Don’t miss! Four films for Sunday 21 October

Women Making Films: A New Road Movie Through Cinema

The latest cinematic lecture by Mark Cousins is passionately devoted to and powered by female practitioners. Women Make Film aims to present 40 key topics pivotal to the craft and philosophy of cinema through excerpts from films directed by women. For the first four hours of Cousins’ vast project, he traverses 11 topics, including ‘Openings’, ‘Believability’, ‘Conversations’ and ‘Framing’. The result is a beautiful labour of love – a tribute to the genius of women directors and to the art of cinema. It is also a valuable contribution to the ongoing process of addressing film history and those who have been omitted from it. Future episodes include ‘Sex’, ‘Religion’, ‘Memory’ and ‘The Meaning of Life’. Who knows, we might just learn about something more than filmmaking.

Ana David

• Book tickets for Women Making Films: A New Road Movie Through Cinema

My Little Chickadee

Mae West plays a swaggering Chicago singer who is abducted by a mysterious masked bandit during a stagecoach holdup. Rightly suspected of a romantic adventure with the bandit, she is run out of her scandalised town, Little Bend, along the way making the acquaintance of travelling salesman (WC Fields). She dupes him into a hasty sham marriage in a bid to appear more respectable and in Greasewood City the pair find out more than they bargained for about each other. Flower Belle teaches unruly schoolboys and Twillie becomes bartender and Sheriff. But with the return of the masked bandit will their ‘marriage’ stand the strain? My Little Chickadee has assumed legendary status thanks to its stars and the script, co-written by them, is packed full of outrageous one-liners.

Julie Pearce

• Book tickets for My Little Chickadee

Yours in Sisterhood

Yours in Sisterhood doesn’t tell a story as much as it gathers an ensemble of personal narratives related to womanhood. UK-born filmmaker Irene Lusztig asks a group of women to read unpublished letters received by Ms., the first mainstream feminist magazine published in the US. The women then engage with the letters, relating them to their own personal experiences, highlighting with appalling clarity the fact that feminism still grapples with many of the same issues that it did in the 1970s: male-dominated workplaces, domestic work, financial independence, sex work, gay motherhood, trans representation, black womanhood and interracial relationships. It is a deceptively simple, hugely effective and ultimately celebratory documentary, which should be mandatory viewing for those who want their feminism to be joyful and intersectional.

Ana David

• Book tickets for Yours in Sisterhood

No Ifs or Buts

Filming on and off for 20 years, first-time director Sarah Lewis delivers a vital portrait of Soho barbershop Cuts – not just a place to get your hair trimmed, but a space for street fashion and pop innovators. Guided by freewheeling founders James Lebon and Steve Brooks, who met when one was a rockabilly and the other a New Romantic, the salon moved from early ’80s post-punk roots to become a hip-hop club and communal hub for DJs, photographers and style icons. Weaving colourful footage with interview snippets – familiar faces include Boy George, Neneh Cherry, junglist Goldie and regular customer Isaac Julien – No Ifs or Buts highlights the subcultural strands that once grew in the heart of our city.

Manish Agarwal

• Book tickets for No Ifs or Buts