Mike Leigh and Gary Yershon continue our season of live conversations, discussing his 2008 film Happy-Go-Lucky.

Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is an irrepressibly cheerful primary school teacher who won’t let anyone or anything get her down. Living with her flatmate Zoe (Alexis Zegerman), Poppy has a gift for making the most of life. Determined to learn to drive, she finds herself matched with Scott (Eddie Marsan), an uptight driving instructor who is everything she is not.

For our second ever industry panel and members’ networking event, we were joined by Christina Papasotiriou (Senior Film Programmer at Raindance Film Festival) and Philip Ilson (Co-Director of the London Short Film Festival) who spoke with our own Abla Kandalaft to discuss all things film festivals.

Having started film programming in community cinemas, Christina Papasotiriou was Genesis Cinema’s Alternative Programming Manager where she brought the best of independent film to the people of East London as well as showcased work from underrepresented filmmakers; this translated to her leading the programming of the first edition of Genesis Cinema’s own Fragments Festival, which focuses on championing inclusivity though film. Currently Christina is the Senior Programmer at Raindance Film Festival, as well as part of team EFN – Emerging Filmmaker’s Night short film festival – which similarly to Raindance showcases early work from emerging directors.

Philip Ilson is the Co-Director of the London Short Film Festival, which he co-founded in 2004. He was also the short film programmer for the BFI London Film Festival between 2006 and 2022, and has worked as a freelance programmer, including at the East End Film Festival (London), Cork Film Festival (Ireland), and the Branchage Festival (Jersey), Latitude music festival, and at Curzon Soho Cinema.

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.