BFI Southbank will be showcasing women-centric and women-made films throughout the month of June. A press release has announced that the four-screen cinema in South Bank, London will be championing works by and about women in honor of the 100th anniversary of British women’s suffrage.
“One hundred years ago British women marched to the voting booths for the first time. One hundred years later, Frances McDormand brandished a little gold man and instructed the women at the Oscars ceremony to stand up. A continuum of action has brought about seismic change and, just like those women and men a century ago, we are witnessing a shift,” stated Gaylene Gould, BFI Head of Cinema and Events. “This month, in honor of the Vote 100 campaign, we pay tribute to the women who transcended their worlds to expand ours, and present a program bursting with female stories.”
Ava DuVernay, Agnès Varda, and Ida Lupino will be among the women receiving tribute. DuVernay will be the subject of Southbank’s June edition of “Close Up,” a monthly series that screens all the films of an important contemporary director. Varda and Lupino will both receive retrospectives. “Cléo from 5 to 7,” “Mur Murs,” “Vagabond,” and the 2018 Oscar nominee“Faces Places” will be shown as part of “Agnès Varda: Vision of an Artist.” “Ida Lupino: Actor, Director, Writer, Producer, Star” will feature films toplined and made by Lupino, such as “They Drive by Night,” “Never Fear (aka The Young Lovers),” and “Outrage.”
Women animators will also be spotlighted in June, as part of Southbank’s Animation 2018 program. Animation pioneers Joy Batchelor (“Ruddigore”), Lotte Reiniger (“The Adventures of Prince Achmed”), and Alison De Vere (“The Black Dog”) will be honored alongside women currently working in animation, including director Sarah Smith (“Arthur Christmas”) and producer Camilla Deakin (“Ethel & Ernest”).
The centerpiece of Southbank’s women-focused June lineup is “Woman With A Movie Camera Summit,” a one-day event that “will honor the courageous trailblazers of the past, explore the power and pitfalls of grassroots feminist cinephile activism, champion new voices in criticism and programming, explore movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp, and, above all, celebrate the women who’ve not allowed themselves to be victimized or excluded from the conversation.” Taking place June 16, the Summit will feature discussions, activities, and screenings of films such as “Working Girl.”
Visit BFI Southbank’s website for more information and tickets to its June lineup. Details on DuVernay’s, Varda’s, and Lupino’s programs and the women animators event are below, courtesy of the venue.
AGNÈS VARDA: VISION OF AN ARTIST PART ONE
- SAT 2 JUN, 12:00–15:00 — TALK: The Many Faces of Agnès Varda
- WED 20 JUN, 20:30 — DISCUSSION: Agnès Varda Salon: Political, Personal and Playful
Over six decades, AGNÈS VARDA has established herself at the vanguard of world cinema. On the eve of her presenting a new commissioned work at Liverpool Biennale 2018, BFI Southbank will present a two-month retrospective which foregrounds Varda as an artist experimenting with the moving image. AGNÈS VARDA: VISION OF AN ARTIST, which takes place from Friday 1 June — Tuesday 31 July, will include a re-release of Vagabond (1985), Varda’s powerful and heartbreaking account of a defiant and free-spirited woman, playing on extended run from Friday 29 June. Alongside films such as Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) and Mur Murs (1981), part one of the season in June will also include contextualising talks The Many Faces of Agnès Varda which, in partnership with the film and feminism journal Cléo, will trace Varda’s career from her debut to her most recent collaboration, the Oscar-nominated Faces Places (2017); and Agnès Varda Salon: Political, Personal and Playful, an evening looking at Varda’sparticularly strong eye for portraying social movements, cultures and overlooked communities. With her training in art history and her experience as a photographer, AgnèsVarda pushed the boundaries of what cinema as an art form can achieve, creating her own singular style by blending reality with poetic imagery, and fiction with documentary.
Varda’s first feature La Pointe Courte (1955), a precursor to the French New Wave, signals her future stylistic and thematic interests. Set in a working-class fishing village, the story moves between the daily struggles of the villagers and a young married couple from the city contemplating their failing marriage. In Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) Varda created an iconic female protagonist. Wandering the streets of Paris, pop singer Cléo goes on a journey of self-discovery as she awaits the results of an important medical test. Moving and lyrical, Cléo from 5 to 7 is Varda’s breakthrough feature and classic of the French New Wave. In her first colour film, Le Bonheur (1964) Varda becomes not only an observer of human behaviour and a commentator on the sexual revolution of the 1960s, but also a painter, utilising her palette on screen to enhance the story to great effect. It tells the story of Thérèse and François, who lead a seemingly pleasant married life, until he begins an affair with another woman, supposedly to enhance their mutual enjoyment.
A playful chronicle of 1960s American counter-culture, Lions Love (… and Lies) (1969) features performances from Andy Warhol’s muse Viva, authors of Broadway hit musical Hair James Rado and Gerome Ragni, and experimental filmmaker Shirley Clarke, capturing Hollywood’s hedonistic spirit of the times, with the social and political upheavals in the background. Set against the backdrop of the women’s lib movement, One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977) charts the friendship between two women over the course of 15 years. Suzanne and Pauline lead two different lives, but what unifies them is their commitment to women’s rights. A deeply personal film for Varda, it combines elements of a musical (with lyrics written by the director herself) with Varda’s usual blend of fiction and documentary. During her second extended stay in California, Varda turned her lens towards the outdoor murals of Los Angeles. Mur Murs (1981) is a visual journey through the city’s neighborhoods, documenting its extensive network of public art and introducing the individuals and communities behind the works, while at the same time revealing the systematic racial and economic divisions of the city. Mur Murs will screen alongside short film Uncle Yanco (1967), a portrait of a lost relative of Varda’s, an artist living in San Francisco. Completing the line-up for June will be Jane B. for Agnès V. (1987), an innovative portrait of British-French actor and singer Jane Birkin, which was made in the lead-up to her 40th birthday. The ‘imaginary biopic,’ as Varda calls it, shows Birkin in private moments that offer a glimpse into her personal life, and fictionalised scenes that play to viewers’ expectations of Birkin as a star. Together, Birkin and Varda reflect on what it means to be a cultural icon, exploring the creative actor-director relationship, and examine how women are often portrayed on screen. AGNÈS VARDA: VISION OF AN ARTIST will offer audiences a chance to explore the memorable and groundbreaking female protagonists, marginalised communities and rich portraits of other artists which Varda has created over her 60 year career.
IDA LUPINO: ACTOR, DIRECTOR, WRITER, PRODUCER, STAR
- TUE 5 JUN, 18:10 — TALK: Before and Behind the Camera: The Very Versatile Ida Lupino
During June BFI Southbank will celebrate the vastly talented and versatile IDA LUPINO, an actor, writer, director and producer who took on the male-dominated Hollywood of the 1940s and became a superstar. Lupino, who was born into a British theatrical family a hundred years ago, moved to Hollywood in the 1940s and found stardom, starring alongside leading men such as Humphrey Bogart in They Drive by Night (Raoul Walsh, 1940) and High Sierra (Raoul Walsh, 1941), and Edward G Robinson and John Garfield in The Sea Wolf (Michael Curtiz, 1941), films which will all screen during the season. Lupino was acutely aware of the risk of being typecast, turning down roles as result, and in the late 40s she set up her own production company, becoming Hollywood’s sole female director for many years. The season, which includes screenings of 14 of her best-loved films, will also include a talk — Before and Behind the Camera: the Very Versatile Ida Lupino — on Tuesday 5 June, which will consider Lupino’s many achievements as an actor, director, writer and producer who took charge of her career, leaving behind a rich body of cinematic work.
Other films screening during the season will include The Gay Desperado (Rouben Mamoulian, 1936) in which Lupino plays a spirited young woman who is kidnapped by Mexican bandits so besotted by gangster movies that they model themselves (disastrously) on Chicago mobsters; The Man I Love (Raoul Walsh, 1946) in which she excels as a New York nightclub singer who, recovering from an unhappy affair, decides to visit her family in California; and Never Fear (aka The Young Lovers) (1949), Lupino’s official directorial debut, following her uncredited direction of Not Wanted which she took over after director Elmer Clifton fell ill. Lupino’s pioneering second feature Outrage(1950) concerns the traumatic aftermath of rape — then still taboo as a movie subject — as experienced by a young woman assaulted on her way home from work.
Differing in tone from Lupino’s other films as writer-director, The Hitch-hiker (1953) is a taut, bleak thriller concerning two friends on a fishing trip to Mexico who are prevented from returning to California when a hitchhiker they pick up turns out to be a fugitive serial killer. Co-written and produced by Lupino with her former husband Collier Young, Private Hell 36 (Don Siegel, 1954) also co-starred Lupino’s husband Howard Duff as one of two cops who decide to keep the fortune they discover while investigating a robbery. Also screening will be The Big Knife (Robert Aldrich, 1955), one of Hollywood’s most savagely critical self-portraits, chronicling the clash between an actor (Jack Palance) reluctant to renew his contract, and his scheming studio boss (Rod Steiger), while Lupino plays the actor’s idealistic but disenchanted wife. The Trouble with Angels (1966) is a breezy, all-women coming-of-age comedy-drama, starring Rosalind Russell, Hayley Mills and June Harding, and focusing on the adventures of two rebellious students in a Catholic boarding school.
Other films screening will include: On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1951), Hard, Fast and Beautiful (Ida Lupino, 1951) and The Bigamist (Ida Lupino, 1953).
CLOSE UP: AVA DUVERNAY
- MON 11 JUN, 18:30 — SPECIAL EVENT: The Close Up Salon: Ava DuVernay
This month’s regular CLOSE UP will showcase the work of AVA DUVERNAY, who is forging her own path in the film industry, focusing on complex, profound and intelligent characters. Through both her own work and her distribution company ARRAY, DuVernay has championed stories about women and people of colour, and in just over 10 years since she directed her first feature, she has become one of the most important filmmakers working today. We hope to welcome Ava DuVernay to talk about her work via Skype at an event during the Close Up, and will announce details soon. The Close Up will also feature a Salon discussion on Monday 11 June, during which expert speakers will explore the range of DuVernay’s craft, the themes she explores in her films, and her impact as one of the few black female directors working at the highest levels in Hollywood today.
DuVernay’s first feature This Is the Life (2008) is a fascinating documentary charting the rise of The Good Life, a group of LA street poets who rejected gangster rap and dedicated themselves to pushing the creative boundaries of hip hop. In her first fiction feature I Will Follow (2010), DuVernay establishes a lot of her interests as a filmmaker: elevating people of colour, exploring the inner lives of women and the dynamics of caring. DuVernay picked up the Sundance Directing award for the stirring, character-driven drama Middle of Nowhere (2012) that shines a light on an infrequently explored part of African American life; Ruby (Emayatzy Corinealdi) was on her way to becoming a doctor when her husband was sentenced to eight years in prison. She drops out of med school to focus on his well-being while he’s incarcerated.
DuVernay’s breakout film Selma (2014) was the first major feature about Dr Martin Luther King Jr (David Oyelowo) and his campaign for equal voting rights, a campaign that culminated in an epic march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. DuVernay’s close collaborator David Oyelowo carries the film with a towering, unforgettable performance. The Oscar-nominated documentary 13th (2016), a long-term passion project for DuVernay, is an in-depth look at the legacy of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, highlighting the underlying issues of inequality and mass incarceration which have been created despite the amendment. Completing the line-up is DuVernay’s latest film A Wrinkle in Time (2018), based on Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 book about a young girl’s dangerous journey across the universe, assisted by a trio of astral travellers.
ANIMATION 2018: THE FEMALE PIONEERS
BFI Southbank’s year-long focus on animation continues with a look at the pioneering women who have made diverse and provocative animations, from the scissor-sculpted fairy tales of Lotte Reiniger to the personal films of Alison De Vere. Like the screen industry as a whole, the commercial animation sector has been historically dominated by men; all the more reason to underline the achievement of pioneers like Joy Batchelor, who co-directed Britain’s first two animated features and enjoyed a 40-year career, as well as contemporary studios Lupus Films and Locksmith Animation, who are putting women at the centre of contemporary British animation.
Alison De Vere’s five-decade career may well be Britain’s greatest contribution to world animation. Her first regular job was with the Halas and Batchelor Studio in 1951, and from there she moved into directing and designing TV commercials before venturing into more personal filmmaking with her own work. A compilation of films by De Vere, showing an overlooked artist of profound warmth, wit, experience and intelligence will be screened in a special event The View from the Café Bar: Remembering Alison De Vere. The season will also celebrate the work of Joy Batchelor with a rare screening of Ruddigore (1966), an adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera which is Britain’s second animated feature (after Animal Farm, which Batchelor co-directed with her husband John Halas).
Making Animated Features in the UK will be a discussion event during which audiences will be able to hear some of the UK’s success stories including Sarah Smith, director of Arthur Christmas and CEO of Locksmith Animation, and Camilla Deakin, producer of Ethel & Ernest and MD of Lupus Films. Though it is best known as the world’s earliest surviving animated feature, it’s time to reclaim the landmark classic The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) as a thoroughly modern work by a 27-year-old woman of extraordinary skill and vision. Lotte Reiniger was the creative heart of this collaboration between some of the finest talents of Weimar film culture, and the work remains a visual and narrative feast ideal for the big screen.
