There’s a wild history of F-rated cinema on show this weekend, from a debut feature by British writer-director Corinna McFarlane to the story – equally inspiring and infuriating – of one of Britain’s great female filmmakers, Antonia Bird, via documentaries about the hearts of our relationships and our communities.
To the cinema, first, for McFarlane’s The Silent Storm, based on the story of her Scottish ancestors. It’s an openly feminist, triple F-rated entry, with a stunning turn from Andrea Riseborough as an intelligent, impassioned woman stifled by strait-laced religious traditions. In fact, it’s quadruple F-rated, with female producer Nicky Bentham (on the right in the group photograph; McFarlane is second left) bringing the film through production while pregnant!
Also on the big screen, another debut feature: musician Laurie Anderson’s utterly magical documentary Heart of a Dog. The Scottish landscape plays a central role in The Silent Storm, but here Anderson bends her erudite and compassionate thoughts towards her creative and companionate relationship with her rat terrier Lolabelle, and through her meditation on Lolabelle’s death, to her relationships with other lost loves of her life: her mother and her husband, Lou Reed. Anderson shot the film herself, and provides the voice-over.
Antonia Bird made her films personal by other means: often a director for hire, she always brought her political intelligence, her dramatic sense of framing, and her incredible rapport with her actors (Kate Hardie says more about that here). You can get a taste of Bird’s work – and of the person she was – in Susan Kemp’s excellent documentary, which premiered at the BFI last week. Antonia Bird: From EastEnders to Hollywood is on BBC4 at 9pm on Sunday, and then on the iPlayer.
It’s followed by a screening of Bird’s TV drama Care, about a survivor (Steven Mackintosh) of sexual abuse in the foster system. It’s one of the most powerful dramas of the century so far, and of continuing, stark relevance given that 100 cases of child abuse are being reported every month to the Goddard inquiry.
And for crucial contemporary campaigning cinema, you can see Andrea Luka Zimmerman’s immersive, participatory documentary about social housing and the people who live there, Estate, A Reverie, on Curzon Home Cinema. Zimmerman recently screened her previous feature documentary Taskafa, about an extraordinary dog in Istanbul, as part of Anderson’s dog-themed season in London.
And that poster quote from John Berger is a teaser trailer in itself... for Tilda Swinton’s first feature as director: a documentary about the great writer and thinker, which will close Sheffield Doc/Fest in June.