Event type: Film

FACT presents a special screening of The Bang Straws by filmmaker Michelle Williams Gamaker, followed by a live Q&A with Future Ages Will Wonder curator Annie Jael Kwan.

The Bang Straws draws its vision from the production history of The Good Earth (Sidney Franklin, 1937) which was one of cinema’s most notorious cases of casting discrimination, with American-German actress Luise Rainer winning the high-profile lead of the Chinese farmer’s wife O-Lan.

Cognitive Sensations invites you to watch and experience The Downloadable Brain highlights video, celebrating their pioneering programme of artists, writers and thinkers exploring the technologies of our time.

Over the next month, they will be releasing a video series exploring their programme findings around the evolving biological relationship between humans and technology.

In discussion panels with leading multidisciplinary artists such as Anna Dumitriu, Rod Dickinson and Marcos Lutyens, immersive artworks and AR exhibitions with emerging artists ASH//ELLA & Andriana Oborocean, they question the transformation of emotions and human experience in the age of AI.

Will emotions remain private in a future with brain implants? What can we learn from the rules and ecosystems of worms to inform our future with technology? And how can humans and AI work together to create a better future?

One of the great masterpieces from director Michelangelo Antonioni, this engrossing thriller features some of his most memorable and eloquent images.

Suspense, intrigue, wit, visual beauty, ideas: this classic has them all in spades.

This screening will begin with a short 10-15 minute introduction from the Liverpool Architectural Society.

Over the summer, Sky Arts followed a collection of inspiring artists in a unique project as they creatively reimagined some of Liverpool’s most iconic statues, giving them a whole new look by dressing them up or creating art around them.

The documentary special, Statues Redressed, first aired on Sky Arts 18 October (available to watch On Demand until 17 November) and streaming service NOW in October, will see the artists challenge and celebrate the role of these statues in modern times, as part of the ongoing debate around who and what should be immortalised as public monuments.

Chosen because of its rich history, Liverpool has the highest number of statues in the UK outside of London, including cultural icons like The Beatles through to sporting heroes, royalty, and monuments depicting people linked to slavery and Britain’s colonial past.

Some of the artists’ interventions range from the celebratory to the confrontational, and all will be thought-provoking. As each statue is gradually revealed to the public, spectators will be prompted to look again, think again, and question how we feel about the public art that surrounds us.

The artists involved in the project include major artists and heavyweights in the public art scene, as well as rising stars, local artists and designers. The reimagined statues include:

• Open Culture worked with costume designer Mary Lamb, storyteller Gav Cross and a group of young children celebrate the magic of the Peter Pan statue in Sefton Park, an exact replica of the original in Kensington Gardens, London. With the children dressed in fantastical outfits, and a new hat for Peter, Mary Lamb’s redressing of the statue explores the storytelling in the sculpture, and the fact that it was commissioned in 1928 as a gift for the children of Liverpool.
• Artist Bob and Roberta Smith has boldly placed a ‘We will get through this with art’ banner underneath Jacob Epstein’s famous Liverpool Resurgent sculpture, reinforcing the statues original post-war message of hope and giving it new meaning following the impact of the pandemic
• Designer Daniel Lismore gives the statue of Victorian statesman Benjamin Disraeli a whole new look with a Pride-themed Empress of India dress. The redressing is a commentary on Disraeli’s reputation as a flamboyant dresser and a dandy who wrote love letters to men, and on the fact that Victorian anti-homosexuality laws were imposed by Britain across the Empire. In many ex-colonial countries today, those laws still apply.
• Taya Hughes has dressed statues of Christopher Columbus, Captain Cook and Henry The Navigator in elaborate Elizabethan-style ruffs made from fabrics associated with indigenous populations in Africa, New Zealand and Australia as a commentary on these explorers, who claimed to ‘discover’ these parts of the world.
• Designer Stephen Jones will soon be giving The Beatles statue outside the Museum of Liverpool a new look creating four spectacular hats, each inspired by a different Beatles song to celebrate the iconic band.

Full details of all ‘redressings’ can be found at: www.statuesredressed.com

RITUALS is a new series of 3 films that explore the magical, yet real, power of ritualistic acts in the age of covid.

The dream-like films (Cleanse, Breath and Sanctuary) show hand-washing as a protective spell of love, the wishes we quietly make when we hold our breath, and the boundaries that must be invoked to dispel harm.

Liverpool-based artist and filmmaker Tom Shennan was commissioned to make the work during lockdown by Public Health Liverpool and COoL (Open Culture/Homotopia). He collaborated with dance artist and choreographer Shivaangee Agrawal to create the ritual movement sequences for the films.

The concept was developed with a group of young people in Liverpool over Zoom and they were able to film themselves at home to be included in the film. The action plays out within the confines of a computer screen mirroring the experience of young people under lockdown. The lead performances were shot on location at Wallasey Beach with a reduced crew.

To see more on the making of these films go to the artist’s instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tomshenn

Homotopia Festival 2021 presents: Luz, in The Box at FACT.

Ruben and Carlos are cellmates. When Ruben struggles to learn the ropes of daily prison life, Carlos becomes a mentor and eventually a lover. The two men develop feelings for one another they can’t easily express.

After being released questions loom. What began as a friendship turns into a fierce romance in this heart-wrenching drama. LUZ is a story of survival, not only for the lives of both men, but for their relationship as it transitions to the world outside their cell.

Join Campbell X and friends for a Homotopia 2021 screening of DES!RE, followed by a panel discussion on trans masculine visibility and representation.

DES!RE by award-winning filmmaker Campbell X (Stud Life, VISIBLE, Spectrum London, Different for Girls, Still We Thrive) takes it’s visual influence from the homo-erotic photography of Bruce Weber and queers it further with a trans and feminist lens. It is in Black and White with a dreamy soundtrack by Campbell L Sangster and animation by Neelu Bhuman.

In queer culture there has been a shift to speaking about the complexities of desire. But there is very little discussion about actively desiring those bodies which blur gender boundaries and binaries.

Mainstream visual culture is still stuck in cis heteronormative capitalistic binary attractiveness – even for those who define as transgender. So there is a wealth of images of those trans mascs who approximate cis male embodiment. Butch women or those who reject womanhood who are not trans men are also not celebrated or “seen” especially in mainstream LGBTQ timelines.

DES!RE attempts to explore the desire for sameness and difference using the bodies of people of diverse ages and races, who were assigned female at birth, yet now identify as transmen, men, masculine of centre, butch, stud, non-binary and AG.

The dialogue between the images and the voice over by femme lesbian and bisexual women, transmen, and butch women subverts heteronormative understanding of love and lust for this queer masculinity. DES!RE celebrates while acknowledging the challenges for loving masculinity, maleness and manhood.

With local artists Felix Mufti-Wright and Campbell L Sangster.

13:30: Doors

14:00: Intro

14:10 Film

14:20 Q&A

To complement British Music Experience’a Frankie say 1984! Exhibition and further explore the social and political context of the mid-1980s, they are screening My Beautiful Laundrette.

The 1985 British comedy-drama directed by Stephen Frears from a screenplay by Hanif Kureishi was one of the first films released by Working Title Films.

The story is set in London during the Thatcher years, as reflected in the complex—and often comical—relationships between members of the Pakistani and English communities.

The story focuses on Omar, played by Gordon Warnecke, a young Pakistani man living in London, and his reunion and eventual romance with his old friend, a street punk named Johnny, played by Daniel Day-Lewis. The two become the caretakers and business managers of a launderette originally owned by Omar’s uncle Nasser.

The British Film Institute ranked My Beautiful Laundrette the 50th greatest British film of the 20th century.

Please note, their museum galleries are closed during film screenings. There are no ads or trailers.

Director: Stephen Frears

Certificate: 15

Length: 1hr 37mins

​Tickets £8 adult, £6.50 concession/Independent Liverpool member (ID required)

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