British Urban Film Festival: Urban independent cinema arrives at the BT Tower this September as festival director Addie Akinrinade announced this year’s selections and schedule for 2017, sponsored by BT.
Free In Deed will open this year’s film festival and will feature a live Q&A with actor David Harewood, day 2 highlights include the London premiere of ‘A Landscape of Lies’. Also to be screened at the world famous venue will be the London premiere of Chapter and Verse on Friday the 8th of September. The festival programme will also feature the London premieres of Blue Hollywood, hair documentary Back to Natural, and Stay Woke.
On Saturday 9 September, Africa features heavily in the line-up with the documentary Black Stars of Highlife and African rom-com Potato Potahto. Other festival highlights include an acting masterclass and a Make-up masterclass. For more info please visit BUFF website. When: 6th September – 12th September 2017
Where: BT Tower (45 Maple Street, W1T 4JZ London, United Kingdom) Tickets: Day passes £30 (you can book your tickets here)
Raindance Film Festival is an annual event organised by Raindance which aims to promote and support independent filmmaking and filmmakers. For new and emerging to industry pros, Raindance connects, trains, supports, and promotes visual storytellers through every step of their career.
Raindance Film Festival is the largest independent film festival in the UK. Celebrating its 25th Anniversary in 2017, Raindance is based in the heart of London’s buzzing West End film district.
Each year, Raindance attracts 16,000 visitors including 500 industry professionals into London. The 25th Raindance will take place 20 September – 1 October 2017 in central London.For more info and tickets please visit the Raindance website.
When: 20th September – 1st October 2017
Where: Various locations in central London
Tickets: £49 – £149 (you can book your tickets here)
Open City Documentary Festival 2017: The Open City Documentary Festival aims to challenge and expand the idea of documentary in all its forms and provide a platform for emerging talent as well as established masters working within the documentary form. This year, the festival focuses on two hugely important, poetically political filmmakers: Ukrainian/Russian master documentarian Vitaly Mansky and Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd, a Belgian filmmaker who with his past three works has established a unique documentary language of his own. For more info and tickets please visit ICA website.
When: 6th September – 9th September 2017
Where: ICA (The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH)
Tickets: £7 – £11 (please book your tickets on ICA website)
BFI London Film Festival: the prestigious BFI London Film Festival will come back in October for another season of incredible cinema.
The 60th anniversary edition of the Festival last October presented 397 features and short films, more than 800 international and British filmmakers attended the Festival to support their films in the programme along as international stars as David Oyelowo, Cillian Murphy, Leonardo DiCaprio, Dev Patel, Lupita Nyong’o, Trevante Rhodes, Janelle Monáe and many more.
This year the Festival remains committed to agenda-setting debate on the future of the film industry, presenting the BFI Black Star Symposium which was launched with a powerful and rousing keynote from David Oyelowo, star of A United Kingdom and Queen of Katwe.
Directors presenting their work included Amma Asante, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Bertrand Bonello, Xavier Dolan, Maren Ade, Martin Koolhoven, Mohamed Diab, Barry Jenkins, Terence Davies…
For more info and the programme please visit BFI website
WHEN: 4th October – 15th October 2017
London Feminist Film Festival: The London Feminist Film Festival is an independent festival set up in 2012, which celebrates feminist films past and present from international women directors. They aim to support women filmmakers in the male-dominated film industry, to get women’s stories out there, and to inspire feminist discussion and activism through screening films that deal with feminist issues and/or that show a feminist representation of women. For more info and the programme please visit LFFF website. When: 17th – 20th August 2017
Where: All screenings are at the Rio Cinema in Dalston (107 Kingsland High St, London E8 2PB ), except for Feminist Classic, The Sealed Soil, which is at BFI Southbank on 19 August.
Tickets: each event is priced and you can book your tickets here.
