Sally Potter was live in conversation at The Garden Cinema with Dr. Alice Pember to discuss her 1993 film Orlando, starring Tilda Swinton.

The director joined us for a weekend retrospective of her films and music in anticipation of the release of Sally’s debut album, Pink Bikini, a semi-autobiographical collection of songs about growing up female in London in the 1960s, as a young rebel and activist.

Orlando is a story of the quest for love, and it is also an ironic dance through English history. Addressing contemporary concerns about gender and identity, the film is remarkably true to the spirit of Virginia Woolf, but it also skilfully adapts the original story to give it a striking, cinematic form. The screenplay is a standard text taught in film schools as a radical and successful adaptation of a classic work. Orlando is a bold, unsentimental re-working of Virginia Woolf’s classic novel in which an innocent aristocrat journeys through 400 years of English history first as a man, then as a woman.

Watch film programmer Erifili Missiou’s take on Name Me Lawand, Edward Lovelace’s inspirational and moving documentary.

Name Me Lawand opens with a Kurdish family migrating to the UK seeking a brighter future for their profoundly deaf son. Remarkably, Lawand’s parents discourage him from learning Sign Language, insisting he communicates as a non-deaf person, which deepens his sense of isolation.

Seeing Lawand transform from a withdrawn and lonely to a confident individual after learning BSL and connecting to the D/ deaf community is a rewarding experience. It’s also heartwarming to witness the immigrant family gradually embracing BSL and be actively supported by the Derby community against deportation.

What initially feels like an ableist melancholic storyline slowly unfolds into one of empowerment and liberation, as Lawand and his family navigate the challenges of migration whilst discovering the power of communication. A truly empowering documentary, this is a must-see.

Name Me Lawand is showing at The Garden Cinema from Friday 7th July

The second half of our season of live conversations with Mike Leigh and Gary Yershon continues with a screening and Q&A for Leigh’s 1993 film Naked.

Johnny, (David Thewlis) is a frenetic and destructive outsider who tears through the lives of others like an emotional tornado. On the run from Manchester, he seeks sanctuary with his ex-girlfriend Louise (Lesley Sharp) in London, where he immediately targets her vulnerable housemate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge) with his unique blend of predatory charm. From there he embarks on a nocturnal odyssey across the city, dragging other disaffected souls into his orbit as he spirals towards his own personal apocalypse. Mike Leigh’s Cannes-winning film is a masterful, controversial and totally unforgettable exploration of society in free-fall at the tail end of Thatcher’s Britain.

The Garden Cinema is proud to present a major retrospective of the legendary master of suspense: Alfred Hitchcock. Arranged in three parts, this season provides an overview of Hitchcock’s career and contains his most revered films.

Act II: 1945 – 1954, Post-war Hollywood and Independent Productions:
The end of WWII corresponds with the end of Hitchcock’s working relationship with David O. Selznick, but not before they make Spellbound. Having endured the spectre of Selznick’s influence over the production of Notorious, even after sale of the project to RKO, Hitchcock founded his own production company, Transatlantic Pictures. Stung by the interference of studios (and Selznick), independence allowed Hitchcock to experiment with Rope and, with considerable effort, to make Strangers on a Train. But despite their formidable status today, both films received lukewarm receptions from critics and audiences. We end this section of the season with a taste of what is to follow, a first collaboration with Grace Kelly with Dial M for Murder.

Check listings for screenings with guest introductions.

Part 2 of Mike Leigh and Gary Yershon’s ongoing discussion of the acclaimed director’s films begins with a screening and Q&A for his 1983 film Meantime.

A slow-burning depiction of economic degradation in Thatcher’s England, Mike Leigh’s Meantime is the culmination of the writer-director’s pioneering work in television. Unemployment is rampant in London’s working-class East End, where a middle-aged couple and their two sons languish in a claustrophobic council flat. As the brothers (Phil Daniels and Tim Roth) grow increasingly disaffected, Leigh punctuates the grinding boredom of their daily existence with tense encounters, including with a well-meaning aunt (Marion Bailey) who has managed to become middle-class and a blithering skinhead on the verge of psychosis (a scene-stealing Gary Oldman, in his first major role).

Watch film curator George Crosthwait’s take on War Pony, the directorial debut of Riley Keough and Gina Gammell, and written with first-time writers, Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy.

The most authentic and well researched depiction of reservation precarity since Chloé Zhao’s docudrama work in Pine Ridge (Songs My Brother Taught Me, The Rider). As with these touchstones, the presence of non-indigenous filmmakers raises some concerns, but the development of the script and characters with Native American writers Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, and producer Willi White goes some distance to mitigate this. All that being said, the resulting film feels undoubtedly true to lived experience. A loose, dual narrative structure which takes the time to establish a superb sense of setting before gradually twists into a gripping flashpoint.

Watch film curator George Crosthwait’s take on Pretty Red Dress, the debut feature from writer and director Dionne Edwards.

Evidence perhaps, alongside Raine Allen Miller’s Rye Lane, of an emerging wave of South London-set films made by fresh (and female) voices. Pretty Red Dress is a sweet, funny, and very timely, exploration of black masculinity, brought to life by a superb central cast. Queerness emerges here as a universal sensibility, rather than something paradoxically binary. Also, it’s a musical!