Our regular monthly update featuring the latest news and opportunities for your cinema, festival or film society.
ICO News
- Streaming on the Cinema of Ideas until 11 July, Feast from the East is an online film season in support of Ukraine. A cinematic a celebration of the food, feasts and famously fertile soil of Eastern Europe, the programme includes Earth (1930), The Colour of Pomegranates (1969) and Bread (1929), as well as a panel discussion on Soviet cinema and a cooking workshop with chef and activist Alissa Timoshkina.
- This month we launched our 2021-22 Annual Report, providing an overview of the work we’ve been doing over this period to support the film exhibition sector as we have slowly emerged from the disruptions of the pandemic.
- We also updated our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan with details of the work we’ve undertaken since November. This update covers recent Screening Days activities, trustee recruitment results and new ICO staff & board demographic data.
- Over the course of two blog posts, we highlighted some of our favourite titles from this year’s 75th Cannes Film Festival. Read about our selections here.
- Thanks to everyone who joined us for Young Audiences Screening Days earlier this month, whether in person or online. Our next event will be Inclusion & Diversity Screening Days, taking place in person on Friday 9 September at Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal (plus an additional online day). Mark your diary.
- Bookings are still available for The Camera is Ours, a programme of newly-restored works from Britain’s pioneering female documentary makers. Check out the trailer and get in touch to book it for your venue.
Opportunities
- Passes are now on sale for This Way Up 2022, taking place in Dundee and online from 30 November – 1 December. This annual film exhibition conference is a place to come together to consider the key issues that affect the film exhibition sector and develop creative solutions for the future. Book your place here.
- Funding is now available for cinemas to present special curated events and enhanced film programmes as part of the new BFI FAN Blockbuster horror season In Dreams are Monsters, which will be running from October to December 2022.
- There are currently roles available on our Jobs Board at Chapter, Queen’s Film Theatre, BFI NETWORK, Rich Mix, CinemaLive and more.
- The format has been announced for this year’s 66th BFI London Film Festival, with the festival taking place across London as well as ten UK-wide cinemas and BFI Player.
- Into Film is launching a new area on their website to help better connect schools and cinemas. They are currently gathering information on what schools partnerships already exist, so if your venue has an offer that is specific to schools, or are thinking of launching one, please fill out this form.
- The BFI Film on Film Festival is a new festival dedicated to celebrating the art of film and film projection. The inaugural edition will run from 8 – 11 June 2023 and will be the first film festival in the UK wholly dedicated to screening works solely on film.
- Just started or thinking of starting up a community cinema group? Cinema for All’s Launchpad scheme offers coaching sessions and a £300 bursary to help cover the cost of your first two screenings. Applications close 31 July.
- The Film & TV Charity has relaunched the Looking Glass Survey to get a snapshot of mental health in the industry. If you work in film, TV, or cinema it’s important to get involved so they can understand how people are feeling and what they are dealing with.
- Taking place from 6-8 July, the Live Xinema 2022 conference will address artistic and technological advances in the field of live cinema, and film screenings augmented through live or immersive elements.
- The UK government has launched a new £150 million Community Ownership Fund to help ensure that communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can support and continue benefiting from the local facilities, community assets and amenities most important to them. The Charity Bank may be able to support your application with match funding.
Upcoming film screenings, festivals & seasons
- This summer, Film Feels sees 27 film festivals, independent venues and event companies across the UK present CURIOUS events and screenings to audiences.
- On 7 July, Jerwood Arts premieres two newly-commissioned moving-image installations by early-career artists Soojin Chang and Michael., which explore themes of kinship, creation and inclusion.
- Touring cinemas across the UK and on BFI Player, Birds’ Eye View’s Queerious season is a month long touring programme which invites audiences to explore a multitude of desires on screen in ways all too rarely seen in cinema.
- A complete film retrospective of Satyajit Ray arrives at BFI Southbank this July and August. Check out the season’s trailer here.
- As part of their TLC (aka Tender Loving Care for Trans-Led/Trans-Loved Cinema) series celebrating queer and trans cinema, Lexi Cinema is screening Magic Mirror and Funeral Parade of Roses in July, featuring intros and Q&As with curators Juliet Jacques and Lillian Crawford.
- Join the Barbican and Black Audio Film Collective co-founder Edward George on Saturday 23 July for a rare screening of The Last Angel of History and Gangsta Gangsta: The Tragedy of Tupac Shakur.
Good reads/watches/listens
- Birds’ Eye View’s vision for a more equal future for film
- A beginner’s path through the pioneering career of the late Menelik Shabazz
- This year’s Screen International Stars of Tomorrow, including ICO Trustee Ayo Akingbade
- Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston, plus a new interview with the filmmaker
- On the ending of Barbara Loden’s Wanda
- On the cinematic representations of refugees
- Russian directors Kira Kovalenko and Kantemir Balagov on their decision to leave the country
- Jean-Louis Trintignant – a life in pictures
- Five films by Jenny Brady, streaming on Ecstatic Static
- An interview with Flora Gomes, Guinea-Bissau’s preeminent filmmaker
- On the world-making aesthetic of Hong Sangsoo
- Life as art in Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island
- The fourth issue of Open City Documentary Festival’s publication Non-Fiction
- On two films made about the Hong Kong protests by anonymous filmmakers
- On Benediction and poetry in cinema
- MUBI’s video essay on the self-referentiality of Chantal Akerman’s cinema
- Are films liberal?
- On flowers in cinema
- On the career of Juliet Berto
We post our news & opportunities round up on the final Thursday of every month. Have something you want included? Email Sami: sami.abdul-razzak@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk
Header image: Earth (dir. Oleksandr Dovzhenko), now streaming as part of Feast from the East