The 21st LSFF opens with a programme of repertory and new short film that focuses on desire, touch and relationships, made by British filmmakers. In our atomised lives, the craving to know and be known permeates our every interaction, and a thread of intimacy runs through the festival programme this year.
Do we ever truly know who shares our beds, our bodies? This collection of short films curated by the LSFF team celebrates chance encounters, sexual abandon, kink and consent. Entwined with the opening night programme in the ICA Theatre and our Touch Me Free programme at FOLD, we invite you to join the filmmakers in conversation after the screening.
Clio Barnard’s (The Arbor, Ali and Ava) groundbreaking lip-synced documentary Random Acts of Intimacy features an early performance from Isla Fisher. Campbell X (Stud Life) documents the complexities of love and lust for queer masculinity in DES!RE. Writer/director/actors Anna Maguire (With Love and a Major Organ, Violation) and Freya Mavor (Industry, About Joan) both explore the interconnection of love, lust and loss in their personal and intimate films Constellations and Kinked.
Directors Anna Thew and Abel Rubinstein delve into kink and consent amongst young Londoners, from the early 90s in Thew’s Cling Film to contemporary youth culture in Rubinstein’s Life in Love.
Followed by Q&A with attending filmmakers, hosted by independent curator Maya Sfakianaki.
