The S&S Watchlist

Liverpool’s Biennial seems to get bigger and better every year, reflecting a lively arts scene in the city. This edition marks the Olympic year with the theme of Hospitality uniting the works of 242 artists on display over 27 different locations in the city, from museums and galleries to a pub, a bakery and a former sorting office, as well as the city’s docks and its iconic Cunard Building. It features new work by artists and filmmakers such as Doug Aitken, Akram Zaatari, David Panos and Anja Kirschner.

Film Africa

1-11 November, venues around London @FilmAfrica

The Education of Auma Obama, Ugandan gay-rights doc Call Me Kuchu, Javier Bardem’s Sahrawi study Sons of the Clouds and Miriam Makeba tribute Mama Africa.

Leeds Film Festival

1-18 November @LeedsFilmFest

New discoveries from around the world, plus retrospectives on Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky and Japanese actress Tanaka Kinuyo.

7th London Korean Film Festival

1-16 November, London and touring to Bristol, Glasgow and Bournemouth @koreanfilmfest

This year’s K-Fest features box-office smash The Thieves, Queer Lion-winner The Weight and Directors’ Fortnight animation The King of Pigs.

UK Jewish Film Festival

1-18 November, London, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester @UKJewishFilm

Aesthetica Short Film Festival

8-11 November, York @asffest

A four-day celebration of short films spanning 15 different venues around York, encompassing comedies, drama, documentaries, animation and experimental shorts.

French Film Festival

8 November-2 December, venues around Scotland and the UK @lefrenchfilmfes

Celebrating its 20th edition, this year’s festival brings movies new and old to 11 cities nationwide, from Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia to a Chantal Akerman retrospective.

AfrikaEye

9-11 November, Bristol @AfrikaEyeFest

Aldeburgh Documentary Festival

16-18 November @aldeburghcinema

This year’s three-day Suffolk confab welcomes Marc Isaac with his new film The Road, Julien Temple with Requiem for Detroit? and doc veteran Leslie Woodhead.

Seasons and retrospectives

Ealing: Light and Dark

22 October-30 December, BFI Southbank @BFI

Alexander Mackendrick

23 October-29 November, BFI Southbank @BFI

Made in Prague: New Czech Cinema 2012

1-29 November, venues around London @CzechCentreLnd

Uncut

1-30 November, BFI Southbank @BFI

Cult and classic movies to celebrate the BBFC’s centenary.

Step into the Dark

5-29 November, Barbican, London @BarbicanCentre

A season of films and talks “exploring dystopia, the sublime and the surreal, where the dark comes alive on the silver screen”.

Nights of Noir

9-11 November, The Old Vic Tunnels, London and on-air on MGM HD

Peter Nestler

9-17 November, Tate Modern, Goethe Institute and Sheffield Showroom

Agnès, Cléo and Co: Varda’s Cinema at the Tyneside

10-18 November, Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle @tynesidecinema

The French director herself will visit the Tyneside for a conversation after a screening of ‘Cléo from 5 to 7’ to celebrate the 50th anniversary of her ground-breaking 1962 film.

Shoot the Wrx, Artist and Filmmaker Jeff Keen

until 24 February, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery

Keen, who sadly died earlier this year, receives a career retrospective in Brighton, where he spent most of his artistic career. A pioneer of multimedia art in Britain through his multiple-screen projections and raucous performances, Keen’s experimental films (available as a BFI DVD box-set) are shot through with surrealist imagery, anarchic wit and a love of popular culture.

Jonas Mekas

December-January, BFI Southbank, London, and until 27 January, Serpentine Gallery, London @BFI / @SerpentineUK

Mekas’s multi-faceted career as a filmmaker, artist, poet and crusader for independent film finally gets the celebration it deserves with an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, sampling moving images, poetry and sound works from his six-decade-long practice, as well as featuring a new film installation by the octogenarian.
Highlights of the the BFI Southbank’s concurrent season are his diary film Walden and Lost, Lost, Lost, which refects on the filmmaker’s early years in New York. Mekas himself (above) appears in conversation with Sandra Hebron on 6 December.

William Kentridge: I am not me, the horse is not mine

11 November-20 January, Tanks at Tate Modern, London

Doris Day

1-29 December, BFI Southbank @BFI

Shows and special events

John Akomfrah: Hauntologies

5 October-8 November, Carroll/Fletcher gallery, London W1

See our review.

Ian Breakwell: Keep Things As They Are

6 October-13 January, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea

Breakwell was an artist who roved across a number of mediums – from painting to performance – but the moving image was always at the heart of his idiosyncratic practice, be it his television broadcasts or his diary films. This is the largest retrospective of his career to date, including many rare and little-seen works.

Hollywood Costume

20 October-27 January 2013, V&A, London

A major exhibition of costumes from Chaplin to Avatar.

Jane and Louise Wilson: The Toxic Camera

until 27 January, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester

The Wilsons continue their obsession with architecture and ruins with this survey of the abandoned city of Pirpyat 25 years on from the Chernobyl disaster. In addition to documenting the exclusion zone’s eerie, empty landscapes, the film also explores Ukrainian Vladimir Shevchenko’s ‘Chernobyl: A Chronicle of Difficult Weeks’, filmed only a few days after the explosion. (The toxic camera of the title is Shevchenko’s, which became so radioactive that it had to be buried.) Showing alongside is a contrasting film installation by the Wilsons, examining a sleek new Dubai hotel.

Feast of Jazz Film

10 November, Southbank Centre, London

A triple bill at the London Jazz Festival includes Mike Dibb’s touching Barbara Thompson, Playing Against Time and Michael (Il postino) Radford’s wonderful portrait of prodigious three-foot piano genius Michel Petrucciani.

Rosemarie Trockel: Manu’s Spleen (I-V)

11 November, ICA, London

The protagonist of Rosemarie Trockel’s series of five films, played by Manu Burkhart, strikes a number of detached poses in various situations, questioning the social implications and possibilities of art. Screen legend Udo Kier also makes a notable appearance in Manu’s Spleen II.

A Nos Amours

15 November, ICA

The eclectic programme of Joanna Hogg and Adam Roberts’s Maurice Pialat-inspired collective continues with a screening of Herk Harvey’s macabre B-movie delight Carnival of Souls.