Shows, events and special screenings
2012
We all scream for… experimental kids’ films? Review
Gareth Moore invited five artists to contribute to his Children’s Films series – but as Ian Francis discovered at a screening in Birmingham, there is artistic jouissance and there is ice cream
Infernal combustion: magic, machines, montage and The Robinson Institute Installation
Patrick Keiller’s reworking of his ‘Robinson’ trilogy as an installation at Tate Britain is a study of British industry’s own uncanny vanishing act. Henry K Miller sees the artist update his beloved Humphrey Jennings – again
The Magpie Index: Roy Harper sings for the birds Artists’ video
Richard Grayson’s evocative video portrait places the songwriter in a complex lineage of British dissent, says Frances Morgan
2011
Dara Birnbaum: the caged artist Exhibition
Laura Allsop on the video appropriator’s new and old visions of suffering for – and in – one’s art
New directors, new voices in the London Film Festival First-look reviews
Our critics cast a glance at the films shortlisted for the LFF’s Sutherland Trophy, given to the maker of the most “original and imaginative” first feature
Diving spirits: Chick Strand
Artists’ movies
Vera Brunner-Sung on the mind-bending ethnographic forays of the late experimental master
Pipilotti Rist: sublime pants
Exhibition
Laura Allsop is tickled by a fanciful exhibition of screened bodies and embodied screens
Horror film sound: Songs in the key of fear Festival and symposium review
Mark Pilkington tunes into terror at London FrightFest and at Sound and Music’s ‘Sound of Fear’ showcase
Vision quest: Robert Breer
Experimental animation
Robert Breer’s lifelong experiments with film intrigue Ian Francis
Trashy magic: Alan Moore vs Edwin Pouncey vs Harry Smith Live cinema
Frances Morgan hears a meeting of spacey mindscapes
Haunting houses: the Brothers Quay meet Alina Ibragimova Live cinema
Jonathan Romney sees the inscrutable filmmaking duo and violinist Ibragimova hold a candle to Wilton’s Music Hall
Unreconstructed: Phil Collins’ Marxism Today Artists’ movies
Daniel Trilling weighs the lessons of the past in a two-film portrait of the old East Germany’s Communist bygones
Aaron Sorkin: billionaires are easy
On stage
Joe Fraser reports from an on-stage interview with the “rock star among writers”
London’s burning: The War Game and Black Umbrella Archive event
At an East London working-men’s club, Peter Watkin’s 1966 vision of a nuclear attack screened alongside Louis Bernassi’s new montage of burning buildings. Frances Morgan on an evening of fire, fury and salvaged prints
Nam June Paik: electric dreamer
Artists’ movies
Laura Allsop on a major two-site retrospective of the work of the first master of video art
2010
Out of the ether: In Free Fall
Artists’ movies
Hito Steyerl’s new video essay traces the uncanny half-life of global capitalism through the journey of an aeroplane chewed over by the movie industry. Daniel Trilling is mesmerised
Sheffield Doc/Fest 2010 highlights Documentaries
New films from Patricio Guzmán, Penny Woolcock and John Gianvito – plus Jeff Malmberg’s festival favourite and Morgan Matthews’ latest Audience Award winner
Live-action shorts at the London Film Festival Short films
Dylan Cave rounds up the best live short films across five programmes at this year’s LFF
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2010 highlights Documentaries
Adina Bradeanu reviews Arab Attraction, The Green Wave, Holy Wars and Utopia in Four Movements
FrightFest Hallowe’en all-nighter Endurance feat
Anton Bitel makes it through the witching hour with a series of films themed around the return (and revenge) of the past
Polytechnic: early British video art Artists’ movies
A new exhibition mounts a retrospective of Britain’s ‘vital, acerbic and unsettling’ – but never canonised – early video art. Colin Perry takes a trip back the intimist 1980s
Timecode live: quartet for four cameras Live cinema
Daniel Trilling sees Mike Figgis perform a live show-and-tell remix of his digital 2000 split-screen experiment Timecode
The Miners’ Hymns Artists’ movies
Durham Cathedral was the perfect setting for Bill Morrison and Jóhann Jóhannsson’s tribute to the north-east’s colliery glory days, says Nick Bradshaw
2009
London Film Festival 2009 reviews, part three
Reviews: Nowhere Boy, Shed Your Tears and Walk Away and Starsuckers
London Film Festival 2009 reviews, part two
Reviews: American – The Bill Hicks Story, Don’t Worry About Me, Have You Heard from Johannesburg: The Bottom Line and An Organisation of Dreams
London Film Festival 2009 reviews, part one
Reviews: 44 Inch Chest, Oil City Confidential and Ride the Wave Johnny