OPENING NIGHT: Good Stock on the Dimension Floor: an Opera
HowDoYouSayYaminAfrican?'s transportive visual opera explores the multiplicity of Black selfhood through Afrofuturist abstraction.
NEW SHORTS: Funny Shit
From ASMR for white liberals to homoerotic rivalries at the badminton club, these quick-fire comedies might just prove 2020 gave us something to laugh about after all.
NEW SHORTS: Midnight Movies
A visceral, fluid-splattered ride through sinister cults, nightmarish microdosing, human taxidermy and more. Horrors to be consumed, as is tradition, at the witching hour.
NEW SHORTS: Screen On Screen
Artists’ film and video works abstract and interpret a chaotic world, from the diarising of Barbara Hammer to Noël Carroll’s theories on horror.
UK COMPETITION: I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know (at BFI)
From the afrofuturist currents of carnival in the Bahamas to the mellower cadences of Patrick Cowley’s San Francisco, these short works offer evocations and elegies of past lives and shared legacies.
NEW SHORTS: Animation Variety Show
Plasticine, sexed up washing machines and a cruise ship sinking in style illuminate this staple animation programme, featuring LSFF 2020 Best Animation winner Astrid Goldsmith.
UK COMPETITION: The Double Life Of... (at BFI)
Who we present to the real world often isn't the person we really are. This eclectic batch of interior fictions digs into true selves, concealment and catharsis.
MOTION SUSPENDED: Outdoor Projections
In the absence of gigs, LSFF presents a free AV installation of performance visuals and sonic futurism on the Southbank.
ONLINE TOGETHER: Keiken In Conversation
Cross-dimensional digital arts collective Keiken (Augmented Empathy) will be hosted in open conversation on their collaborative creative and working process.
UK COMPETITION: Close Quarters (at BFI)
Compulsions, crushes and cravings come to a head in these portraits of social dysfunction and bad company kept, with new work from Daniel Kaluuya and Sophia Di Martino.
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION: Things To Come
Otherworldly phenomena and an incarcerated anthropomorphic cow feature in this panorama of a world in stasis. With new animated fables from Wong Ping, Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki.
ONLINE TOGETHER: Live Chat
How do we foster intimacy across the flatness of our screens? The White Pube's Gabrielle de la Puente leads discussion on seeking and building community in virtual spaces.
NEW SHORTS: London Lives
Life in the capital has shaped up differently of late. These affectionate works survey the highs and lows of pre-pandemic and locked down London.
LFS: The Space Between Us: Remi Itani and Rafael Manuel
London Film School alumni Remi Itani and Rafael Manuel join us in conversation on the intricacies of their characters and world-building.
NEW SHORTS: A Winter's Matinee of Romantic Films
To bolster hearts in trying times, our LSFF staple of modern romances (and some old school meet-cutes) is back.
UK COMPETITION: Lessons In Survival (at BFI)
Whether old friends or strangers we meet along the way, protecting those around us is essential to our morality and survival. Featuring the latest from Riz Ahmed and visual artist Rhea Dillon.
WITH WARMTH AND ECSTATIC SOLIDARITY
This curation of short documentaries interrogates the form itself as a politically useful tool for marginalised and displaced peoples and cultures.
UK COMPETITION: The Devil's In The Details (at BFI)
Layering fantasy over reality, these works comprise speculative futures, dream logics and waking nightmares, from tricksy megachurches in Lagos to the utopian otherworlds of Somerset's Wookey Hole Caves.
RADICAL TV: Videofreex
Collective television-makers Videofreex revolutionised citizen journalism in the late ‘60s, documenting protests and profiles of activists like Black Panther Party Deputy Chairman, Fred Hampton.
NEW SHORTS: Science Fictions
Visions of cosmic presents and imagined futures. With existential gems from artist filmmakers Jacqueline Lentzou and Linh Duong.
