The Garden Cinema Film Talk

A Room With a View with curator Keith Lodwick and the Fashion Film Club's Sarah Bailey

This screening of this multi-award winning Merchant Ivory classic is presented by the Fashion Film Club and will be followed by Costume Couture: Sixty Years of Cosprop curator Keith Lodwick.
 
This adaptation brings the novel by E.M. Forster to dazzling life in the Florentine countryside and in the well-appointed homes of the English Edwardian upper classes. A comedy of manners with a quick wit and impeccable comic timing, A Room With A View is also a portrait of the quiet solitude that lies beneath Forster's characters, and of the need for human connection in a world of rigid convention.
 
The young Englishwoman Lucy Honeychurch (played by Helena Bonham Carter), arrives in Florence on a Baedecker-style grand tour with her aunt Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith). Through a series of events involving English expatriates Miss Eleanor Lavish, an unflappable novelist (Judi Dench), and the Emersons, a free-thinking father and son (played by Denholm Elliot and Julian Sands), Lucy's life is changed forever under a loggia in Florence and in the Tuscan countryside. (Merchant Ivory)
 
Curator of Costume Couture: Sixty Years of Cosprop at The Fashion and Textile Museum, London (until March 8th), Keith Lodwick is an expert on costume in Merchant Ivory films. A writer, curator and historian, Lodwick was formerly Curator of Theatre and Screen Arts at the V&A.
 
The Q&A will be hosted by Fashion Film Club founder Sarah Bailey.

Power Station: A solar power revolution from Walthamstow

"Power Station began in the depths of lockdown - and in the aftermath of our previous film Bank Job, where we purchased and blew up £1.2 million of local debt - with the question ‘'what could we do from where we live, with the people around us, to build power - of energy and imagination?’
Working to turn a street and local schools solar, Power Station is a scalable in-your-face prototype of community led power. Channelling Withnail and I and Ealing comedy the film charts the financial and emotional trials and tribulations of making change together.  From sleeping on rooftops to growing thousands of sunflowers and attempts at Christmas number one, community spirit and resilience are at the heart of this documentary."
Co-directors Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn join us to discuss their wild journey as part of our Planting Seeds strand. You can follow the strand to get updates on new screenings.

Nezouh: Syrian filmmaker Soudade Kaadan in conversation with Arab Film Club's Sarah Agha

14-year-old Zeina and her family are the last to have stayed in their besieged hometown of Damascus in Syria. A missile rips a giant hole in their home, exposing them to the outside world. When a rope is mysteriously lowered into the hole, Zeina gets her first taste of freedom, and an unimaginable world of possibility opens up for her. As the violence outside escalates, the family is pressured to evacuate, but Mutaz, her father is adamant that they stay, refusing to flee to the uncertain life of a refugee. Faced with a life or death dilemma, Zeina and Hala, her mother, must make the choice whether to stay or leave.
 
Sarah Agha discusses casting, magic realism, filmmaking in the Arab world, and how the film resonates a few years down the line.

Climate-conscious storytelling - how to create a sustainable and greener industry?

Crosspollinating with our Planting Seeds strand, as we are joined by Danusia Samal from Green Rider, a movement of artists and productions shifting the TV & film industry towards a fairer and healthier way of working, and by Josh Cockcroft from Climate Spring, a global organisation dedicated to shifting our cultural response to the climate crisis by championing storytelling that transforms how it is represented in film, TV, and popular culture.

Fiume o Morte: Igor Bezinović on his film about Gabriele D’Annunzio's short-lived rogue state

In defiance of the Paris Peace Conference Italian poet and military officer Gabriele D’Annunzio led a rogue, short-lived, and ultranationalist occupation of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) in 1919. Over a century later, filmmaker Igor Bezinović revisits this strange historical episode, blending archive, reenactment and interviews with residents in the present, interrogating how a city remembers and forgets, and the enduring presence of European fascism.
 
A stark and peculiar lesson in the history that is not past, Fiume o morte! (Fiume or death!) won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2025 and is Croatia’s submission for the Oscars.
Film writer Savina Petkova discusses the film with director Igor. 

Sweet Sixteen Q&A with Rebecca O'Brien

Ken Loach's longtime collaborator Rebecca O'Brien joins Gareth Evans for a discussion following Sweet Sixteen, showing as part of Ken Loach: A Retrospective at the Garden Cinema.
 
This Q&A was also filmed. You can watch it on our YouTube channel. 

Dragonfly Q&A with Paul Andrew Williams, Andrea Riseborough, Brenda Blethyn

Have we become a nation of strangers? In Dragonfly, neglected pensioner Elsie (Brenda Blethyn) finds an unexpected ally in her younger neighbour Colleen (Andrea Riseborough). Over time, Elsie gains a friend and the troubled Colleen finds a fresh purpose in life as she shops, cleans and cares for her. It brings brighter days for both of them. 
Dragonfly is a well-crafted slow burner anchored by outstanding performances from Andrea Riseborough, Brenda Blethyn, and Jason Watkins.
Though firmly grounded in reality and echoing social realist traditions, the film also functions as a thriller through its consistent high tension and effective misdirection. There's an abstract danger lurking, and we're never sure from where or how it will manifest.
The Garden Cinema's Joe Miller talks to Paul Andrew Williams, Andrea Riseborough, and Brenda Blethyn to discuss the the film.

Ken Loach in Conversation: The Films They Tried to Silence

Join us for an evening of screenings and a live Zoom conversation with Ken Loach as he discusses some of his most controversial and suppressed films - works that TV networks and other institutions have tried to keep from the public. We will discuss The Gamekeeper, The Navigators, The Save The Children Fund Film, Which Side Are You On?, and A Question of Leadership. Films that revealed the complicity of union bosses, the creativity and solidarity of striking miners, the problematic attitude of large aid organisations, police brutality and a lot more...Discover the untold stories behind these banned and buried films, as well as first-hand accounts of the battles Loach fought to bring them to the general public.

Lebanon in the UK: Diaspora - Panel with Lebanese filmmakers in the UK

Lebanon in the UK: Diaspora Shorts was a programme of short films by 5 (women) Lebanese filmmakers based in the UK, part of our season: New Lebanese Cinema: Reclaiming Storytelling. The season is focused on contemporary filmmaking in Lebanon which sees a new generation of directors telling authentic stories of life on the ground, eschewing as much as possible some of the constraints of European financing bodies and co-productions. 
The five filmmakers discuss filmmaking in Lebanon today and what it means to be part of the diaspora. The films discussed are: 
Neo Nahda, dir. by May Ziade
A Tempo the 3rd Act, dir. by Maria Abdel Karim
The Sun Sets on Beirut, dir. by Daniela Stephan
Three Centimeters, dir. by Lara Zeidan
Submarine, dir. by Mounia Akl
https://www.thegardencinema.co.uk/film/lebanon-in-the-uk-diaspora-shorts/

Angeliki Papoulia on Matchbox, Lanthimos and contemporary Greek cinema

The Greek actress, best known for Yorgos Lanthimos' Alps, Dogtooth, and The Lobster, and currently to be seen in Mahdi Fleifel's To A Land Unknown, discusses Yannis Oukonomides' Matchbox and Greek cinema with Erifili Missiou, the curator of the Garden Cinema's Contemporary Greek Cinema: Beyond the Weird Wave season.