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Each week, we round up the most exciting film events happening in London over the coming week, from pop-ups and one-offs to regular film clubs, outdoor screenings and festivals. Here’s this week’s top five.
BFI Flare: ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ Singalong
London’s biggest celebration of LGBT+ cinema returns with another bumper crop of dramas and docs, plus shorts, talks, parties and special events. The line-up is brilliant. Programmer Tricia Tuttle has already picked out a prime selection of the best new movies exclusively for Time Out, but sadly quite a few are already sold out. So we’ve plumped for this party-hearty screening of the classic musical in which Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell play a pair of chesty chisellers aboard a cruise ship bound for Paris, forced to work their faux-ditsy charms amid a chorus of male admirers. It’s worth the ticket to see Monroe’s iconic performance of ‘Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend’: a perfect four minutes.
BFI Southbank, Belvedere Rd, SE1 8XT. Mon Mar 20, 6.30pm. £12.10, £8 concs.
Kinoteka Polish Film Festival: ‘Blindness’
The capital’s annual salute to Polish cinema is back, with another crowded programme of popular favourites, classics and docs, plus shorts and talks. This year, we’re most looking forward to the festival’s in-depth tribute to director Andrzej Wajda, the filmmaking maestro who died last year. That strand doesn’t kick off until next week, so in the meantime we’ve picked out this bruising Soviet-era drama. Julia Brystiger was a notorious figure in the secret service, willing to go to extreme lengths to torture the truth out of her prisoners.
Regent Street Cinema, 309 Regent St, W1B 2HW. Sun Mar 19, 5pm. £11, £8 concs.
Chronic Youth Film Festival: ‘Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion’
A weekend of films celebrating youth, including the twentieth-anniversary screening of this feisty comedy about two old friends. Long-time pals Romy (Mira Sorvino) and Michele (Lisa Kudrow) have achieved, well, not very much since graduation. But a gnawing curiosity draws them back to their old school and old scores are just waiting to be settled. The star of the show is undoubtedly Janeane Garofalo, who gives a hilariously abrasive performance as an adolescent outsider who's turned her chain-smoking habit to her advantage by inventing a quick-drawing ciggie you can inhale with a single puff.
Barbican Centre, Silk St, EC2Y 8DS. Sun Mar 19, 2pm. £9.50, £8.50 concs.
Fashion in Film Festival: ‘In the Mood for Love’
More achingly lovely cinema from the Fashion in Film Festival, celebrating what happens when cinema meets style. This is director Wong Kar-Wai’s paean to the agony and ecstasy of buttoned-up emotions. In Hong Kong, 1962, Mr Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs Chan (Maggie Cheung) are neighbours who discover that their spouses are having an affair. They fall in love, but repress their feelings. Every charged frame of the film pulses with the central contradiction between repression and emotional abandon.
Curzon Soho, 99 Shaftesbury Ave, W1D 5DY. Fri Mar 17, 6pm. £15, £12.50 concs.
Cult Classic Collective: ‘A Clockwork Orange’
Hardly the most obscure choice from the Genesis’s cult film club, but we’ll never pass up the opportunity to see Stanley Kubrick’s cold masterpiece on the big screen. Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel gives us a future version of Britain where the modernist fabric of the 1960s is exaggerated just enough for it to feel both strange and familiar. But this world’s sense of justice is all awry. Alex commits rape for fun, but when he’s arrested it’s the state that appears menacing as he’s subjected to a form of therapy meant to banish his criminal tendencies.
Genesis Cinema, 93-95 Mile End Rd, E1 4UJ.Thu Mar 16, 6.30pm. £8, £7 concs.