6th–11th
May 2025
across London

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Wednesday 24th April

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Opening Night: Sunless Haven

Wed 24 Apr, 18:30 , ICA

"Animating a host of dispersed fragments from historical documents to architectural remnants and the river, Sunless Haven looks at the docklands as a resonant chamber connecting disparate worlds." (George Clark) George Clark worked with historians Simeon Koole and Ben Mechen, sound artist Jol Thoms and performance artist Yarli Allison to imagine the experiences in, around and through the London Docklands at the turn of the 20th century. “Woven into the film are attempts to understand the d...

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Festival Bookshop at the Common Press

Apr 25 — Apr 30 , The Common Press Bookshop

Throughout the festival we’re happy to host a curated bookstand at The Common Press, London's first consciously queer intersectional bookshop, with a selection of publications from and about filmmakers in this year’s and past festival programmes, as well as anthologies and artists’ publication from friends and collaborators.

Thursday 25th April

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Festival Bookshop at the Common Press

Apr 25 — Apr 30 , The Common Press Bookshop

Throughout the festival we’re happy to host a curated bookstand at The Common Press, London's first consciously queer intersectional bookshop, with a selection of publications from and about filmmakers in this year’s and past festival programmes, as well as anthologies and artists’ publication from friends and collaborators.

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Talks & Workshops Pass

Apr 25 — Apr 30 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

Our week-long pass gives you access to the talks, workshops and masterclasses taking place at our Festival Hub between 25th – 30th of April. Pass holders can attend any of the events listed below, no pre-registration required. Printed Forms: Publishing and Experimental Moving Image Thursday 25 April, 11am-12.30pm Gathering, collaging: Moving image artists and other peoples' archives Thursday 25 April, 2.30pm-4pm Undocumented Friday 26 April, 11am-1pm Stolen Films Imagi...

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Printed Forms: Publishing and Experimental Moving Image

Thu 25 Apr, 11:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

Bringing together the writers and publishers of recent books devoted to experimental cinema, many of whom focus on filmmakers from this year’s Open City programme, this encounter will present a range of methodologies of mediation involved in translating the communal, temporal experience of cinema to text and the printed page. Panellists will include: DOWSER, notes on artists moving image in Scotland is a chapbook series founded in 2020 and published by Transit Arts. Sharing fragments, ...

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Surgeries

Thu 25 Apr, 14:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

The Documentary Film Council, FLAMIN, LUX, The Scottish Documentary Institute, and T A P E Collective will be hosting one-to-one surgeries and drop-in sessions throughout the festival. Check below closer to the festival date for more information and details on how to book. The Documentary Film Council is a democratically run, sector-wide organisation facilitating effective, coordinated action on the key issues in the UK's independent documentary film industry. One-to-ones with the Documenta...

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Gathering, collaging: Moving image artists and other peoples’ archives

Thu 25 Apr, 14:30 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

Close and careful collaboration runs deeply through the Open City programme, with many filmmakers working with their subjects on the basis of trust and shared storytelling. This panel aims to discuss the diffuse acts of assembly and re-inscription that are required when taking on the responsibilities, risks and advocacy involved in presenting experiences other than our own, sometimes across time and geographies. Panellists will include: Niki Kohandel, Filmmaker, Minevissam (I am Writing...

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Filmmaker Meetups of London

Thu 25 Apr, 17:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

The filmmaker meetup sessions are a chance to hang out, meet other artists and gossip about cameras, image making, potential collaborations and more in a relaxed and supportive environment. The filmmaker meetups are inclusive, open to anyone who works with moving images and were launched at Open City Documentary Festival 2023. We’re more than happy to have them back.

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In Focus: Jessica Sarah Rinland 1

Thu 25 Apr, 18:15 , ICA

Bosque Jessica Sarah Rinland / 2006-2007 / UK / 4’ / Digital / silent An impressionistic portrait of a woodland in Southern England, shot on 16mm over two years, before and after felling. Y Berá – Bright Waters Jessica Sarah Rinland / 2016 / Argentina, UK / 10’ / Digital / English spoken With her 16mm camera, Jessica Sarah Rinland documents the incredible biodiversity of fauna and flora of the second biggest wetland in the world (Iberá, in Argentina). “In Y Berá – Bright Waters...

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OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE: MILITANT PALESTINIAN CINEMA (1968-1982)

Thu 25 Apr, 18:15 , Bertha DocHouse

Since the founding of the Palestine Film Unit (PFU) in 1968, cinema has been central to the struggle for Palestinian liberation. PFU co-founder Mustafa Abu Ali described it as “cinema of the people, for the people. Cinema that is simple and profound at the same time, easy to understand and beautiful.” This selection of films attempts to keep alive the tradition of fierce beauty, celebrating the celluloid commandoes who saw themselves not merely as documentarians of the revolution, but as acti...

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Preemptive Listening

Thu 25 Apr, 18:30 , Tate Modern

Part of a larger research project that takes the siren as a prompt for exploring the politics of listening and emergency, Preemptive Listening brings together musicians, activists and thinkers to propose alternatives modes of sounding and recalibrating the signal. The film weaves together original music by Mazen Kerbaj, Raven Chacon, Evelyn Glennie, David Toop, Elaine Mitchener, Camille Norment, Laurie Spiegel, Maja S.K. Ratkje, Anton Lukoszevieze, BJ Nilsen, Ilpo Väisänen, Rhodri Davies, FU...

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Losing Ground + GAMA

Thu 25 Apr, 20:30 , Close-Up

Losing Ground Anonymous Collective / 2023 / Myanmar / 18’ / Digital / Burmese spoken, English subtitles The aftermath of the 2021 coup d’état in Yangon, Myanmar sees an entire generation left in a brutal environment. The country’s economic capital city has rapidly become an open-air prison. Protest attempts are met with hostility, arrests, involuntary confinement and the threat of execution. With the constant threat of violence in the city, a collective of young anonymous voices from the...

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Combined Programme: Afterthoughts and Disappearances

Thu 25 Apr, 20:30 , Genesis

N’importe quoi (for Brunhild) Luke Fowler / 2023 / UK / 9’ / 16mm / French and English spoken An evocative portrait of “musique concrete” composer Brunhild Meyer-Ferrari, shot by Luke Fowler over a few hours spent together in March 2023. Brunhild is filmed in her studio, amongst her tapes and equipment, but also recording sound for the film in the streets of Paris, in public spaces such as a park and at Gare de l’Est, where trains from Germany arrive. Brunhild herself moved from Frankfu...

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Grandma’s Grammar 1: Prismatic Generations

Thu 25 Apr, 20:45 , ICA

Red Shift Gunvor Nelson / 1984 / Sweden / 50’ / 16mm / English and Swedish spoken, English subtitles Oscillating between extreme proximity and distance, Red Shift is a film of domestic interiors, tactile details, and mutable intergenerational dynamics. Nelson, daughter Oona, and Oona’s grandmother, Carin Grundel, appear playing family roles. Two other actors represent a “past” of mother-daughter relations. They are tethered in a relay of extreme closeups and long shots: hands grasping an...

Friday 26th April

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Festival Bookshop at the Common Press

Apr 25 — Apr 30 , The Common Press Bookshop

Throughout the festival we’re happy to host a curated bookstand at The Common Press, London's first consciously queer intersectional bookshop, with a selection of publications from and about filmmakers in this year’s and past festival programmes, as well as anthologies and artists’ publication from friends and collaborators.

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Talks & Workshops Pass

Apr 25 — Apr 30 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

Our week-long pass gives you access to the talks, workshops and masterclasses taking place at our Festival Hub between 25th – 30th of April. Pass holders can attend any of the events listed below, no pre-registration required. Printed Forms: Publishing and Experimental Moving Image Thursday 25 April, 11am-12.30pm Gathering, collaging: Moving image artists and other peoples' archives Thursday 25 April, 2.30pm-4pm Undocumented Friday 26 April, 11am-1pm Stolen Films Imagi...

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Surgeries

Thu 25 Apr, 14:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

The Documentary Film Council, FLAMIN, LUX, The Scottish Documentary Institute, and T A P E Collective will be hosting one-to-one surgeries and drop-in sessions throughout the festival. Check below closer to the festival date for more information and details on how to book. The Documentary Film Council is a democratically run, sector-wide organisation facilitating effective, coordinated action on the key issues in the UK's independent documentary film industry. One-to-ones with the Documenta...

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Undocumented: Film in the Archive & Film as Outreach

Fri 26 Apr, 11:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

The New Black Film Collective and London’s Screen Archives present a session that will delve into absence and representation in London’s moving image archive collections. Archives across the capital are telling the story of London and Londoners over the last 100 years through their film & video collections, but there are still many voices missing from these narratives, including London’s Black communities. This session will feature panel discussion and archival footage, and will explo...

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Stolen Films Imaginary

Fri 26 Apr, 14:30 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

In 1982, during Israel's invasion of Lebanon and siege of Beirut, the archive of the Palestinian Cinema Institute was stolen by the Israeli military in one of their most enduring crimes of cultural genocide. The archive has never been recovered; its absence a gaping wound in the visual heritage of an occupied nation. In a collective act of cultural resistance, the Stolen Films Imaginary will "project" a number of these missing films and, over a blank screen, invited guests will narrate the st...

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Kanafani Karaoke

Fri 26 Apr, 16:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

In 1970, Ghassan Kanafani – spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, writer, and Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader – gave a 5-minute television news interview to Richard Carleton in Beirut. Two years later, Kanafani – a "commando who never fired a gun" – was assassinated by the Mossad. Today, the interview has achieved legendary status; the rhetorical, playful power of Kanafani's words a blueprint for the Palestinian insistence on controlling their own narratives. ...

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Listening session: Palestinian Sound Archive

Fri 26 Apr, 17:30 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

This year, the festival has worked with The Palestinian Sound Archive's Mo'Min Swaitat to produce a series of sonic interventions that will take be played throughout the festival. Featuring a range of music and sound recordings from Palestine preserved and digitised by the Archive, these mixes highlight the diversity of Palestinian sonic culture historically and in the present. Whilst the interventions will be played throughout the festival, including before and after screenings and events, t...

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In Focus: Simon Liu 1

Fri 26 Apr, 18:15 , ICA

Single File Simon Liu / 2023 / Hong Kong, USA, Italy, UK / 10’ / Digital / sound “In the wake of cataclysmic regional change in the artist's homeland of Hong Kong, Simon Liu’s Cinema-Strobo-Scopic film features a laborious sequence of analogue darkroom practices and dense shrouds of video processing techniques which actively work to both conceal and reappraise approaches to personal expression in the face of censorship. Times ahead and behind collide – a new linearity is in need of; th...

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Folk Memory Project 1: Self-Portrait: Window in 47 KM

Fri 26 Apr, 18:15 , Rich Mix

Zhang Mengqi has made 10 films chronicling the past and present of her ancestral village, 47 km. The place’s peculiar name comes from its distance to the nearest city of Suizhou, which encapsulates both the context and potency of the project: “were it not for these films, no one would know about life there”, says Zhang. The eighth instalment in Zhang’s 47 km series is perhaps her most measured exploration of the village, shedding a delicate light on the two protagonists: Li Guiting and Fa...

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Absent Forces: The politics of the eerie in English rural moving image

Fri 26 Apr, 18:15 , Close-Up

Drawing upon Mark Fisher’s theorisation of the eerie as the sensation of absence, of either a presence or an absence, these works activate the dissonance between our imagined notion of the countryside and the political realities of this landscape. Framed by both its critics and advocates as a bastion of uncorrupted tradition isolated from the many developments that have emerged following the industrial revolution, the popular perception of the countryside has taken on an (ideological) em...

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THE NEW MILITANTS

Fri 26 Apr, 20:30 , Genesis

The New Militants picked up the camera from beside Hani Jawherieh's body and refused to let the tradition of radical filmmaking die with him. This strand brings together for the first time contemporary work from Palestinian filmmakers, and their international allies, who have inherited the legacy of Palestine's original militant cinema movement. Their image-making is not only a reflection of liberatory politics, but a political act in itself. Works like Basma Alsharif's fragmented ode to rest...

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The Soldier’s Lagoon (La Laguna del Soldado)

Fri 26 Apr, 20:30 , Close-Up

La Laguna del Soldado is the second part in Pablo Álvarez-Mesa’s trilogy of films retracing Simón Bolívar’s passage during the Liberation Campaign of Colombia in 1819. The film follows Bolivar’s path high into the Andean mountains and the foggy páramo ecosystem through which he led his troops in their final march towards Bogotá. Referred to as “the land of the mist” by Spanish Conquistadors, the páramo is a major source of water for the country but the extreme temperatures and high altitude m...

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Saturday 27th April

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Talks & Workshops Pass

Apr 25 — Apr 30 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

Our week-long pass gives you access to the talks, workshops and masterclasses taking place at our Festival Hub between 25th – 30th of April. Pass holders can attend any of the events listed below, no pre-registration required. Printed Forms: Publishing and Experimental Moving Image Thursday 25 April, 11am-12.30pm Gathering, collaging: Moving image artists and other peoples' archives Thursday 25 April, 2.30pm-4pm Undocumented Friday 26 April, 11am-1pm Stolen Films Imagi...

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Festival Bookshop at the Common Press

Apr 25 — Apr 30 , The Common Press Bookshop

Throughout the festival we’re happy to host a curated bookstand at The Common Press, London's first consciously queer intersectional bookshop, with a selection of publications from and about filmmakers in this year’s and past festival programmes, as well as anthologies and artists’ publication from friends and collaborators.

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Surgeries

Thu 25 Apr, 14:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

The Documentary Film Council, FLAMIN, LUX, The Scottish Documentary Institute, and T A P E Collective will be hosting one-to-one surgeries and drop-in sessions throughout the festival. Check below closer to the festival date for more information and details on how to book. The Documentary Film Council is a democratically run, sector-wide organisation facilitating effective, coordinated action on the key issues in the UK's independent documentary film industry. One-to-ones with the Documenta...

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Long Visions: Paths to First Features

Sat 27 Apr, 11:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

We invite all artists interested in or on their way to developing a first non-fiction feature to join Head of the BFI Doc Society Fund Luke Moody for this roundtable discussion. The session will touch on opportunities, practicalities and guidance for artists working towards feature-length filmmaking and will include a filmmaker case study presentation. We encourage attendees to participate in the conversation and exchange experiences of working in the non-fiction field, as well as use this op...

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Preemptive Listening: Symposium and Performance

Sat 27 Apr, 11:00 , Tate Modern

Join the Preemptive Listening symposium culminating in a performance by Raven Chacon Who sounds the alarm, and in the interest of what? What would a siren for the intertwined human, non-human and more-than-human sound like? Curated alongside Aura Satz’s Preemptive Listening film premiere and three-day programme, Tate film brings together musicians, artists, historians, sociologists, activists, and more in a symposium to explore the critical potential of reimagining sirens. The t...

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Listen with your eyes: Experimental Films for Families

Sat 27 Apr, 11:00 , Barbican

“The idea of putting together this family film programme came from some questions I have been thinking about as the parent of a toddler. What kind of moving image do I want to share with my child? How do I introduce the space of cinema and its collective spectatorship?   A response to these questions came to me in the form of attributes: gentle, slow, playful, open, experimental, home-made, beautiful and communal. It felt important that young children were offered plenty of space to see, ...

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Artist Talk: Simon Liu

Sat 27 Apr, 13:30 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

“Skateboarding is an individualised thing. Everyone does their own trick. You’re not dependent on a team or collaboration to skate by yourself. But it’s a community-based thing. I’ve been thinking about this idea of an individualised kind of methodology or practice within a community setting. Which in many ways I think is related to local filmmaking scenes or experimental filmmaking scenes. Those closely resemble skate culture.” (Simon Liu) In Focus artist Simon Liu discusses how skateboa...

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The Diagonal Force (La force diagonale)

Sat 27 Apr, 14:00 , Close-Up

Drawing from the writings and ideas of political philosopher Hannah Arendt, and particularly her focus on the human capacity to introduce something new into the world we share, Annik Leroy and Julie Morel travel across Europe, filming portraits of people and landscapes, gathering accounts of traumatic experiences that had been life-changing and transformative. In Sarajevo, a woman recounts an episode of the 1990s siege, when the tram that she was driving was hit by shell. In Görlitz, a Belgia...

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Folk Memory Project 2: Mountain Village

Sat 27 Apr, 14:00 , Rich Mix

Hu Sanshou visits his grandparents’ home in Xiangzidian village (Shaanxi province) with his camera for the first time. Vividly capturing their labour-intensive, self-sufficient ways of living, Hu invites us to observe the elderly couple’s everyday activities – preparing meals, raising pigs, and making tools. In the process of performing these tasks, they share their distant yet still raw memories of the Great Famine; their hands saying as much as their words. In line with the ethos of t...

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Film in Solidarity with Palestine

Sat 27 Apr, 15:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

In the face of the unfolding genocide in Gaza, how can filmmakers work together to end institutional complicity with occupation and apartheid both within our industry and the world beyond? What are Palestinians calling on cultural workers to do, and what does meaningful solidarity look like? This workshop aims to share knowledge and models of practice with a view to connecting film workers who want to be part of a transformative movement for collective liberation, and arming them with some...

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Grandma’s Grammar 2: Refusals of the Given – A Grass Cutter’s Tale (草とり草紙 )

Sat 27 Apr, 15:00 , ICA

Fukuda Katsuhiko’s portrait of Grandmother Katsu Someya documents the indomitable voice of an elderly peasant farmer (born in 1899) who worked land designated for redevelopment for the construction of Narita airport. Someya participated in the Sanrizuka protests, a resistance movement of farmers and workers, that was documented in a series of films by the Ogawa Productions filmmaking collective, of which Fukuda was a member until 1977. Someya continued resisting, a defiance that extended to p...

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A friend’s face, a red sphere, and a landscape: The films of Narcisa Hirsch

Sat 27 Apr, 17:45 , ICA

“On a warm Buenos Aires night in 2015 a friend called to invite me to join him and a few others at Narcisa Hirsch’s home. Around 9pm I knocked on her large wooden door on Cochabamba in the neighbourhood of San Telmo. After satisfying our stomachs with a hearty soup, we climbed her spiral staircase into the loft to watch films, one of which was Narcisa’s Pioneros (1976). A film which at first glance seems an anomaly within her expansive experimental oeuvre but contains motifs visible in h...

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Sunday 28th April

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Festival Bookshop at the Common Press

Apr 25 — Apr 30 , The Common Press Bookshop

Throughout the festival we’re happy to host a curated bookstand at The Common Press, London's first consciously queer intersectional bookshop, with a selection of publications from and about filmmakers in this year’s and past festival programmes, as well as anthologies and artists’ publication from friends and collaborators.

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Talks & Workshops Pass

Apr 25 — Apr 30 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

Our week-long pass gives you access to the talks, workshops and masterclasses taking place at our Festival Hub between 25th – 30th of April. Pass holders can attend any of the events listed below, no pre-registration required. Printed Forms: Publishing and Experimental Moving Image Thursday 25 April, 11am-12.30pm Gathering, collaging: Moving image artists and other peoples' archives Thursday 25 April, 2.30pm-4pm Undocumented Friday 26 April, 11am-1pm Stolen Films Imagi...

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Surgeries

Thu 25 Apr, 14:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

The Documentary Film Council, FLAMIN, LUX, The Scottish Documentary Institute, and T A P E Collective will be hosting one-to-one surgeries and drop-in sessions throughout the festival. Check below closer to the festival date for more information and details on how to book. The Documentary Film Council is a democratically run, sector-wide organisation facilitating effective, coordinated action on the key issues in the UK's independent documentary film industry. One-to-ones with the Documenta...

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Within Worlds Docklands Walk

Sun 28 Apr, 10:30 , Meeting place: Outside the Dickens Inn, Marble Quay, St Katharine's Way, London E1W 1UH

In 1931, Virginia Woolf wrote that, “with the sea blowing its salt into our nostrils, nothing can be more stimulating than to watch the ships coming up the Thames.” Now that maritime past of the port of London is all but lost, erased by decades of development. On this walk, historian Simeon Koole retraces that world. In conversation with the film Sunless Haven, which opens this year’s festival, Koole takes us to the remaining traces of the seamen’s lodging houses, wharves, water stairs, “stra...

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Approaching Landscape

Sun 28 Apr, 11:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

The subject of landscape features extensively in new and historical films at this year's Open City programme, having been a recurrent concern in the field of moving image. Featuring practitioners and researchers participating in the festival, this panel will draw out resonances and approaches to landscape image-making practices and how they can provide an avenue for exploring a site’s history, memories and politics. Panellists will include: Louis Henderson, Filmmaker, Afterthoughts of ...

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Folk Memory Project 3: My Village 2008 + Back to Huamulin

Sun 28 Apr, 12:00 , Rich Mix

My Village 2008 (我的村子2008) Shao Yuzhen / 2009 / China / 68’ / Digital / Mandarin Chinese spoken, English subtitles Now in her seventies, Shao Yuzhen has been making first-person documentaries about her home village of Shaziying (Beijing) since her selection for the China Villagers Documentary Project in 2005. The farmer, now locally well-known as the villager filmmaker, chronicles “all the bits and pieces of our everyday lives, since they, too, are part of my family’s and my fellow...

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Margaret Salmon and Jessica Sarah Rinland in Conversation

Sun 28 Apr, 13:30 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

In this artists’ discussion devised around the publication Cinematographa, filmmakers Jessica Sarah Rinland and Margaret Salmon will reflect on their connected and diffuse experiences with analogue and personal filmmaking, and wider discourses around the technical act of cinematography and the subject of the woman filmmaker in the field contemporary documentary.

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Saeed Taji Farouky: Soon We Will All Be History Here vol. II

Sun 28 Apr, 14:00 , Rich Mix

Soon We Will All Be History Here vol. II is a spatial performance lecture that examines Palestinian political cinema as a form of resistance. Incorporating aspects of music, architecture, literature, and film, Saeed will walk with participants in a psychogeographic wandering that links Palestinian exile, the British film industry, and the UK's nuclear weapons arsenal. Saeed Taji Farouky is a Palestinian-British filmmaker and artist who has been producing work around themes of conflict, hu...

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In Focus: Simon Liu 3

Sun 28 Apr, 15:00 , ICA

Harbour City Redux Simon Liu / 2015-22 / Hong Kong, USA / 12’ / 4x16mm projection performance / sound “Incited by the airy weight of digital platforms and their approaches, I imagined ironing flat potentially conflicting 16mm negatives via an industrial contact printer. Views thicken; detail lost over generations. A dream of turning two images into one, a density of information reserved for the modern cloud.” (Simon Liu) E-Ticket Simon Liu / 2019 / Hong Kong, USA / 13’ / Digital / s...

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Combined Programme: Becoming Landscape

Sun 28 Apr, 15:00 , Close-Up

Public Surfaces Gillian Waldo / 2023 / USA / 12’ / Digital / English spoken In 1964, Baltimore passed a law stipulating that for any new building in the city, 1% of its construction budget had to go towards commissioning a new piece of public art. Open to interpretation and variably repurposed by the city’s residents, Public Surfaces revisits the resultant sculptures and installations. In dialogue with a wide cross-section of Baltimore residents, director Gillian Waldo’s questioning pr...

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In the Name of Memory

Sun 28 Apr, 15:30 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

Filmmaker and choreographer Zhang Mengqi will give a lecture performance reflecting on her complex relationship with her father’s village, 47 km, as well as highlighting the evolution of the Folk Memory Project. The performance will also explore the abstract notions of time and memory, employing non-linguistic and multi-sensorial expressions as devices to create narrative.

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Body Workshop

Sun 28 Apr, 17:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

Body is the core of creativity in the practice of the Folk Memory Project (FMP). Being present with the body and tending to acts of remembering and re-enactment are both central to the ways the FMP filmmakers connect with memory. In this hands-on workshop led by Zhang Mengqi & Ang Gao, participants are guided to explore their bodies as the first moment of remembering and to realise their potential to become living archives.

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Monday 29th April

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Festival Bookshop at the Common Press

Apr 25 — Apr 30 , The Common Press Bookshop

Throughout the festival we’re happy to host a curated bookstand at The Common Press, London's first consciously queer intersectional bookshop, with a selection of publications from and about filmmakers in this year’s and past festival programmes, as well as anthologies and artists’ publication from friends and collaborators.

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Talks & Workshops Pass

Apr 25 — Apr 30 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

Our week-long pass gives you access to the talks, workshops and masterclasses taking place at our Festival Hub between 25th – 30th of April. Pass holders can attend any of the events listed below, no pre-registration required. Printed Forms: Publishing and Experimental Moving Image Thursday 25 April, 11am-12.30pm Gathering, collaging: Moving image artists and other peoples' archives Thursday 25 April, 2.30pm-4pm Undocumented Friday 26 April, 11am-1pm Stolen Films Imagi...

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Surgeries

Thu 25 Apr, 14:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

The Documentary Film Council, FLAMIN, LUX, The Scottish Documentary Institute, and T A P E Collective will be hosting one-to-one surgeries and drop-in sessions throughout the festival. Check below closer to the festival date for more information and details on how to book. The Documentary Film Council is a democratically run, sector-wide organisation facilitating effective, coordinated action on the key issues in the UK's independent documentary film industry. One-to-ones with the Documenta...

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Recreational Filming: Super 8mm in Waterlow Park

Mon 29 Apr, 10:00 , LUX at Waterlow Park Centre

For this outdoor filmmaking workshop led by artist filmmaker Margaret Salmon, participants will gather at LUX’s headquarters in Waterlow Park and work collaboratively on a Super 8mm film about the park. The day will begin with a technical seminar introducing and exploring the basic operation and uses of the Super 8mm Cine Camera. Following this camera induction, collaborative groups will plan and make/shoot a film in the park, using an “in-camera” edit as method. LUX will process the results ...

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Meet The Producers

Mon 29 Apr, 11:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

A director/producer dream team can take years of searching and forced matchmaking, but it can also be love at first sight. In the name of transparency these one-on-one sessions are conceived to gain a better grasp of what it is you’re looking for and how to express it, the sessions will give you a taste of the forms the director-producer relationship can take and things to keep in mind. The session will include opportunities with eight different producers, with 15 minutes available to sp...

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UCL Public Anthropology Student Showcase

Mon 29 Apr, 14:00 , Rich Mix

Coinciding with its relocation to East London, UCL’s Public Anthropology section has added to its long-running documentary master’s degrees with two exciting audio-based programmes, further expanding the department’s scope of practice-based research and learning. It is exciting to present some of the most recent work produced by our students. The work here demonstrates an eclectic approach to non-fiction storytelling, revealing new perspectives and new insights into the social world. &nbs...

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Meet The Exhibitors

Mon 29 Apr, 14:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

Made a film? About to enter post-prod? Or interested in entering the world of programming and distribution? Learn how to connect your work with an audience and the journeys you could take with these one-to-one sessions where you can gain a better idea of how programmers and distributors source films, what they’re looking for and how to approach them. The session will include opportunities with eight different industry professionals, with 15 minutes available to speak with each producer. ...

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Let’s Get Physical – Storyboarding & Mood boarding

Mon 29 Apr, 16:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

There’s only so much rumination you can do as a filmmaker. In this session we encourage those who are ready to envision their project to get physical in a collage making workshop; whether you need some encouragement to storyboard, or inspiration to moodboard we’ll have the material and space for you to explore and play around with options and to think outside the box in how to layer your story. Bring any material you’d like and complement it with T A P E curated material such as archive ...

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Man Number 4 + background

Mon 29 Apr, 18:15 , Bertha DocHouse

Man Number 4 Miranda Pennell / 2024 / UK / 10’ / Digital / English spoken The filmmaker comes across an image on social media. The scene it appears to be depicting is of such relentless violence that it is difficult to comprehend upon an initial glance. And so, the filmmaker thinks through the image piece by piece, undoing the compression algorithms to look behind the clusters of pixels. She identifies scenes in the image – a humvee, a studio light directed at a line of handcuffed men –...

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Grandma’s Grammar 5: Memory’s Hands

Mon 29 Apr, 18:15 , Close-Up

Maria’s Days (Maria e i giorni) Cecilia Mangini / 1960 / Italy / 10’ / Digital / Italian spoken, English subtitles Cecilia Mangini’s ode to the woman she considered her godmother, Maria di Capriati, is narrated with a declaratively poetic assertion of her existential and social station in life. Capriati – an unmarried peasant who had many children out of wedlock and continued to work the land and oversee workers on a farm estate in rural Apulia – figures both a refusal to accept inutilit...

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Nicolás Guillén Landrián: A Gaze Restored (Programme 1)

Mon 29 Apr, 19:00 , Barbican

The films of Nicolás Guillén Landrián (1938, Camagüey, Cuba - 2003, Miami, Florida) represent one of the most important oeuvres in post-Revolutionary Cuban documentary cinema. The first Afro-descended filmmaker to work out of the country’s national film institute (ICAIC), Landrián, nephew to Cuba’s national poet, Nicolás Guillén, directed around twenty short newsreels and documentaries from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. Landrián was committed to an irreverently personal vision, which in...

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A conversation between Narcisa Hirsch and Chantal Akerman

Mon 29 Apr, 20:15 , Close-Up

Aujourd’hui, dis moi (Tell Me) Chantal Akerman / 1980 / France / 45’ / Digital / French spoken, English subtitles "In Chantal Akerman’s episode for the series “Grand Mothers” commissioned by French television, she walks through Paris entering various homes inhabited by older women, all Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. She politely sits at their kitchen tables, listening attentively to their testimonies. There is warmth and familiarity within these interactions, a sensitivity that is r...

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Tuesday 30th April

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Festival Bookshop at the Common Press

Apr 25 — Apr 30 , The Common Press Bookshop

Throughout the festival we’re happy to host a curated bookstand at The Common Press, London's first consciously queer intersectional bookshop, with a selection of publications from and about filmmakers in this year’s and past festival programmes, as well as anthologies and artists’ publication from friends and collaborators.

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Talks & Workshops Pass

Apr 25 — Apr 30 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

Our week-long pass gives you access to the talks, workshops and masterclasses taking place at our Festival Hub between 25th – 30th of April. Pass holders can attend any of the events listed below, no pre-registration required. Printed Forms: Publishing and Experimental Moving Image Thursday 25 April, 11am-12.30pm Gathering, collaging: Moving image artists and other peoples' archives Thursday 25 April, 2.30pm-4pm Undocumented Friday 26 April, 11am-1pm Stolen Films Imagi...

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35mm Arri IIC Camera Workshop for Advanced Cinematographas

Tue 30 Apr, 10:00 , LUX at Waterlow Park Centre

This advanced technical workshop, led by artist filmmaker Margaret Salmon, will introduce the Arri IIC camera to a group of experienced participants, working through the basics of 35mm camera operation as well as the principles of exposure and handheld filming technique particular to the IIC. The workshop will finish by each member of the group operating the camera to film a live “performance” using handheld methods on 35mm film stock, making a collective document of the group’s handheld work...

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UCL Public Anthropology Student Showcase (Expanded Realities)

Tue 30 Apr, 13:00 , Festival Hub at Rich Mix

Join students from UCL's Centre for Public Anthropology's audio and immersive postgraduate programmes for a sharing and celebration of their recent work. This afternoon will include a performance by students on the Designing Audio Experiences: Art, Science & Production (MA) programme who will be presenting two site-specific collaborative performances using live spatial (immersive) audio and an exhibition of selected VR projects and audio documentaries created by students on the Immersive ...

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Closing Night: Leila and the Wolves

Tue 30 Apr, 18:30 , ICA

It took Heiny Srour six years to make Leila and the Wolves, a film that reveals a hidden past of women’s struggle in Palestine and Lebanon in an attempt to rewrite the history of the region from a feminist point of view. As John Akomfrah has written, Leila and the Wolves “weaves a rich tableau of history, folklore, myth and archival material.” The film is structured in a series of sketches, each of which features the same actors. The female protagonist (Nabila Zeitoni) is a modern Lebanese wo...

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