Can't decide on whether to take an umbrella or a sombrero out in this ever-changeable climate? The answer's both, unfortunately, so we recommend that instead of facing the elements you bed down in a hushed auditorium, where this week's selection includes a season of films from an island where the sunshine is just that little bit more reliable.
Thursday As part of their retrospective of Oscar Munoz, which we reviewed last month, Rivington Place is running a selection of films that have inspired the Colombian artist. The season opens with The Mirror, Tarkovsky's lyrical panegyric to memory and history. The screening is free, and begins at 7pm. Advance booking recommended: [email protected], or 020 7749 1240.
Saturday It may be tarnished by a hundred lazy Boxing Day broadcasts, but catch Bridge On The River Kwai on the big screen and all those associations with leftover Christmas dinner soon drop away. Today you get that chance: the Alec Guinness-led portrayal of British derring-do (based, ironically enough, on a book by a Frenchman) is showing at BFI Southbank as part of its David Lean season.
Sunday Woody Allen's recent output has been so dismal that one critic begged for purse-holders to stop funding his films. Depressing, isn't it, that the man who made so many classics has fallen to such depths. Remind yourself of a time, pre Soon-Yi, pre-Cassandra's Dream, when the New Yorker could put nary a foot wrong: Riverside Studios have a double-bill of Allen this evening, with the near-flawless combo of Annie Hall and Manhattan tackling a thousand neuroses between them.
Monday The Roxy's Second Run Monday season begins anew with Le pays des sourds, a spartan yet elegant documentary that illuminates the difficult yet dignified lives of a deaf community in France. Sounds interesting, and the Roxy's judgment is usually to be trusted, so this should be a season to keep an eye on. The screening is introduced by Second Run's Mehelli Modi, and begins at 8pm. Entrance is free.
Tuesday BFI Southbank's Japanese Gems season rolls around to the film arguably most deserving of that title: Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, the Oscar-winner whose splintered narrative structure effectively spawned the Western world's fascination with Asian cinema. The films is on at NFT1 at 5.40.
Seasons, festivals etc. The Barbican's Cine Cuba festival runs from the 10th to the 17th July, combining classics from the early days of the revolution that capture the fervour of the times (Memories of Underdevelopment (pictured) and Death of a Bureaucrat) to recent, less overtly political films like Lucía, known as Cuba's Gone With The Wind (though don't let that put you off).
Image from "Memories of Underdevelopment" courtesy of Sarah Harvey
