March film screenings

Black Narcissus (1947)

MICHAEL POWELL AND EMERIC PRESSBURGER
DURATION: 99 MINUTES
THURSDAY 3 MARCH, 6.30PM

Adapted from the 1939 novel by Rumer Godden, Black Narcissus tells the story of a group of Anglo-Catholic nuns who establish a convent and dispensary in a former harem in the Himalayas. The exotic and erotic atmosphere of their new home seeps into the nuns’ cloistered existence, memories of the past compounding uncertainties about the present and pushing each to her own unravelling.

Starring Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodagh, Kathleen Byron as the tormented Sister Ruth, and Jean Simmons as Kanchi, Black Narcissus has been hailed by Martin Scorcese as “one of the first truly erotic films.”

Dissolution trilogy (2017-2019)

MICHELLE WILLIAMS GAMAKER
DURATION: 58 MINUTES
THURSDAY 10 MARCH, 6.30PM

Michelle Williams Gamaker’s Dissolution Trilogy comprises of House of Women (2017), The Fruit is There to be Eaten (2018) and The Eternal Return (2019). House of Women and The Fruit is There to be Eaten revisit the 1947 film Black Narcisuss to examine the representation of South East Asian people on screen who were often played by white actors, such as the film’s character Kanchi. Recasting the once silent role in a new script, Kanchi is reimagined with agency and becomes the new protagonist of the storyline, evoking Williams Gamaker’s strategy of ‘fictional activism’. In The Eternal Return, the life of Indian actor Sabu Dastagir is told through a kind of fictional biography that imagines the emotional toll of his rise and fall in 1930s era Hollywood.

Caravaggio (1986)

DEREK JARMAN
DURATION: 93 MINUTES
THURSDAY 17 MARCH, 6.30PM

Caravaggio is a fictional re-telling of the life of Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio directed by visionary filmmaker, writer and gay rights activist Derek Jarman. Thematically, it explores the tortured plight of the artist, homosexual love and the hypocrisy of religious authority. It was the first of Jarman’s collaborations with Tilda Swinton, who would go on to star in six more of his films.

Our current exhibiting artists Larry Achiampong and Michelle Williams Gamaker have both been recognised by The Film London Jarman Award, which honours Derek Jarman.

Waru (2017)

BRIAR GRACE-SMITH, CASEY KAA, AINSLEY GARDINER, KATIE WOLFE, RENAE MAIHI, CHELSEA COHEN, PAULA WHETU JONES, AWANUI SIMICH-PENE
DURATION: 86 MINUTES
THURSDAY 24 MARCH, 6.30PM

A celebration of indigenous filmmaking, Waru is a feature film made up of eight vignettes each written and directed by Māori women directors. Waru unfolds around the tangi of a small boy (Waru) who died at the hands of his caregiver. The vignettes are all subtly interlinked and each follow one of eight female Māori lead characters during the same moment in time as they come to terms with Waru’s death and try to find a way forward in their community.

Vai (2019)

NICOLE WHIPPY, ‘OFA-KI-LEVUKA GUTTENBEIL-LIKILIKI, MATASILA FRESHWATER, AMBERLEY JO AUMUA, MĪRIA GEORGE, MARINA ALOFAGIA MCCARTNEY, DIANNA FUEMANA BECS ARAHANGA
DURATION: 88 MINUTES
THURSDAY 31 MARCH, 6.30PM

From the same producers who created Waru, Vai is a portmanteau feature film made by nine female Pacific filmmakers, filmed in seven different Pacific countries: Fiji, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Kuki Airani (Cook Islands), Samoa, Niue and Aotearoa. It is about the journey of Vai, played by a different indigenous actress in each of the Pacific countries. In each of these Pacific nations ‘vai’ means water.

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