LSFF 2022: NEW SHORTS
Shorts made in the past year by filmmakers from the UK and across the world. Animation, documentary, funny, dark, strange — these films were selected from over 5,000 global submissions.
New Shorts: Funny Shit
14/01/22, 21:00
ICA
We could all do with a laugh. LSFF returns with our time-honoured opening night tradition, a smörgåsbord of the year's finest comedy shorts. If your sense of humour is warm and observational, gallows and deadpan, trippy and crude or satirical and politically subversive - there'll be something to LOL at.
New Shorts: Lo-Budget Mayhem
15/01/22, 13:30
Rio Dalston
“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” Orson Welles knew what was up. And if you agree with such a statement, LSFF's cherished ragtag anthology of short and strange frugal filmmaking is for you.
International Competition: We seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us.
15/01/22, 15:00
ICA
The haunting past reassembles itself, sometimes with permission, at times without. A former student, a father, a young woman and a young man wrangle with a history that intend to reveal and expose lingering dilemmas.
New Shorts: Disparate Youth
15/01/22, 15:00
Curzon Soho
Youthful optimism battles the struggle to self-actualise amid constraints of class, capital and parental permission in this global collection of shorts from Ethiopia, Croatia, Lithuania and the UK; each beautifully depicting teen turmoil and the hopes and fears of an unknown future.
D/deaf Shorts: My Eye Is My Ear
15/01/22, 18:00
BFI Southbank
Our yearly programme exploring the multitude of d/Deaf experiences returns, guest programmed by multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker Rinkoo Barpaga. These beautiful, innovative films explore the personal letters of Beethoven as interpreted by a deaf Black artist, a group of mates deciding to claim their own space, and the exclusion of d/Deaf people from last year’s government COVID briefings.
International Competition: I hear you, I see you, I speak of you
15/01/22, 19:00
ICA
A meaning is decipherable. Yet a meaning of purpose is indecipherable. Wrapped in yearning and adversity - siblings resort to rivalry, a family is obliged to seek refuge, a newlywed wobbles in predicament while a community form bonds with one another.
New Shorts: Animation Variety Show
15/01/22, 21:00
ICA
Our annual Animation selection continues to colour outside the lines. These animations are bold, political, hilarious and irreverent miniatures of the modern condition - these characters may only exist on paper, but their emotions, predicaments and sentiments are entirely #relatable.
New Shorts: experimental: void mirror
16/01/22, 13:00
ICA
Exploring the paradoxes and rules within the online wellness movement and artificial ecologies, these shorts overlay archive, sonic landscapes and digital materials in a strand that always champions innovative visual forms of storytelling.
New Shorts: A Winter's Matinee of Romantic Films
16/01/22, 15:00
Curzon Soho
Warm, fierce, and (occasionally) delusional narratives about love emerge in this eclectic programme, embracing the sensuality of touch and the vulnerability of a romantic declaration.
International Competition: On the Pulse of Hope
16/01/22, 15:00
ICA
It was long till Spring, yet the frozen water was still flowing. Death laced in solitary, children seeking meaning, a couple drowning in lust and a neighbourhood in drought from routine. In truth, nobody wants water this thin.
New Shorts: Disconnected Conversations
16/01/22, 15:45
Rich Mix
Staged in the spaces and silences of broken connection and trust, these dramas put family tensions and misunderstandings under the microscope.
International Competition: And what remains is the maze
16/01/22, 17:00
ICA
They had no words but to conceive their longing silently. Tethered by reality of others, men searching for passing love, a teenager fails to recognise herself, a mother to be is in despair at her community and a child's mind runs wild in quarantine. Today may look like tomorrow, but it's not the same.
New Shorts: Science Fictions
16/01/22, 17:00
Curzon Soho
Prophecies, premonitions and parallel universes abound in this series of otherworldly sci-fi transmissions from worlds and dimensions beyond this one. Time-traveling relatives, inter-dimensional TV-obsessed religious zealots, the eerie future of sperm donation and the motivational lyrics of Eminem's Lose Yourself.
New Shorts: Mourning Rituals
17/01/22, 18:20
Curzon Soho
What do we do when Death pays a visit? How do we cope when it leaves, bearing friends and family away with it? With video eulogies and phone-call farewells, absurd animal apparitions and sinister sci-fi bureaucracies, eight filmmakers face the void head-on.
International Competition: We seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us. (Repeat Screening)
18/01/22, 16:00
ICA
The haunting past reassembles itself, sometimes with permission, at times without. A former student, a father, a young woman and a young man wrangle with a history that intend to reveal and expose lingering dilemmas.
New Shorts: There Was A Factory
18/01/22, 18:20
Curzon Soho
There’s an arresting tenderness to these films that flies in the face of conventional portrayals of labour. There’s dance to be found in the brutal angles of a dockyard, outlandish characters at an abandoned lido and defiance in the face of gentrification.
New Shorts Documentary: Presumed Guilty, Awaiting Innocence
18/01/22, 19:00
ICA
For those who have spent years imprisoned, have had a loved one die at the hands of the police, or live threatened by their presence, the purpose and success of the police force and prisons is highly questionable. Looking across our meagre carceral systems, this programme explores unjust incarceration and abuses of power.
UK Competition: So It Goes
18/01/22, 20:45
BFI Southbank
From the profound significance of a life lost, to snapshots of the banal and the absurd - our collective existence amounts to a mere evolutionary speck in the grand scheme of things. These films ponder our place in the universe in heartfelt, distinctive ways.
International Competition: I hear you, I see you, I speak of you (Repeat Screening)
19/01/22, 16:00
ICA
A meaning is decipherable. Yet a meaning of purpose is indecipherable. Wrapped in yearning and adversity - siblings resort to rivalry, a family is obliged to seek refuge, a newlywed wobbles in predicament while a community form bonds with one another.
New Shorts: Gothic
19/01/22, 18:20
Curzon Soho
The cold, dark nights evoke the weird and the eerie; a hint of something in the shadows, candlelit tales of forgotten folklore. This programme beckons you into the warmth of the cinema, though you may feel a cold breath on the back of your neck…