Recent chains
Seven Decades of the LFF as a Gateway
7 films
restless · curious · cinematic · political
A chain tracing the BFI London Film Festival's role as a bridge between British cinema and world cinema, from the Czech New Wave and Free Cinema to Andrea Arnold and Joanna Hogg.
Who Is Really Performing Here?
8 films
deadpan · unsettling · playful · complicit
Ali G returns to a world of cameras and marks, and this chain follows the put-on from Staines to Tehran, asking who is really being conned when we laugh.
The Mother Who Comes Back Wrong
8 films
unsettling · intimate · uncanny · feverish
A chain of films where the woman who gave you life returns as something else: a ghost, a double, a hunger with her face. Other Mommy opens the door, and the best part of a century of cinema walks through it.
The Face Is the First Casualty
8 films
feverish · clinical · tragic · moonlit
From Gotham's newest monster to silent Hollywood's phantom and Cronenberg's surgical twins, a chain about bodies rebuilt by the industries that broke them.
The Long Con of the Cue Ball
8 films
smoky · calculating · bruised · electric
Eight films about hustlers, pupils and the moment a performance of skill curdles into something crueller. The table is never just a table.
Machines That Open the Wrong Doors
8 films
feverish · visceral · neon-lit · unhinged
A chain of films where scientists build devices to widen the mind and find something with teeth waiting on the other side. Practical effects, saturated colour and sound design do the terrible work of making the interior visible.
Glass Houses That Refuse to Let You Leave
8 films
claustrophobic · ornate · uncanny · nocturnal
A tour of haunted architecture, from a 2001 remake's clockwork glass prison back through Italian gothic and the black-and-white British ghost story, where the building always gets the last word.
The prestige is the trick you never see coming
8 films
theatrical · deceptive · obsessive · uncanny
A chain of films about magicians, mediums and con artists, tracing the moment cinema learned to lie to us and we learned to love it.
When a Mother's Love Turns Stranger
8 films
unsettling · claustrophobic · tender · uncanny
A chain of horror films that treat the family home as a stage for maternal dread, from Polanski's Dakota to the doubles of Jordan Peele and the uncanny Other Mommy.
The KinoChain
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