One Year of CineQ: The Female Gaze
The consistently wonderful CineQ has been exposing the best in queer cinema to audiences in Birmingham for a whole year now. Eclectic, imaginative and without doubt challenging in its programming, if you haven’t checked out CineQ before then why not use the excuse of a well deserved anniversary celebration to engage with one of the city’s most innovative cinematic exhibitors as they pack a programme of shorts with film exploring the female gaze.
Wed 8 Aug 7pm at Centrala, Minerva Works, 158 Fazeley St, Birmingham B5 5RT Free www.outsavvy.com

A Place of Rage (dir: Pratibha Parmar, 1991, cert n/a)
A thoroughly engaging and smartly prescient documentary exploring the achievements of African American women featuring interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan and Alice Walker. It’s a powerful call to arms linking racism and homophobia winning the National Black Programming Consortium “Best Historical Documentary” award. Screened as part of a season of films curated by the BFI examining the exciting political diaspora of 1968 entitled Uprising.
Thu 9 Aug 6.30pm at mac, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH £9 macbirmingham.co.uk

Daisies (dir: Vera Chytilova, 1967, cert 15)
The BFI’s enlightening and thought provoking Uprising season continues with an absolute pearl of the Czech new Wave, one of the most exhilarating and eclectically unsettling movements in film history. Chytilova’s Daisies was inevitably banned by the relentless dullards of the Communist regime for “depicting the wanton”. It’s iconically carefree, almost innocent, hotfoot through popular culture is unforgettable and manages to expertly usurp expectations whilst wearing two enormous grins. You will smile, but most importantly you will think.
Thu 9 Aug 8.30pm at mac, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH £9 macbirmingham.co.uk

Heathers (dir: Michael Lehmann, 1988, cert 18)
Homicidal high school shenanigans as Winona Ryder and Christian Slater fire up a storm of revenge and score settling in Michael Lehmann’s mean and moody black comedy. Rife with a razer sharp wit that manages to garner laughs from suicide and homosexuality, Heathers is a relentlessly satisfying walk on the wild side. Westerburg High School is not a good place to be a jock or cheerleader, the teenage suicide capital of America. As the tag line goes, ‘best friends, social trends and occasional murder.’
Fri 10 Aug 8.30pm at Electric, Station Street, Birmingham B5 4DY £10.50 www.theelectric.co.uk
Fri 10 Aug to Sun 12 Aug at The Mockingbird, Custard factory, Birmingham B9 4AA £5 veezi.com

Vertigo (dir: Alfred Hitchcock, 1958, cert PG)
Never pass up the opportunity to see Hitchcock on the big screen, the master of suspense’ incredible oeuvre demands the cinema experience and if that film is Vertigo we’ll have front row seats please. Famously replacing Citizen Kane as the greatest film ever made, in a 2012 BFI poll of world critics, it is a sublimely exquisite and psychologically undermining joy from start to finish. Contains our favourite MacGuffin in the never seen Carlotta Valdes and look out for a bugle case carrying Hitch cameoing about ten minutes into the film.
Sat 11 Aug to Sun 12 Aug at Electric, Station Street, Birmingham B5 4DY £10.50 www.theelectric.co.uk

Apocalypse Now (dir: Francis Ford Coppola, 1979, cert 15)
There is simply nothing in the entire canon of cinematic history as violently compelling as Captain Benjamin L. Willard’s journey into the Heart of Darkness in Coppola’s epic Nam movie Apocalypse Now. A gigantic mythological milestone in movie making that nearly killed its star Martin Sheen. There is an almost psychotic bravura about Coppola’s vision, utterly breathtaking in scope and execution, it demands to be seen on the big screen.
Sun 12 Aug 2.30pm at Electric, Station Street, Birmingham B5 4DY £10.50 www.theelectric.co.uk

Yellow Submarine (dir: George Dunning, 1968, cert U)
A subversive joy from start to finish, The Beatles’ fourth film, which actually had little input from the band, is a hyper-coloured romp through the fab four’s oeuvre mischievously littered with with puns, double entendres, and Beatles in-jokes. A psychedelic hippy fairy tale that still manages to delight and within which a myriad cultural waypoints for animation that followed can be discerned.
Sun 12 Aug 8.30pm at The Lighthouse, The Chubb Buildings, Fryer St, Wolverhampton WV1 1HT £7.20 light-house.co.uk