Jane B. for Agnès V., dir. Agnès Varda, France 1988, French with English subtitles, 99 min.
Book tickets
Stendalì: Still They Toll, dir. Cecilia Mangini, 1960, 11 min.
A pioneering figure in Italian documentary, Cecilia Mangini explores grief, gendered performance, and cultural memory through reconstructed reality. Stendalì: Still They Toll records a vanishing female mourning ritual in Puglia, Southern Italy, staging a funeral with the last surviving practitioners of the tradition. Mangini’s frequent collaborator Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote the text and the mourning song, enriching the film’s poetic tone. Blending authenticity and artifice, this semi-documentary reveals how sorrow is physically expressed and culturally encoded, offering a contemplative meditation on heritage and collective remembrance.
Jane B. for Agnès V., dir. Agnès Varda, 1988, 99 min.
Whimsically interweaving reality and fantasy, Agnès Varda's exquisite portrait of Jane Birkin reimagines her both as a cultural icon and as a woman. Made for Jane’s 40th birthday, the film unfolds as a playful game in which she inhabits multiple selves, from Jane of Tarzan and Calamity Jane to Joan of Arc, as well as simply herself. Friends and family, including Serge Gainsbourg, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Mathieu Demy, appear as themselves, further dissolving the boundaries between life and performance. Varda’s camera intimately captures Jane in all her forms and emotions, enabled by the profound trust and reciprocal inspiration between the two. As Varda herself said, no portrait can ever be complete, yet in that impossibility lies the joy of discovering a new Jane in every moment, each one a fresh revelation.
The screening will be introduced by Dr Barbara Knorpp.
A pioneering figure in Italian documentary, Cecilia Mangini explores grief, gendered performance, and cultural memory through reconstructed reality. Stendalì: Still They Toll records a vanishing female mourning ritual in Puglia, Southern Italy, staging a funeral with the last surviving practitioners of the tradition. Mangini’s frequent collaborator Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote the text and the mourning song, enriching the film’s poetic tone. Blending authenticity and artifice, this semi-documentary reveals how sorrow is physically expressed and culturally encoded, offering a contemplative meditation on heritage and collective remembrance.
Jane B. for Agnès V., dir. Agnès Varda, 1988, 99 min.
Whimsically interweaving reality and fantasy, Agnès Varda's exquisite portrait of Jane Birkin reimagines her both as a cultural icon and as a woman. Made for Jane’s 40th birthday, the film unfolds as a playful game in which she inhabits multiple selves, from Jane of Tarzan and Calamity Jane to Joan of Arc, as well as simply herself. Friends and family, including Serge Gainsbourg, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Mathieu Demy, appear as themselves, further dissolving the boundaries between life and performance. Varda’s camera intimately captures Jane in all her forms and emotions, enabled by the profound trust and reciprocal inspiration between the two. As Varda herself said, no portrait can ever be complete, yet in that impossibility lies the joy of discovering a new Jane in every moment, each one a fresh revelation.
The screening will be introduced by Dr Barbara Knorpp.
Dr Barbara Knorpp is a visual anthropologist with a special interest in film history. She has taught and done research in higher education in the UK, Germany, Australia, and Japan for two decades and has worked as a curator and picture researcher. She is currently working with Open City, UCL.
Book tickets
04:00 pm
Sat, 08 Nov 2025
Cinema 2
Ticket information
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Access information
Cinema 2
- Both our Cinemas have step free access from The Mall and are accessible by ramp
- All seats are hard back, have a crushed velvet feel and they do not recline
- These are our seat size dimensions: W 42 x D 45 x H 52
- Arm rest either side of the seat dimensions: L 27 x W 7 x H 20
for the following requirements:
- We have a removable seat to create a wheelchair allocated space, please contact to organise this prior to the date and time of the screening
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