IT’S BEEN a busy time of late and we just wanted to signpost a a few items that are coming your way very soon – more substantially…
Cannes Golden Eye documentary winner comes to the UK
FOLLOWING its triumphant screening at Cannes, Payal Kapadia’s unusual and slightly genre-defying ‘documentary’ gets its first UK screening tonight (November 25) at the ICA in London. ‘A Night of Knowing Nothing’ won the top documentary prize in Cannes – The Golden Eye and it actually opens the Frame of Representation (FoR) Festival which runs from today through till Saturday, December 4 at the iCA. The festival showcases the best of documentary films from around the world that have a take on our world with “strong political connections and a commitment to aesthetics”.
We interviewed Kapadia in Cannes shortly after its world premiere.
You can read a print review tomorrow (Friday November 26).
ICA Links
https://www.ica.art/films/a-night-of-knowing-nothing-qa
https://www.ica.art/films/for21
Short film by Riz Ahmed gets Oscar nod
WE WERE at a special big screen showing of ‘The Long Goodbye’, starring Riz Ahmed and directed by Aneil Karia, on Tuesday (November 23) in London.
This short film which was first dropped on We Transfer’s We Present platform and Ahmed’s own Youtube channel in April 2020, now qualifies for a short film Oscar, having been screened at several festivals in the US this year and has won prestigious awards there recently. The Grand Prix award at the Hollyshorts Film Festival in Los Angeles went to ‘The Long Goodbye’. It is a short documentary festival recognised by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences (AMPAS), the organisation behind the Oscars/ Academy Awards. Voting for the Oscars begins on December 10 and ends on December 15 this year, with the shortlist announcements made on December 21. The actual ceremony will be on Sunday, March 27. The screening at the W Hotel in London comprised a viewing of the 11-minute film on a big screen and a short Q&A with Ahmed and Karia talking to BBC film critic Mark Kermode about the film’s themes and its making. As Kermode pointed out, there is more in those 11 minutes than there is in many full-length features. It is a hard-hitting, shocking film and a bravura production. The pre-wedding family setting is beautifully done at the beginning and then gives way quite suddenly to something very shocking and unforgettable…Karia is also a director to watch and we caught up him post the screening to talk about ‘The Long Goodbye’ and ‘Surge’ his first feature which stars Ben Wishaw, and won a prize at Sundance 2020 and is currently available to view on Netflix. This interview and comments by him and Ahmed on ‘The Long Goodbye’ are likely to be published in one story next week.
Lubaina Himid at Tate Modern from today and interview with curator Amrita Dhallu
ARTIST Lubaina Himid’s first solo and largest exhibition, to date, at Tate Modern, opens today (Thursday November 25). It follows her work from the 1980s to her much deserved Turner Prize win in 2017 – and there are works that have never been seen before in the UK. Born in Zanzibar, and coming to the UK as a child with her single mother, her African roots influence the style and range in much of her work and as she told us in 2019 – it is very much about making invisible narratives – visible and placing them in the foreground. Amrita Dhallu, assistant curator International Art at Tate Modern and one of the key people at the gallery – who helped put the exhibition together, gave us a tour of the five or so large rooms and spoke to us about Himid’s wider place in both British and international art. We hope to carry this story next week too.
So keep tuned – tomorrow A Night of Knowing Nothing and also our regular Bollywood beat and the latest from the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) which we covered in both 2018 and 2019 – you can find more here! Subscribe, if you haven’t already!