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London Short Film Festival 2022
Institute of Contemporary Arts
14 – 23 January 2022


The Sparrow is Free, dir. Niki Kohandel, UK 2021, 14 min.

Screened over nine days in January, and supplemented with live performances, DJ sets and Q&As with many featured filmmakers, the London Short Film Festival (LSFF) returns with 18 packed programmes of new shorts from the UK and beyond.  

The 19th edition of the festival features unconventional, radical and resolutely independent work by a tremendous variety of filmmakers, visual artists and creatives – and places the spotlight on stories, perspectives and voices that too often sit in the shadows.
 
Programme:


Friday 14 January 2022, 6:30pm
From archive films to contemporary works, this programme of eight shorts – followed by a filmmakers’ Q&A – subverts and examines ideas around self-love, asexuality, lust and longing.



Friday 14 January 2022, 9pm 
New Shorts: Funny Shit 
The LSFF’s opening night once again features some of the year’s finest comedy shorts.


 
Saturday 15 January 2022, 3pm
Tuesday 18 January 2022, 4pm
International Competition: We seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us
Colonial histories, superstitions, global financial crises, personal testimonies – these new films from Singapore, Greece, the Philippines, Tanzania and French Guiana offer myriad perspectives.




Saturday 15 January 2022, 5pm
DWOSKINO
The world premieres of three newly commissioned artists’ films inspired by boundary-pushing experimental filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin (1939–2012).




Tuesday 18 January 2022, 7pm
The Rise of Digital Art + NFTs (featuring Beeple)
Digital installations, screenings and panel discussions on NFTs and digital art, followed by a DJ set from Emile and Electricity.




Saturday 15 January 2022, 7pm
Wednesday 19 January 2022, 4pm
International Competition: I hear you, I see you, I speak of you 
From a New Orleans salon to a refugee camp in Kabul, these shorts speak to familial bonds, ties to home and the displacement of people.




Saturday 15 January 2022, 7pm 
Up Yours! Post Punk & Feminism Revisited  
Focused on feminism and the experimental post-punk scene, this shorts programme is supplemented by live sets from Shade Ray and Es, plus a DJ set from Gabi. 




Saturday 15 January 2022, 9pm 
New Shorts: Animation Variety Show
A heart murmur, a graffiti artist and an animator’s experience of racism are among the subjects explored in this selection of international films.




Sunday 16 January 2022, 1pm 
Experiments: Void Mirror
Exploring the rules and paradoxes of the online wellness movement, these short films confront our interaction with and perception of new technologies. 




Sunday 16 January 2022, 3pm
Thursday 20 January 2022, 3pm 
International Competition: On the Pulse of Hope
This international selection explores the effects of natural disasters and our environments on the human psyche.




Sunday 16 January 2022, 5pm
Friday 21 January, 3pm 
International Competition: And What Remains is the Maze
One young girl ponders her sexuality, another faces an arranged marriage, a woman is drawn to religion and a garden comes alive in this beguiling international selection.



Tuesday 18 January 2022, 7pm 
Documentary: Presumed Guilty, Awaiting Innocence  
This programme explores unjust incarceration and abuses of power in Egypt, Germany, Turkey, the UK and the USA.




Wednesday 19 January 2022, 7pm 
Documentary: Hostile Environments 
Building context from testimony, these films consider expanded notions of a hostile environment, starting with but going far beyond the context of Theresa May’s policy.




Thursday 20 January 2022, 7pm
Documentary: Kinship
Focusing on direct and mediated interactions between families and friends, these films reflect on lost and recovered relationships, honesty and dreams of immortality.




Friday 21 January 2022, 7pm 
Documentary: The Promise Of Happiness?
From queer clubs to bingo halls via psychic readings and the ecstatic outcomes of divorce, these seven films reveal the instability of happiness. 




Saturday 22 January 2022, 3pm 
The Work of Farah Nabulsi + Q&A 
A retrospective of three short films by Palestinian-British filmmaker and human rights advocate Farah Nabulsi, who will also be in conversation with Elhum Shakerifar.




Saturday 22 January 2022, 5pm 
New Shorts: Anthropocene's Deities
Exploring spiritual practices and self-reflection by acknowledging other beings, these films are an invitation to contemplate the richness and fragility of ecosystems. 




Sunday 23 January 2022, 3pm 
New Shorts: Deracination 
These character-led shorts investigate the embodied experience of displacement in relation to migration and queer identities.