Mike Leigh and Gary Yershon continue our season of live conversations, discussing his 1999 film Topsy-Turvy.

Mike Leigh’s dramatisation of the staging of the 1885 comic opera The Mikado stars Jim Broadbent and Allan Corduner. A lushly produced epic about the harsh realities of creative expression, featuring bravura performances and Oscar-winning costume design and makeup.

Our South Asian Heritage Month: Stories to Tell continues with a screening of Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray’s neo-realist inspired debut feature which revolutionised Indian cinema and unveiled his enduring artistic voice to the world.

Anupma is a British-Indian film curator and archives researcher, with a deep and evolving interest in colonial & post-colonial screen narratives. Her curatorial practice is focussed on researching, screening and creating conversations around heritage films, with aim of making them accessible to a wider audience, both within and outside the UK. Her other interests include, Black-British cinema, Post-war Japanese Cinema, Indian Parallel Cinema, and Iranian New-wave Cinema.

Asif Kapadia joins Richard Vitola-Jones for a Q&A about his first feature documentary Senna, kicking off The Garden Cinema’s Summer of Sport documentary season. Covering Kapadia’s inspirations, the links with his other films Amy and Diego Maradona, and how the structure of the film brings presence and drama to the screen.

Spanning a decade of Formula One from 1984, Senna picks through archive footage to show a world where traditional driving skills are under threat from the unsporting forces of big business and technical engineering. A gifted newcomer, Senna goes from anonymity at the back of a rain-soaked debut at Monaco to three-time world champion -earning him legendary status in Brazil and igniting the hopes of a struggling population along the way.

Our Hitchcock odyssey concludes with arguably his most fertile period: an inspired decade-long stretch during which he made some of Hollywood’s most beloved movies. Of the titles shown here, Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), Rear Window (1954), and North by Northwest (1959) feature in the top 50 of Sight and Sound’s recent greatest films of all time poll, with The Birds (1963) also listed in the top 200. Alongside this pantheon of classics are perhaps the lightest of his late works, To Catch a Thief (1955), and the only instance of Hitch reworking Hitch, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).

For the first time in the UK, masterpieces from 1980s, 90s, and 00s Taiwanese cinema will be screened collectively in a groundbreaking new season at The Garden Cinema.

Guided by regular introductions and discussion groups, these screenings offer the perfect opportunity to immerse yourself in the cinema of Taiwan for the first time, or to experience these classics anew on the big screen.

Mike Figgis is joined by producer Graham Smith at the Garden Cinema for a Q&A about the development and production of his first film, Stormy Monday, which opened the door to Hollywood, where Mike went on to make the celebrated Internal Affairs and Leaving Las Vegas.

Award-winning British director Mike Figgis’s first movie is a neon and rain-drenched noirish thriller set in Newcastle. The film stars Tommy Lee Jones, as the hawkish property developer/gangster Cosmo, trying to carve out a profitable chunk of the town; Melanie Griffith and a very young Sean Bean, as lovers Kate and Brendan who are drawn into a bitter turf war; and Sting as the ambivalent jazz club owner, Finney. All accompanied by a cool jazz soundtrack (written by Figgis), Stormy Monday is an evocative slice of late 80s British film-making.

Ramses Underhill Smith (he/him) discusses his response to Kokomo City, the raw, taboo-breaking depiction of the lives of four black trans sex workers in America, directed by two-time Grammy nominee D. Smith.

Ramses is a passionate campaigner for LGBTQI rights and a transgender black man, who has worked alongside the British Red Cross, Opening Doors London, and FTM London, to name a few charities. He is Managing Director of Alternative Care Services, the UK’s first, independent LGBTQI* domiciliary care provider.

Kokomo City is an authentic representation of Black transgender sex work through the testimonies of four sex workers. There’s nothing polished or comfortable in this irreverent piece of work – just the undiluted truth served with style and wit.

The film is showing at The Garden Cinema from Friday 4 August.

To launch our South Asian Heritage Month season, which is themed ‘Stories to Tell”, we screened Jean Renoir’s intoxicating first colour feature – shot entirely on location in India – The River.

The film was preceded by an Odissi Dance Performance by Prachi Hota and introduced by guest curator Anupma Shanker, who selected the film.

Anupma is a British-Indian film curator and archives researcher, with a deep and evolving interest in colonial & post-colonial screen narratives. Her curatorial practice is focussed on researching, screening and creating conversations around heritage films, with aim of making them accessible to a wider audience, both within and outside the UK. Her other interests include, Black-British cinema, Post-war Japanese Cinema, Indian Parallel Cinema, and Iranian New-wave Cinema.