United Kingdom

Filmmaker Elahe Esmaili helps pack up their parents’ house. As the boxes pile up, intergenerational discussions also flare up: Elahe does not wear a hijab, embodying the courage of her generation. Esmaili longs for a deep, existential shift, driven by the Women, Life, Freedom protest movement that pervaded Iran.

In the silent avant-garde film Garden of Luxor, Derek Jarman creates an imaginary Arabian garden by superimposing various images like old postcards from Egypt, and discarded images from ancient sword-and-sandal epics. This strange garden gets destroyed occasionally by a man with a whip, or by people smoking and eating insects. This is Jarman’s take on the Garden of Luxor and its mysteries.

This television documentary about the great British miners’ strike of 1984 was not broadcast by patron ITV because the film was “too political” and sided with the miners. Did anyone really expect anything different from Loach, one of the most politically engaged filmmakers of his generation?

New Zealand artist Le(o)n(ard) Lye became known for his experimental films and kinetic sculptures. This short film is a great energetic burst, with shapes and twists swirling through the image to the rhythm of Cuban music. Lye painted directly on the celluloid film without using conventional camera work. 

My Childhood was the first of three films based on director Bill Douglas’ memories of his own impoverished childhood in the Scottish mining village of Newcraighall. In this cruel environment, the boy learns to take care of himself. We see him grow up from child to adolescent—angry and bewildered but playful and affectionate.

Lamees Almakkawy’s films can be found at the intersection of documentary and fiction, with a particular focus on performance and identity. Dancing Palestine is centered around the dabke, a Palestinian folk dance.

Crossing the Great Sagrada consists almost exclusively of outtakes from travelogues. The title is a pun on Crossing the Great Sahara, one of the popular travel films of the 1920s that documented “other cultures” in a way that reflected imperial, nationalistic, and often racist stereotypes.

Isaac Julien is a pioneer in video and installation art. His work constantly pushes the boundaries of the medium, combining film with photography, performance, music, and painting. Social inequality is often central to this, and more specifically, his black and queer identity is a thread running through his oeuvre. In his very first film, Who Killed Colin Roach?, he reflects on the death of the 23-year-old title character who was shot at the entrance to a London police building in 1982.

In 45th Parallel, a monologue is performed in a building on a borderline. Lawrence Abu Hamdan intelligently exposes the absurdity of borders and the often hypocritical legislation around them.

A dreamlike meditation on art and politics in the final years of the Cold War.

A man finds himself haunted by a mysterious black tower in London that appears to follow him wherever he goes.

Fifty-nine-year-old factory worker Beryl is totally obsessed with drawing, and her fixation dominates the entire household. Apart from her husband, her model and muse, every member of the family is addicted to something.