What might a more inclu­sive film pro­gram­ming world look like?

“I have nev­er felt so com­fort­able in a cin­e­ma before,” said some­one in the front row. I have host­ed many post-film Q&As and dis­cus­sions, but this was the first time I felt at a loss for words. The moment came at the end of a ​‘relaxed screen­ing’ event I pro­grammed at the Bar­bi­can as part of their Emerg­ing Film Cura­tors series, fol­low­ing a lab of class­es last year. Enti­tled ​‘Stims: Towards a Neu­ro­di­verse Cin­e­ma’, the event show­cased a series of short films from ani­mat­ed doc­u­men­tary to sci-fi and exper­i­men­tal, exclu­sive­ly direct­ed by neu­ro­di­ver­gent filmmakers.

It felt like the apoth­e­o­sis of work I have been doing for the past cou­ple of years, work­ing on the Autism Through Cin­e­ma project and pod­cast with Queen Mary Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don which frames cin­e­ma through an autis­tic lens, and host­ing relaxed screen­ings at the BFI and The Gar­den Cin­e­ma. ​‘Stims’ was the first event I had cob­bled togeth­er from scratch, from ensur­ing the light­ing and sound at the Bar­bi­can were at just the right lev­el to acquir­ing the rights to screen the films and bring­ing sev­er­al of the film­mak­ers to Lon­don for a pan­el discussion.

It turns out pro­gram­ming Stims wasn’t apoth­e­o­sis but gen­e­sis – when that per­son took the mic to tell me how they had nev­er felt wel­come in cin­e­ma spaces, or felt like a val­ued part of an audi­ence, I knew that this was some­thing I have to pur­sue fur­ther. Yet mak­ing a per­son­al mark on cin­e­ma exhi­bi­tion is a big thing to take on, espe­cial­ly at lofty insti­tu­tions like the Bar­bi­can. It can seem very over­whelm­ing with­out know­ing where to begin, espe­cial­ly for those of us to whom net­work­ing does not come nat­u­ral­ly. I decid­ed to talk to my fel­low Emerg­ing Cura­tors to see what they made of the process, and the response they received from the pro­grammes they lov­ing­ly prepared.

The first event in the series was curat­ed by film jour­nal­ist and pro­gram­mer Cici Peng. Her screen­ing was called ​‘Visions from the Wake: Grief and its After­lives in Glob­al Cin­e­ma’, fea­tur­ing short films explor­ing modes of mourn­ing from film­mak­ers of the dias­po­ra. ​“The event was real­ly spe­cial because it was reflec­tive of per­son­al expe­ri­ences of loss, in a struc­tur­al con­text,” Cici tells me. ​“I had so many peo­ple tell me about their own rela­tion­ship to grief after the screen­ing, which touched me deeply.”

The films in Cici’s pro­gramme ranged from Mati Diop’s 2009 short film Atlan­tiques to Your Father was Born 100 Years Old, and So was the Nak­ba, a Google Maps view of Pales­tine direct­ed by Razan AlSalah. ​“I think allow­ing these films to enter con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er facil­i­tates new modes of think­ing about grief as a rad­i­cal kind of empa­thy across bor­ders for dias­poric com­mu­ni­ties.” Peng said. I asked her what chal­lenges she feels that young cura­tors face. ​“Screen Dai­ly report­ed the local box office for UK indie films has dropped by 49% in 2023 post-Covid. While this sum­mer, the indus­try was mark­ing Bar­ben­heimer as the ​‘return’ of cin­e­ma, the truth is that these huge releas­es over­shad­ow inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma and inde­pen­dent pro­gram­ming and distribution.”

Inspired by Cici’s inci­sive reflec­tions, I spoke to Issy Macleod who works as a pro­gram­mer at Pic­ture­house to see what cura­tion looks like to some­one who has man­aged to turn it into a full-time job. ​“For free­lancers, it becomes a game of who you know through net­work­ing,” Issy says. ​“It’s about build­ing rela­tion­ships with dis­trib­u­tors and stu­dios. Every­one is try­ing to keep the film indus­try alive, and even though it can feel dif­fi­cult at times, dis­trib­u­tors want their films to be screened.”

I won­dered if Issy has much space to curate the films they are per­son­al­ly pas­sion­ate about. ​“I love hor­ror films from coun­tries that don’t often make it to the UK and West­erns, but they don’t trans­late into box office very eas­i­ly. So my aim is to slow­ly cul­ti­vate an inter­est in things I love, such as screen­ing on 35mm which is real­ly pop­u­lar right now.” When it comes to advice for new cura­tors, Issy says ​“Reper­to­ry pro­gram­ming is a real­ly great way to learn how to book things and to iden­ti­fy the obsta­cles that you come up against. And reach out to your local cin­e­ma, they are often will­ing to work with new people.”

Screen­ing reper­to­ry or archival films can cir­cum­vent the com­pli­ca­tions, includ­ing fees, of screen­ing new releas­es. Teodo­ra Kosanović’s Bar­bi­can pro­gramme is an evening of rarely screened shorts called ​‘Unseen Avant-Gardes: Women Exper­i­men­tal Film­mak­ers in Yugoslavia, 1960 – 90’. I asked Teodo­ra how she went about find­ing the films. ​“There was a lot of detec­tive work involved, includ­ing con­tact­ing the fam­i­lies of the film­mak­ers, try­ing to find where these films could be and who the rights-hold­ers were.” The desire to curate often comes from stum­bling across some­thing online or in an archive that hasn’t been screened before. But where to begin?

“As some­one who is start­ing out in cura­tion, I am hap­py to see that there is a grow­ing inter­est in alter­na­tive voic­es and per­spec­tives,” Teodo­ra responds. ​“Espe­cial­ly look­ing at his­tor­i­cal art­works in a dif­fer­ent light and show­cas­ing cur­rent works which reflect on our world in more rad­i­cal and chal­leng­ing ways.” There’s cer­tain­ly a polit­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal edge to a lot of the pro­grammes being pro­duced. My own event aimed to demon­strate alter­na­tive ways of see­ing which neu­ro­di­ver­gent film­mak­ers bring to the film indus­try, whilst exam­in­ing the access chal­lenges we face both on set and in an audi­ence watch­ing in a cinema.

The chal­lenge of going it alone can be assuaged by work­ing as a col­lec­tive, as demon­strat­ed by the final event in the Emerg­ing Cura­tors series. Tak­ing place on 24 March, ​‘Chang­ing With The Tides’ is an immer­sive screen­ing explor­ing coastal com­mu­ni­ties and fish­ing indus­tries over 70 years from 1950s Sivi­ly to 2021 Scot­land. It was pro­grammed by three cura­tors: Aryan Tauqueer Khawa­ja, Sophiya Sian, and Tony Yang. ​“Film is, after all, a col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence,” Sophiya reflects. ​“Col­lab­o­ra­tion keeps film alive.”

Com­pared to how we all felt before the Lab, the men­tor­ship from the Barbican’s pro­gram­ming team has giv­en us con­fi­dence to devel­op fur­ther ideas and take them for­ward. As Issy said to me, it is a case of learn­ing through expe­ri­ence, and their advice that cura­tors with ideas should not be afraid to pro­pose them to cin­e­mas is worth repeat­ing. I am already curat­ing my next relaxed event at the Bar­bi­can, hav­ing learned so much from the first expe­ri­ence. The rewards of the work involved in curat­ing screen­ings have been felt by all of these young pro­gram­mers, and we need to help more new voic­es find their place.