With under a week to go, we’ve put together a handy Crimbles gift guide for all those friends and family most fiendishly tricky to please. No last minute trucking through the hellscape of Oxford Street necessary, just a click o’ the thumb. Happy holidays!
For the big kid: Air Draft: A Weekender Residency, Sat 12th-Sun 13th Jan, Grow, Hackney
We’ve got pneumatic docs, we’ve got Lone Taxidermist’s Trifle, we’ve got the nightmarish hyper-realities of Rachel MacLean, and we’ve got them on a dang boat. Something for all the adult children in your life! Browse the full programme, here.
For the history buff with a taste for dissent: Behind The Wall: Short Films from the GDR, Sat 19th Jan, 17.00, ICA
Full programme. 2019 will mark 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the gradual reunification of a divided Germany. In partnership with MUBI, we’ve dug into the archives to bring to London a triptych of short film and subversion from the German Democratic Republic. Perfect for the Mark Corrigans on the roster.
For Mum’s new boyfriend with the Brexit hot take: English Pastoral, Mon 14th Jan, 18.30, ICA
Tickets. The inevitable B word and Christmas dinner. It’s happening! Let’s pre-empt! Through archival public information films and visuals from Gazelle Twin’s Middle England-themed satire Pastoral and In Fabric’s Peter Strickland, we dissect the rural idyll Brexiters have venerated. Tell ‘em to save discussion for Q&A.
For the little bro you’re weaning off Kidulthood: Top Boys, Monday 14th Jan, 20.30, ICA
Tickets. Back when this kid was probably just a twinkle, the Noughties saw a new gen of British filmmaking talent ushered in helming the Top Boy - working class young men supplanted into a newly cinematic inner city and inevitably, a skirmish. Uncompromising on the realism, these shorts add up to a unique cross-section of working class masculinity with talents behind the scenes including Darkest Hour’s Joe Wright and comedian Kathy Burke.
(Also, doubles as a fun game of spot the Eastender - Bianca Jackson! Ronny Ferreira! - for accompanying mums.)
For the best friend in a dry spell: Drawn By Desire: Women’s Animation On Sex, Sat 19th Jan, 13.00, ICA
Tickets. Sex! In all its soft, squishy, flirty, fleshy glory! Free of the male gaze and the prudish! Nobody Ordered Wolves looks to the women animators visualising the erotic in an amorphous offering of clitorises, plasticine and lots and lots of orgasms. Plus, author of A Girl Is Not a Half-formed Thing, Eimear McBride will be in conversation with writer Jennifer Hodgson.
For the lil sis returning from freshers a radical: Club Des Femmes: I Want A Dyke For President, Sat 19th Jan, 13.00, Rio
Tickets. “I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a Black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth and an attitude…” Club des Femmes pair Mykki Blanco’s reinterpretation of Zoe Leonard with Pratibha Parmar’s visionary A Place of Rage, featuring interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan and Trinh T. Minh-ha dissecting racism and homophobia. Come revel in the queer feminist Black Power.
For the big bro who thinks irony is a personality: Fishing With John, Fri 18th Jan, 20.00, BFI Southbank
Tickets. Somewhere between a Discovery Channel travelogue and a hipsterized Beckett play, Fishing With John follows artist, musician and man-of-most-talents John Lurie on ill-advised fishing jollies with his pals Willem Dafoe, Tom Waits, Dennis Hopper and Matt Dillon. The results are deadpan hilarity and the catches, er, unusual. With John Lurie in Skype Q&A.
For the Mary Whitehouse of the family: Nasty Stuff: Basket Case, Fri 18th Jan, 20.30, Regent Street
Tickets. New York City. Homicidal Siamese twins seeking revenge on the doctors who separated them. Seized by the police and kept off British cinema screens. Yep, it’s a gnarly, old school Video Nasty. Tuck in.