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Features
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A healing treatment of love in its various forms: Maryam Touzani’s The Blue Caftan
30 May 2023, by Julie-Yara Atz
“It’s a love story” – this was the conclusion of an audience member after the screening of “Blue Caftan”, Maryam Touzani’s latest film, at the Garden Cinema in early May. And indeed, it is a love story, but quite a surprising and complex one, that explores love in its various forms. It leaves us wondering what can be considered love, pondering its intricacies, here portrayed without judgement. The three-dimensional characters are constantly trying to overcome their inner frictions, (...)
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It demands the elders to confront their past and support their children: Memory Box, a trawl through the Lebanese Civil War
24 May 2023, by Lillian Crawford
At the end of Memory Box, Alex (Paloma Vauthier) films her mother Maia (Rim Turki) at a party on her smartphone, panning out to capture the sun rising on the city skyline. It’s a new technology of image capture, itself caught by the digital camera, aligned with the memory of 8mm and 16mm, still photographs, and notebooks which populate the preceding scenes. Even as we live moments, we are thinking about how we will remember them, with time allowing for increasing recording clarity. (...)
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Film and event! Bella Ciao: Song Of Rebellion - An exhaustive and rousing doc about the revolutionary anthem
1 May 2023, by judy
London audiences were able to watch the film at our screening at the Garden Cinema on 25 April, which was followed by a Q&A with the directors, hosted by journalist Steve Topple. See pictures below and a link to the post-screening Q&A with Steve.
A 90-minute documentary film about the roots and rise of the most popular revolutionary song in the world. With more than 20 interviews on three continents, this historic documentary traces the cultural history of the song and (...)
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It’s a film that makes you question your position as a viewer: Patrick Muroni on Fierce: A Porn Revolution
9 April 2023, by Allie L.D.
In Lausanne, a group of twenty-something women and queer persons start directing ethical and dissident pornographic films: the OIL Productions collective is born. Committed to an artistic and political approach, they create adult films aiming to positively represent sexualities and bodies in all their diversity.
Patrick Muroni’s debut documentary is a sensitive and eye-opening look at the process of Oil’s work and productions and the context they developed them in. Where his film works (...)
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"C’est un film qui vous oblige à positionner votre regarder de spectateurice" : Patrick Muroni sur Ardente.x.s
9 avril 2023, par Allie L.D.
À Lausanne, en Suisse, un groupe de jeunes femmes et de personnes queers d’une vingtaine d’années se lance, caméra au poing, dans la réalisation de films pornographiques. Entre leurs jobs pour certaine.x.s et leurs études pour d’autres, iels mettent tout en œuvre pour produire des films éthiques et dissidents. Très vite, les médias du pays, puis le public, s’intéressent au collectif. Aux yeux de tous, les voilà plongée.x.s dans un combat pour une autre vision du désir et de la sexualité. (...)
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Haunted by unspoken grievances and abuse - The Shining in context
23 January 2023, by Robin W. Mac
The Shining was shown at The Garden Cinema as part of their Jack Nicholson season. The film was followed by an in-depth discussion with Professor Roger Luckhurst, writer of The Shining: BFI Film Classics and hosted by Mydy’s Abla Kandalaft. The discussion was recorded as part of the Garden Cinema Film Talk podcast and can be found [HERE->https://thegardencinemafilmtalk.podbean.com/e/the-shining-inventing-new-horror-tropes-a-discussion-with-bfi-classics-writer-prof-roger-luckhurst.
The (...)
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Storytelling at its finest: Fadia’s Tree directed by Sarah Beddington
23 November 2022, by Abla Kandalaft,
Anne-Sophie Marie
Dreaming of a homeland she is denied, a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, sets a challenge to find an ancient tree that stands as witness to her family’s existence, guided only by inherited memories, a blind man and a two-headed dragon. Sarah Beddington’s first feature film is the result of over a decade of filming and years of editing, in collaboration with her producer Susan Simnett. The story of Fadia and her search is interspersed with footage of bird migration and interviews with (...)
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Portrait of a fallible character that doesn’t gloss over his selfishness - Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner
10 November 2022, by Tia Garmonsway
Our writer Tia attended a screening of Mr Turner as part of the "In conversation with Mike Leigh" series of screenings at the Garden Cinema in London.
As I sat in plush comfort at The Garden Cinema, London, surrounded by creative intellectuals sipping wine and discussing with ardour the frequency with which they attended similar events; I couldn’t help but wonder if Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner would comprise a similarly varied cast and artistic scenery. From the off, the guttural growls and (...)
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Epic in scope, carnivalesque in tone and almost unprecedented in style: A New Old Play
7 November 2022, by Judy Harris
Set in an exquisite hand-crafted world made up of painted backgrounds, miniatures, intricate compositions and theatrical props, A New Old Play may at first strike one as sui generis. While the history of cinema is rich in hand crafted worlds and ingenious practical effects (e.g. the works of Méliès, Tourneur and Zeman), such techniques have historically been dismissed as uncinematic and are usually permitted only in science fiction, horror or children’s cinema. The hostility directed (...)
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Revisiting 2017! The Art Of Loving / Get Out
24 June 2022, by Coco Green,
Ola Magdziarek
Coco Green and Ola Magdziarek review a couple of cinematic highlights from 2017: Maria Sadowska’s The Art Of Loving, which tells the story of Polish sexologist Michalina Wislocka who fought for her book to be published in the late 1970s, and Jordan Peele’s Get Out, in which Daniel Kaluuya’s African American Chris Washington visits his white girlfriend’s parents. A series of bizarre, unsettling events ensues.
‘The Art of Loving’ (Sztuka Kochania), Poland 2016, Dir. Maria Sadowskav
Ola (...)