Our regular monthly update featuring the latest news and opportunities for your cinema, festival or film society.
ICO News
- Thank you to the over 470 attendees who joined us both in-person at BFI Southbank and online for this year’s Spring Screening Days to preview key upcoming films and network with others across the sector. Not been to Screening Days before? Check out our new trailer to get a sense of what it’s like.
- Over on the ICO blog, some of our staff reflected on the best films they saw at this year’s Berlinale, and we also heard from Flatpack Festival about their experience taking part in the 4-day working week UK trial.
- It’s been a busy month on The Cinema of Ideas! Our conversation with Sundance’s Director of Programming, Kim Yutani, took place last week, and earlier in the month we hosted our Restitution in Motion season looking at historical and new approaches to cultural restitution. You can read Dr Lennon Mhishi’s written exploration of the forms that restitution can take, and recordings of the event’s discussions will be available to view on our YouTube channel soon.
- Last month on The Cinema of Ideas, Fragments: Burmese Identities In Between became our most popular programme on the platform to date! You can now watch recordings of the roundtable discussion and poetry readings from the programme on our YouTube channel.
- Our Right of Way tour is still making its way around the country, with screenings at SPACE Colchester and Central Saint Martins taking place next month. For more info on the tour, including details of upcoming screenings and how to book it for your venue, see the Right of Way website.
- We’re currently updating our jobs board policy, to help create a fairer industry and help employers find the best talent. If you have any suggestions please email us on info@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk.
Opportunities
- There are currently roles available at Park Circus, Sheffield DocFest, The Light, and more, on our jobs board.
- Inclusive Cinema has released free-of-charge new resources that provide information and guidance to support exhibitors in improving cinema experiences for working-class people and those in poverty.
- Consider supporting the crowdfunding campaign to help the development of a Community Cinema in Govanhill, Glasgow. Creative Scotland will match individual pledges up to £10,000.
- TNB XPO, a convention held by The New Black Film Collective, is currently taking place at Rich Mix in London, with an online day taking place Friday 31 March. The free event is an opportunity for the film industry to discover and amplify both UK and international Black cinema.
- Into Another Intensity is a one-day seminar on Saturday 22 April bringing artists, curators and cultural producers together in Somerset to consider how art can open up new encounters with, and ways of thinking about rural places in the context of an ever more interconnected world.
- Consider the different filmmaking techniques deployed to construct anti-colonial/nationalist/racist film with filmmakers Amanda Egbe and Rastko Novaković, in this fascinating online course: Anti-Fascist Cinema: Single Screen and Multi-Platform Approaches. Running on Thursday evenings across six weeks, 7-9pm UK time, 13 April – 11 May.
Upcoming festivals & seasons
- If the Sky Sounds So Loud is a programme of two films which probe the political and philosophical nature of the night sky, featuring new non-fiction work by artists from Morocco and Afghanistan. Curated by Opensources and taking place at the ICA on 6 April.
- Beginning on Saturday 8 April, The Film Foundation will be screening the restoration of Prisoneros De La Tierra (1939, d. Mario Soffici), online for free for 72 hours.
- In April, the BFI are paying tribute to the sassiest gal in 1930s Hollywood: Ginger Rogers.
- Throughout April, Broadway in Nottingham are celebrating the new 4k restoration of Raging Bull by screening a mini-season on The Films of Martin Scorsese.
- Chronic Youth Film Festival 2023 presents A Time and a Place: A series of films depicting memories of life, how we choose to remember and what we choose to share. Taking place the weekend of 22/23 April, the programme includes the London premiere of How to Save a Dead Friend from first-time director Maryusa Syroechkovskaya.
- This April, Depot in Lewes have a Douglas Sirk mini-season, screening Sirk’s two classics Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life, alongside an introductory talk.
- The 21st edition of Kinoteka continues next month with, among other screenings, an exciting retrospective of the works of Jerzy Skolimowski in collaboration with the BFI.
- The Vito Project Queer Film Club’s Dressed To Thrill season at The Cinema Museum continues exploring dress code and gender expression through film with a special double-bill on 23 April of the rarely seen original German version of Victor and Victoria (1933), followed by the Julie Andrews classic Victor/Victoria (1982).
- Alongside the world première of Retrograde at Kiln Theatre in London, a duo of Sidney Poitier’s films will be screened at Kiln Cinema in May to accompany the production on stage.
- The BFI and Cinecittà have joined forces for Dario Argento: Doors into Darkness, a new month-long season taking place from 1 – 30 May 2023 at BFI Southbank.
- Patrice Robinson has programmed a collection of films at the Barbican that give insight into the evolving identity of contemporary Caribbean cinema. Taking place 17 – 31 May, the season is titled Snapshots: Caribbean Cinema Up Close.
Good reads/watches/listens
- Bad Projection Is Ruining the Movie Theater Experience
- Edinburgh International Film Festival to return as part of one-off EIF edition in August
- On the past, present and future of theatrical film projection
- In The Time Machine: Repertory Filmgoing Rises Again
- Curator June Givanni on African cinema: ‘Films need to be seen in their own countries’
- The Cinematologists Podcast: T.L.C (Tender Loving Care for Trans-Led/Trans-Loved Cinema) with So Mayer and Lillian Crawford
- In with the Old: Checking the Pulse on New York Repertory Culture
- Black cinema organisation We Are Parable to expand into UK, international distribution
- The Current Debate: Oscars 2023, Retread or Revolution?
- Where to begin with Krzysztof Kieślowski
- Highlights from Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival 2023
- FAN to support UK exhibitors to take part in a major new BFI programme on Powell and Pressburger
- Why The Blue Caftan is a boost for queer culture in Africa and the Arab world
- Why non-disabled audiences must play their part in ‘busting the bias’
- Libraries provide a much-needed home for digital culture
- Cultures of trust: Towards flexible and fearless organisations
- Don’t look down: 100 years of Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last!
- Quentin Tarantino’s next film is about a film critic. Should I be scared? – Peter Bradshaw
- A new online resource aims to increase accessibility across the film industry
- The solution to cinema’s curation conundrum? More, more, more
- Under the Sign of Sadness: Zbigniew Preisner’s Three Colors Scores
- New Directors/New Films 2023
- B. Ruby Rich on Cinema’s Cosmic Shifts
- On Cauleen Smith’s feature debut, Drylongso (1998)
- The New Black Film Canon
- Remembering Michael Snow
- Finding a Home in the avant-garde
- The individual ballots from the 2022 Sight and Sound Poll
Header image: © Cinecittà, from Suspiria (Dir: Dario Argento, 1977), screening as part of Dario Argento: Doors into Darkness.