LRB Screen returns to the Garden Cinema with a new series exploring visions of London created by non-British filmmakers: films in which the city is a key player, rather than a backdrop; in which its buildings, streets, parks and rivers cast a distinctive shadow over the drama; in which a fresh encounter makes the city unfamiliar and mysterious again.

‘London Reviewed’ begins in perhaps the only way it could, with Blow-Up, Antonioni’s classic countercultural take on (mis)perception and (un)reality in the swinging 1960s. Adapted from a short story by the cult Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar and with English dialogues by the great Marxist playwright Edward Bond, the film follows a fashion photographer (Hemmings, channelling David Bailey) who thinks he might have unintentionally photographed a murder. Moving from the heart of the zeitgeist to a South London park that proves pivotal, its richness in social, cultural and architectural detail makes it one of the defining works of the decade.

Introducing the film, and discussing it afterwards with regular host Gareth Evans, will be Miles Aldridge, the acclaimed fashion photographer and artist. Born two years before the film’s release, Aldridge grew up in the heart of the cultural scene it portrays and has since created his own highly distinctive photographic signature.

Sunday 25 May at 8.30 p.m.
Rebecca Lenkiewicz and Gaby Wood on Hot Milk
 
Director and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz on adapting Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk for the big screen, in conversation with Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation and a regular contributor to the LRB.
 
Supported by MUBI, in partnership with the London Review of Books.
 
Friday 30 May at 4 p.m.
Was Jane Austen Gay?
 
To mark Austen’s 250th birthday, the LRB revisits an essay by Terry Castle which examined ‘the primitive adhesiveness – and underlying eros – of the sister-sister bond’ between Jane and Cassandra, with readings and accompanying music arranged by Isobel Waller-Bridge.
 
Saturday 31 May at 5.30 p.m.
Pankaj Mishra, Benjamin Moser and William Dalrymple on The World after Gaza
 
In his new book, Pankaj Mishra, essayist, novelist and regular contributor to the LRB, takes the war in the Middle East, and the bitterly polarised reaction to it, as the starting point for a re-evaluation of two competing narratives of the last century.
 
In partnership with the London Review of Books and supported by Open Society Foundations.