Derry, 1972; As the civil rights movement across the North of Ireland begins to secure unprecedented wins, the British state responds with lethal force, murdering 14 people and sparking a 60 year fight for justice and accountability by a community for whom everything had changed.
In partnership with The Canary UK, the Rainbow Collective screened their latest feature doc at the Garden Cinema. The filmmaking duo, also behind To Kill a War Machine, joined us to discuss the film, their documentary and filmmaking background covering international stories, the aftermath of Bloody Sunday and the long fight for justice, and the legacy of the Irish independence movement today.
Director Jack Hazan and editor David Mingay (Rude Boy) had access to David Hockney and his circle from 1970 to 1973, a critical period for the internationally-acclaimed artist following the break-up of his relationship with Peter Schlesinger. As much an intimate study of love gone wrong as a portrait of an artist at work. A Bigger Splash chronicles the emotional ripples that separation casts on their coterie. With appearances by such art scene icons (and subjects of Hockney’s work) as Celia Birtwell, Ossie Clark, Henry Geldzahler and Patrick Proctor, this ground-breaking film is presented here in a newly remastered version..
Dominic Lutyens is a freelance arts writer. He is the co-author with Kirsty Hislop of the book, 70s Style & Design. He also wrote Celia Birtwell the textile designer’s biography, with her. His latest book Perriand, a monograph on architect and designer Charlotte Perriand, was published last year. Here he is in dicusssion with Sarah Bailey, founder of the Fashion Film Club.
14-year-old Zeina and her family are the last to have stayed in their besieged hometown of Damascus in Syria. A missile rips a giant hole in their home, exposing them to the outside world. When a rope is mysteriously lowered into the hole, Zeina gets her first taste of freedom, and an unimaginable world of possibility opens up for her…
Sarah Agha discusses casting, magic realism, filmmaking in the Arab world, and how the film resonates a few years down the line.
Film writer Savina Petkova discusses Fiume o morte! (Fiume or death!) with its director, Igor Bezinović. In defiance of the Paris Peace Conference Italian poet and military officer Gabriele D’Annunzio led a rogue, short-lived, and ultranationalist occupation of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) in 1919. Over a century later, filmmaker Igor Bezinović revisits this strange historical episode, blending archive, reenactment and interviews with residents in the present, interrogating how a city remembers and forgets, and the enduring presence of European fascism.
A stark and peculiar lesson in the history that is not past, Fiume o morte! won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2025 and is Croatia’s submission for the Oscars.
Ken Loach’s longtime collaborator Rebecca O’Brien joins Gareth Evans for a discussion following Sweet Sixteen, showing as part of Ken Loach: A Retrospective at the Garden Cinema.
This is also available as a podcast, if you prefer to listen on the go:
Director Paul Andrew Williams and actors Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn join host Joe Miller and a Garden Cinema audience to discuss Dragonfly.
Recorded on 8th November 2025 at The Garden Cinema
Also available to listen to as a podcast:
Ken Loach on his controversial, underseen, and outrightly suppressed films, including The Gamekeeper, The Navigators, The Save The Children Fund Film, Which Side Are You On?, and A Question of Leadership. Part of our season, Ken Loach: A Retrospective.
Also available to listen to as a podcast:
Recorded at The Garden Cinema on October 27th 2025.