CLUB DES FEMMES
presents
A Swinging Summertime Special

It’s time to revisit sixties London: a time when everything was swinging.
Or was it?
Club des Femmes presents two classics of lesbian cinema: films which, pre- and post decriminalization, bookend the decade and offer a queer consciousness audience a chance to critique mainstream culture and its version of (a newly visible) lesbian culture.

Sunday 28th June 2.30pm, Curzon Soho
THE WORLD TEN TIMES OVER
Director: Wolf Rilla. 1963, 93 mins
Wolf Rilla, fresh from shooting The Village of the Damned, delivers quite possibly the first British lesbian film. Two nightclub hostesses Ginnie (June Ritchie) and Billa (Sylvia Syms) are in love. At a time when female emancipation and sexual freedom was heavily regulated (the film suffered at the censors), it is Syms who delivers a powerhouse performance as the older woman disgusted with her job and unable to set herself free.

Screening as part of 2009 Story of London




Sunday 5th July 3pm, Curzon Soho
THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE
Director: Robert Aldrich. 1968, 138 mins
‘The story of three consenting adults in the privacy of their own home’.
Already controversial by the time it reached cinemas because of its X-rated sex scene the film failed at the box office but remains an era-defining cult classic. The Killing of Sister George gave audiences a rare glimpse of London lesbian culture.
Boo the baddies!
Cheer the goodies!
It’s time to revisit the eternal lesbian love triangle. Susannah York, Coral Brown, Beryl Reid: you are this summer’s Club des Femmes’ dykesploitation heroines.

Booking:
Curzon Soho, 93 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W1D 5DY
Box Office: 0871 7033 988
Website: www.curzoncinemas.com





EXTRA EXTRA! As a special Pride extra The Killing of Sister George screening will also feature a tribute to the infamous Gateways Club. We want your memories! If you enjoyed the delights of the Gateways Club will you send us your memories? We'll publish everyone's recollections online and share our favourites at the screening. Can you describe a great night there? Who broke your heart? Who lit your cigarette? Is it time to tell all? Please contact us (femmes@clubdesfemmes.com) if you want to take part.

See you later in the month, Sarah & Selina






POUT
LGBT Cinema during Pride London 28th June – 6th July
To celebrate this year’s Pride London, Peccadillo Pictures, Verve Pictures, ICA, Club Des Femmes, Curzon Cinemas and Pride London have teamed up to form POUT, bringing you the very best in queer cinema during Pride week. Catering to every taste and persuasion, classic historical dramas such as BEFORE STONEWALL and THE CELLULOID CLOSET will court controversy alongside British cult classics THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE and cult-in-the-making GREEK PETE. Heart-warming crowd pleasers LOST AND DELIRIOUS and SUMMERSTORM round out a programme that aims to bring a variety of entertaining and thought-provoking LGBT cinema to a modern gay audience.
Full programme here





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Club des Femmes's Summertime Special: we are launched

Thank you to everybody who came along to Summer Camp for Girls, our 1st Club des Femmes last month – all 250 of you! It was great to screen such cool films and meet so many interesting people in the audience. Even our party turned into a kind of art action. A big thank you to everybody who supported us: despite the threat of bombs and Wimbledon Ladies Final it was very exciting to feel so much good will.

Right now we're working on a brand new plan and will be back later in the year with another forward-looking event, so please don’t touch that dial. More details soon..

We're also appearing in January at next year's Halloween London Short Film Festival. Halloween give a good name to short film. It's really worth checking out their appearances over the next months at the summer festivals.

In the meantime, if you've stumbled across this site by chance and would like to be a Friend des Femmes and subscribe for free to our monthly newsletter or would simply like to be in touch – please email les femmes and you'll be added to our little black book.

Back soon

Sarah & Selina

presents

SUMMER CAMP FOR GIRLS

Welcome to Club des Femmes's Summer Camp for Girls, a shaded, leafy space in the hot glare of contemporary conservatism. At Summer Camp this year relive the freedom of punk as Club des Femmes revisits Vivienne Dick, Sadie Benning, Lizzie Borden - filmmakers who defined a new world order and gave back to girls the Power of Camp. Why not also pull up a log and light up the campfire to celebrate our annual investigations into recent women's filmmaking. Or feeling curious about Dykesploitation? This year's spotlight falls on Kristy McNichol.

Booking: www.curzoncinemas.com



SUMMER CAMP FOR GIRLS: 24TH JUNE – 1 JULY 2007

BORN IN FLAMES + STATEN ISLAND
Sunday 24 June 14.15, Curzon Soho
Two classics to kick off an action-packed week of Club des Femmes and a rare good opportunity to feel the force of these ground-breaking films.

BORN IN FLAMES
Director: Lizzie Borden, 1983, 90 mins
A sci-fi tale of feminist activism, set 10 years after a socialist revolution. Pirate radio is the modus operandi to gain control of the state run media. It’s militant, punk, hip-hop and funny. Not to be missed.
+
STATEN ISLAND
Director: Vivienne Dick, 1978, 5 mins
Pat Place plays a creature who lives in an old abandoned barge on a rubbish strewn beach. The mood is post-apocalyptic and the music of Telstar mixed with domestic kitchen clatter.













THE LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN
Tuesday 26 June 18.30, Renoir
Club des Femmes is proud to show that feminism is alive and well in this programme of old and new shorts from around the world.

RAISING A RESISTER
Director: Emma Hedditch, 2003, 15 mins
What are the conditions for self confidence, self-consciousness? How do you raise a girl, or even encourage girls to be brave and defiant?

STRONG WOMEN
Director: Jayne Parker, 2000, 15 mins Two contrasting portraits of magnificently strong women: champion body builder Andrulla Blanchette and trapeze artist Vicki Amedume. Strength displayed and strength employed.

SEM TITULO
Director: Celia Domingues, 2002, 5 mins
Private and public spaces are explored in this feminist investigation into
Portugual's past and present histories.

RADIONICA
Director: Margareta Kern, 2005, 11 mins
Radionica reflects a life inside a flat in Bosnia, where a made-to-measure business is run by the artist’s mother. It reflects on the intimate nature of conversations between women while getting their clothes made, and on the slippage between the private space of home and the public space of work. Here, both those spaces converge to create a curious theatre of fashion, gossip, glamour, friendship, politics and coffee.

THE JUDY SPOTS
Director: Sadie Benning, 1995, 15 mins
Five uproarious animated short videos introduce Judy, a paper maché puppet, who drifts through the world as life happens to her.


THE CONTEMPORARY UNSPEAKABLE: TWO FILMS BY VIVIENNE DICK
Friday 29th June 18.00, Curzon Soho

It's 1978 and Vivienne Dick captures New York new wave with an eye for the immediate and a questioning of the performance of femininity. Aided by her trusty sidekicks Lydia Lunch and Pat Place these films stand as testimony to a scene which revolutionised film and music and challenged the conservative stasis of the Cold War World.

GUERRILLERE TALKS
Director: Vivienne Dick, 1978, 28 mins.
Dick's first film consists of eight unedited rolls of super-8 sound footage each of which is a sort of Warholian screen test for Dick's female subjects.
+
SHE HAD HER GUN ALL READY
Director: Vivienne Dick. 1978, 28 mins With Lydia Lunch and Pat Place.
Set in the Lower East Side, NYC, this is a film about unequal power between two people (of any gender), or the repressive side of a person in conflict with the sexual powerful side.

+ immediately after the screening, come with us and dance our way into a better future in the Curzon Soho bar - with records played by Jules Nurrish and The Librarian.

This event is sponsored by ICO













SADIE BENNING: 2 PIXELVISION VIDEOS
Saturday 30th June 18.00, Curzon Soho
Rarely screened in the UK, Sadie Benning's dyke punk videos are intimate revelations into the dreams, desires, fears and fantasies of a young girl in the process of defining (her)self, sexuality and identity.

FLAT IS BEAUTIFUL
Director: Sadie Benning, 1998, 50 mins
An experimental, live-action cartoon narrative using masks, animation, subtitles, drawings, and dramatic scenes to investigate the psychic life of an androgynous eleven year-old girl.
+
GERMAN SONG
Director: Sadie Benning, 1995, 5 mins
Disengaged youth and grey afternoons - featuring the hard-edged music of Come, an alternative band from Boston.

This programme is sponsored by Peccaddillo Pictures


DYKESPLOITATION: TRASH WE LOVE TO KEEP!
Sunday 1 July 14.15, Curzon Soho

LESBIAN ICON #1: KRISTY MCNICHOL
Sit back and enjoy the guilty pleasure of this rarely screened lesbian cult classic. This is our heart-felt homage to the greatness that is Kristy McNichol.

LITTLE DARLINGS
Director: Ronald F Maxwell, 1980, 96mins with Kristy McNichol, Tatum O'Neal, Matt Dillon
2 teenagers from opposite sides of the tracks compete to see who will be the first to loose their virginity whilst at camp one summer.
+
KRISTY
Director: Stephanie Gray, 2003, 7 mins
Kristy McNichol - the only working class tomboy in cinema. Shot off the screen in Super-8, hand-processed, and transferred to video, we are shown glitches and skips to scrutinize Kristy's face and elusive sexuality - as well as the filmmaker's own obsession.


















Where are we?:

Curzon Soho
99 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 5DY
Box office 0870 756 4620

Renoir
Brunswick Centre, London, WC1N 1AW
Box office 0870 506 927

W: www.curzoncinemas.com