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.

On 18 July 2023, we hosted our first ever members’ networking and industry panel. We were joined by producers Georgia Goggin (Pretty Red Dress) and Susan Simnett (Fadia’s Tree) and the panel was hosted by our own Special Programmes & Discussions curator Abla Kandalaft (whose voice you may recognise from The Garden Cinema Film Talk podcast).

Join us on 10 August 2023 for our second industry event where we will be in discussion with Christina Papasotiriou (Senior Film Programmer at Raindance Film Festival) and Philip Ilson (Co-Director of the London Short Film Festival). They will be discussing all things film festivals, so this promises to be a particularly interesting chat for anyone trying to enter the festival circuit.

This summer we will be screening a range of remarkable documentary films accompanied by a plethora of introductions and post-screening discussions in which we will be meeting with directors, athletes, journalists, authors and producers to contextualise and share our collective responses to these extraordinary films.

Sally Potter was live in conversation at The Garden Cinema with Magdalene Lepri to discuss her 2004 film Yes.

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.

Told almost entirely in iambic pentameter, Yes is the story of a passionate love affair between an American woman (Joan Allen) and a Middle-Eastern man (Simon Abkarian), in which they confront some of the greatest conflicts of our generation – religious, political and sexual. Sam Neil plays the betrayed and betraying politician husband, Sheila Hancock the beloved aunt and Shirley Henderson the philosophical cleaner who witnesses the trail of dirt and heartbreak the lovers leave behind them, as they embark, on a journey that takes them from London and Belfast to Beirut and Havana.

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.