intricacies of subtitling and other topics our audience asked about. The event was held as a launch night for the Arab women filmmakers season at the cinema and involved producer and curator Elhum Shakerifar, actress and programmer Sarah Agha and filmmaker Soudade Kaadan.
To mark Italy’s Liberation Day, we screened documentary Bella Ciao: Song Of Rebellion. The documentary traces the origins of the revolutionary song, the myths around it, its international appeal and use, its potential commercialisation. Directors Paul Russell and Andrea Vogt joined us to chat about making indie films, Bella Ciao and the deeply moving meanings behind it with Mydylarama journalist Steve Topple.