Established in 1934 by Himansu Rai and Devika Rani, The Bombay Talkies quickly became one of India’s most successful film studios during the early period of sound cinema in India. Creating a cosmopolitan workplace, the studio engaged employees from across India's communities, configuring one of India's first female film stars in Devika Rani and launching the careers of composer Saraswati Devi, sound engineer Savak Vacha, and actor Ashok Kumar, among ... Read more

This November marks 30 years since the opening of the Berlin Wall, which saw German unification and the subsequent creation of a new European and global order. Focusing on life in the divided and re-unified city of Berlin, this specially curated mini season celebrates the falling of the Wall through women’s films made in the immediate aftermath of the seismic events of 1989.   Our screening of Margarethe von Trotta’s The ... Read more

Our screening of Margarethe von Trotta’s The Promise (1994) links with our recent Margarethe von Trotta season, which spotlighted Germany’s leading feminist film director. The Promise chronicles the lives of five East Berlin youngsters from their dramatic escape to West Berlin after the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 to its fall in 1989, when they become once again reunified with their families and lovers. This screening will be introduced by Erica Carter, ... Read more

Pia Frankenberg’s Never Sleep Again (1992) follows three women friends on their magical odyssey through post-unification Berlin. The dilapidated sites of the former Cold War frontier city, still scarred by World War II, become a place for sheer endless personal experimentation where the women begin to reconfigure their lives and loves. Frankenberg’s impressionistic portrait of three women in the city reflects on the state of the newly unified Germany, where for a ... Read more

Filme weiter_denken: Lesung und Podiumsdiskussion If you are in Berlin you have the chance to listen to Erica Carter in discussion with Christoph Hochhäusler, Daniel Illger and Ayşe Polat. The panel will be chaired by Christine Lötscher. Attendance is free; details here.  

Women Shaping the World: Delphine Seyrig’s film, Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia Women Shaping the World continues with this screening of Delphine Seyrig’s film, Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia, at Ciné Lumière. This screening took place on 26 January and was followed by a discussion between Ulrike Ottinger and Professor Erica Carter (King’s College London). If you were unable to attend this event, you can watch the Q&A here, courtesy of the Institut français.

Virtual Cinema In times of Covid-19, we miss the cinema as physical space. But the cinema as shared social resource is open online. We've put together a list of some of our favourite sites for you to stay in touch with as we ride out this crisis. Please donate generously to independent venues and online sites so we can keep live cinema alive. And follow us on social media as ... Read more

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT IS NOW POSTPONED We hope to be able to reschedule in due course The GSSN is pleased to announce this forthcoming event, organised by the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and The Wiener Holocaust Library, in association with the Insiders/Outsiders Festival and the GSSN. This event brings together two rarely screened films for an afternoon of viewings ... Read more

Please note that the BAFTSS 2020 Conference is now cancelled Panel: Letters, lives and archives: an epistolary approach to women’s film history Letters and personal correspondence held in public and private collections offer a rich primary resource for film scholars, especially for research on figures who have been sidelined or marginalised in traditional historiography. Showcasing new work on three such individuals - Jill Craigie, Lotte Eisner, Lotte Reiniger - this panel ... Read more

Please note that the BAFTSS 2020 Conference is now cancelled As part of this year's BAFTSS Conference, our panel contributes perspectives from Circulating Cinema (CIRCE), to debates on the retrieval and remediation of transnational media histories. CIRCE members have explored archival holdings whose transnational movements are arrested by their ‘stranding’ in national archives, but that may be reanimated by their reframing within historical cartographies mapping transnational epistolary, migratory, (co)-production and distribution ... Read more

Please note that the BAFTSS 2020 Conference is now cancelled. The encounter between machine intelligence and human desire in Brenda Lien’s Call of… mixed-footage video installations (2016-18) Dr Annie Ring presents this paper as part of the panel entitled Installation Spaces and Virtual Screen Cultures. The development of artificial intelligence has enabled unprecedented growth in surveillance in the past 30 years. Data are gathered in vast quantities by smart technologies that reside ... Read more

Coffee with Kafka: Film Discussion of Haneke's The Castle As part of the 'Sense of German' Culture Week run by the Department of German at the University of Aberdeen, you are warmly invited to take part in a 'Kaffee mit Kafka' (Coffee with Kafka) discussion event on Michael Haneke's film adaptation of Kafka's Das Schloss (The Castle). Watch Haneke's film adaptation of Franz Kafka's enigmatic novel Das Schloss (The Castle) here (German audio only). If you're a beginner of ... Read more