Headfirst Editor's Pick
"3 days of politically radical, boundary-pushing cinema celebrating activism and resistance like only Bristol knows how. The ever-eclectic programme includes shorts, docs and dramas on reproductive rights, forgotten prisoners, Zionist myth-making, country music revisionism + much more."
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A event held at The Cube on Saturday 12th October. The event starts at 21:00.
Links to tickets for individual screenings below.
Bristol Radical Film Festival takes place this 12th-13th October celebrating political, activist, and experimental filmmaking. The programme as usual engages with contemporary political issues and showcases an eclectic mix of unseen gems:
The multi-racial roots of Country Music, Britain’s forgotten prisoners, Reproductive Rights in the USA, Israel and Jewish identity, Technology and Race in photography, Union organising against Amazon.
Saturday 12th October - UK Premier: Open Country
A journey into the roots of American Country music, Open Country reclaims it as the creative musical expression of working people of all colours. Through archival clips, contemporary interviews, performances, and animated graphics, it repositions country music into its rightful place as a people’s music.
The evening will be opened by a performance from local fiddlers and pluckers Joe & The Temperance Two.
https://hdfst.uk/e114428
Israelism explores the past, present and future of the relationship between American Jews and Israel as painful cracks have emerged within the Jewish community over the Israel-Palestine conflict, inspiring argument, protest and even censorship. Dozens of American Jewish thinkers, community leaders and activists share stories of falling in love with Israel, and competing visions for a Jewish future, while Israelis and Palestinians describe how their lives are affected by the decisions of a community half a world away.
https://hdfst.uk/e114425
Grassroots activism lies at the heart of Union, which follows a group of people fighting for better working conditions at Amazon in the US. An account of the formation of the first Amazon Labor Union. The directors capture moments of landmark success, but the film makes clear that this is just the beginning of a long fight for the company’s 1.5 million employees.
https://hdfst.uk/e114426
Britain’s Forgotten Prisoners explores the situation of over three thousand prisoners – people who were given an additional indeterminate sentence, Imprisonment for Public Protection. These people remain in jail, held indefinitely with no idea when they’ll be released, even though they completed their sentences years earlier. This punishment follows both the stories of individuals and those campaigning for their rights as human beings to have their lives returned to them.
https://hdfst.uk/e114427
Sunday 13th October
Bristol Radical Film Festival celebrates Black History Month with an exploration of racist bias in photographic technology. Prism explores the many ways that racism as entrenched in film culture is a technical one: the lighting for movie cameras has always been calibrated for white skin, with other production tools reflecting the same bias throughout cinema history. Three Belgian based filmmakers explore the dimensions of that reality. The differences in the skin colour of the filmmakers serve as a starting point to explore their experiences with the biased limitations of the medium.
https://hdfst.uk/e114432
As ever, our annual International Short Films Showcase session presents new work from activists and film makers around the globe. This year we look at the trauma that follows the murder of a family member in Peru that remains shrouded in mystery and the rise to political activism after the killing of the sister of the protagonist by the LA police.
We have a strong focus on Iran with two short fiction films focusing on the conditions of women in Iran and a re-imagining of the history of revolutionary Iran (the film includes brief images of animal cruelty).
Poetry plays an important role in exploring illegal migration in the USA, in rebuilding memories of the Spanish Civil War and in a poetic look at the beautiful and famous Portuguese Cobblestones whose maintenance clashes with the neoliberal city.
We also explore the history of the Keffiyeh and the limits of personal space and consent in public spaces (the right to take photographs of passers-by) and around consent in digital spaces, more specifically around unsoliciated nude images.
https://hdfst.uk/e114441
In Never Rarely Sometimes Always, best friends and cousins Autumn and Skylar precariously navigate the vulnerability of female adolescence in rural Pennsylvania. When Autumn mysteriously falls pregnant, she's confronted with the hurdles in place and facing blue-collar women seeking abortions. Even before the current attack on reproductive rights in the USA and the rest of the world, the film presents a matter-of-fact portrait of two young women in a difficult but all-too-believable situation.
“ The hurdles to an abortion are as legion as they are maddening and pedestrian, a blunt political truism that Hittman brilliantly connects to women’s fight for emancipation” (NY Times).
https://hdfst.uk/e114443
Entry requirements: no age restrictions
Bristol Radical Film Festival takes place this 12th-13th October celebrating political, activist, and experimental filmmaking. The programme as usual engages with contemporary political issues and showcases an eclectic mix of unseen gems:
The multi-racial roots of Country Music, Britain’s forgotten prisoners, Reproductive Rights in the USA, Israel and Jewish identity, Technology and Race in photography, Union organising against Amazon.
Saturday 12th October - UK Premier: Open Country
A journey into the roots of American Country music, Open Country reclaims it as the creative musical expression of working people of all colours. Through archival clips, contemporary interviews, performances, and animated graphics, it repositions country music into its rightful place as a people’s music.
The evening will be opened by a performance from local fiddlers and pluckers Joe & The Temperance Two.
https://hdfst.uk/e114428
Israelism explores the past, present and future of the relationship between American Jews and Israel as painful cracks have emerged within the Jewish community over the Israel-Palestine conflict, inspiring argument, protest and even censorship. Dozens of American Jewish thinkers, community leaders and activists share stories of falling in love with Israel, and competing visions for a Jewish future, while Israelis and Palestinians describe how their lives are affected by the decisions of a community half a world away.
https://hdfst.uk/e114425
Grassroots activism lies at the heart of Union, which follows a group of people fighting for better working conditions at Amazon in the US. An account of the formation of the first Amazon Labor Union. The directors capture moments of landmark success, but the film makes clear that this is just the beginning of a long fight for the company’s 1.5 million employees.
https://hdfst.uk/e114426
Britain’s Forgotten Prisoners explores the situation of over three thousand prisoners – people who were given an additional indeterminate sentence, Imprisonment for Public Protection. These people remain in jail, held indefinitely with no idea when they’ll be released, even though they completed their sentences years earlier. This punishment follows both the stories of individuals and those campaigning for their rights as human beings to have their lives returned to them.
https://hdfst.uk/e114427
Sunday 13th October
Bristol Radical Film Festival celebrates Black History Month with an exploration of racist bias in photographic technology. Prism explores the many ways that racism as entrenched in film culture is a technical one: the lighting for movie cameras has always been calibrated for white skin, with other production tools reflecting the same bias throughout cinema history. Three Belgian based filmmakers explore the dimensions of that reality. The differences in the skin colour of the filmmakers serve as a starting point to explore their experiences with the biased limitations of the medium.
https://hdfst.uk/e114432
As ever, our annual International Short Films Showcase session presents new work from activists and film makers around the globe. This year we look at the trauma that follows the murder of a family member in Peru that remains shrouded in mystery and the rise to political activism after the killing of the sister of the protagonist by the LA police.
We have a strong focus on Iran with two short fiction films focusing on the conditions of women in Iran and a re-imagining of the history of revolutionary Iran (the film includes brief images of animal cruelty).
Poetry plays an important role in exploring illegal migration in the USA, in rebuilding memories of the Spanish Civil War and in a poetic look at the beautiful and famous Portuguese Cobblestones whose maintenance clashes with the neoliberal city.
We also explore the history of the Keffiyeh and the limits of personal space and consent in public spaces (the right to take photographs of passers-by) and around consent in digital spaces, more specifically around unsoliciated nude images.
https://hdfst.uk/e114441
In Never Rarely Sometimes Always, best friends and cousins Autumn and Skylar precariously navigate the vulnerability of female adolescence in rural Pennsylvania. When Autumn mysteriously falls pregnant, she's confronted with the hurdles in place and facing blue-collar women seeking abortions. Even before the current attack on reproductive rights in the USA and the rest of the world, the film presents a matter-of-fact portrait of two young women in a difficult but all-too-believable situation.
“ The hurdles to an abortion are as legion as they are maddening and pedestrian, a blunt political truism that Hittman brilliantly connects to women’s fight for emancipation” (NY Times).
https://hdfst.uk/e114443
Entry requirements: no age restrictions
Tickets for similar Bristol events.
