The Essential Cinema programme is a pluralist retrospective series, proposing revisions and additions to what might be considered canonical cinema. Circadian rhythms of the 80s bring to the fore creative collaborations, familial encounters and working lives.

Christina Demetriou curates Marion Scemama & David Marion Wojnarowicz: Collaboration, Friendship and Fury. Delving into the creative collaboration between Scemama and Wojnarowicz, the programme celebrates collaborative artistic practice and the attempt to document disappeared places, times, and encounters. David Wojnarowicz was a largely self-taught photographer who came to prominence in New York in the 1980s – where he and Marion Scemama met amidst the urban decay, creative energy and the cruising scene.

The programme features the UK Premiere of Relax, Be Cruel (Marion Scemama, USA, France). Filmed in 1983, partially lost, and then re-edited by Scemama in 2023, the film unfolds through the perspective of a marginal punk squatter, and her encounters with the marginalised people at the popular gay cruising spot Pier 34 – an abandoned shipping terminal on the Hudson River.

The long-awaited restoration of Nightshift (Robina Rose, UK, 1981/2024) presents a hypnotic study of nocturnal encounters, filmed at the Portobello Hotel in 1980s London. Starring punk icon Jordan, the film captures a dreamlike world where time stretches and routine tasks give way to ethereal fantasies. Rose was a singular voice in experimental cinema and a social justice campaigner later in life. As we celebrate this New Restoration, we also honour her recent passing, recognising her enduring impact on radical filmmaking. Read a tribute to Robina Rose here.

A film that remains banned from screening in Syria because of its subversive representation and critical voice, this UK Premiere of Ossama Mohammed‘s Stars in Broad Daylight (Syria, 1988) allegorises the Ba’athist regime in Syria through the dissolution of a family amid wedding chaos.