Busy week of cinema ahead with The Black International Film Festival, The Screening Rights Film Festival and Halloween themed events. The BiFF is screening an impressive array of features and shorts with insightful Q&A’s complementing many screenings, read our preview here. The Screening Rights Film Festival has curated a compelling program of cinema exploring social justice and experience. It’s also the time of the year for wearing silly costumes in exchange for sweets and scaring the bejesus out of ourselves watching classic horror movies. We’ve got everything covered with our top picks.

Black International Film Festival (The full BiFF program is available here)

Homelands (dir: Tara Manandhar and Jaha Browne, 2017, cert n/a) + Q&A, live music
Birmingham’s own Punch Records is behind this fascinating documentary that gave four UK musicians the opportunity to visit their countries of origin including Mercury Prize nominee Terri Walker. Following the screening the artists involved will join the directors for a Q&A before a live music performance.
Mon 23 Oct 6.30pm at The Mockingbird, The Custard Factory, Gibb St, Birmingham B9 4AA £9 veezi.com

Detroit (dir: Kathryn Bigelow, 2017, cert 15)
There’s a sickening prescience to Kathryn Bigelow’s dramatisation of the 1967 Michigan incident in which three black teenagers were beaten and killed by police during the 12th Street Riot. The hideous events are grimly told in the director’s usual unflinching style and it’s parallels with the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement are stark and energising.
Tue 24 Oct 5.30pm at mac, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH £9 macbirmingham.co.uk

What Is A Man? (dir: various, 2017, cert n/a) + Q&A
A selection of short films exploring the stereotypical portraits of men including work from some of Birmingham’s finest filmmakers. Look out for Duaine Roberts’ superb Aston set time travel adventure Graycon and the poignant documentary about fathers in the black community A Man Called Dad. A director’s Q&A follows the screenings.
Wed 25 Oct 5pm at mac, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH £9 macbirmingham.co.uk

Screening Rights Film Festival (The full SRFF program is available here)

Unrest (dir: Jennifer Brea, 2017, cert n/a) + Panel discussion
Director Jennifer Brea began experiencing the much debated illness Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) after falling ill with a high fever in 2011. In Unrest Brea shows just how chronically debilitating a condition it is and powerfully addresses the suggestion that it is simply a psychosomatic disorder. Until 1st November, visitors to the mac can get a VR experience of life with ME by lying in a specially designed bed. Brea will take part in a panel discussion following the screening.
Fri 27 Oct 3pm  at mac, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH £9 macbirmingham.co.uk

Mr Gay Syria (dir: Ayşe Toprak, 2017, vert n/a)
That such a competition exists at all amidst the dark uncertainty of Syria, a country plagued by the psychopaths of Isis who gleefully throw gays from tall buildings before stoning them to death, is nothing short of remarkable. Toprak’s documentary powerfully espouses that visibility is vital in countering bigotry. The film follows the competitors, gay Syrian refugees living in Istanbul, as they prepare for the competition despite rapacious hostility, one contestant receives a death threat from his own father.
Sat 28 Oct 8.20pm at mac, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH £9 macbirmingham.co.uk

The Other Side of Home (dir: Nare Mkrtchyan, 2016, cert n/a) + Q&A
Generally regarded as the first genocide of the twentieth century, the horrifying massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 has riven relations between the two countries to this day, with Turkey still refusing to recognise what happened. In Mkrtchyan’s documentary Turkish woman Maya discovers her great grandfather had survived the massacre, she decides to visit Armenia for the centennial commemoration of the genocide and explore her own identity. There is a post screening Q&A with the director.
Sun 29 Oct 6pm at mac, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham B12 9QH £9 macbirmingham.co.uk

Halloween 

Scream (dir: Wes Craven, 1996, cert 18) It takes a special kind of genius to invent a genre and then reinvent it in spectacular fashion decades later. That’s what the sadly departed Wes Craven did with Scream. The director of the vicious revenge thriller Last house on the Left (1972), a film that came with the now legendary tag line ‘just keep repeating it’s only a movie’, turned the whole genre upside down with the existential and rampantly self-referential Scream. Disembowelling your star actress in the opening scene was a master stroke.  Remember kids; if you don’t want to be murdered then don’t have sex!
Sat 28 Oct 1pm at The Mockingbird, The Custard Factory, Gibb St, Birmingham B9 4AA Free veezi.com

The Thing (dir: John Carpenter, 1982, cert 18)
A true horror classic, filled with extraordinary special effects that still look stunning today. Stay away from the defib Dr. Cooper! Paranoia so palpable you can almost touch it as Kurt Russell’s world weary MacReady attempts to sort alien from human. And just who put MacReady in charge anyway? It is an absolute blast from start to finish; the arctic setting really emphasising the isolation and dread. The only safe option is to barricade yourself indoors and never go out. “I dunno what the hell’s in there, but it’s weird and pissed off, whatever it is.”
Sat 28 Oct 9.15pm at The Mockingbird, The Custard Factory, Gibb St, Birmingham B9 4AA £5 veezi.com

Don’t Look Now (dir: Nicolas Roeg, 1973, cert 15)
A masterpiece from a master director. The tiny nuances of a couple’s behaviour as they grieve the death of their child, is explored in prosaic and almost forensic detail. If a film could leak emotional pain then this would be it. If grief wasn’t enough to contend with, just who is the mysterious childlike figure in red, running around Venice with an emotionally disintegrating Donald Sutherland in pursuit?  Often remembered for the ‘did they didn’t they’ sex scene between Sutherland and Julie Christie, it’s a classic film that transcends genres and is not easily classifiable. In addition the Ort Cafe will be open, there’s a Graveyard Disco and a fully stocked bar.
Sat 28 Oct 8pm at The Old Print Works, 506 Moseley Rd, Birmingham B12 9AH £9.08 www.facebook.com

Also recommended

Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997, cert 15)
In which Tarantino’s poplar culture riffing machine reached Blaxploitation. Not meant as a criticism, no one can pull together so many disparate genre threads as eloquently and knowledgeably as Quentin. A master stroke from the director was casting Foxy Brown herself, Pam Grier, as the eponymous hero. The opening scene as a knowing Grier paces confidently through Los Angeles Airport to Bobby Womack’s ‘Across 110th Street’ is cinematic perfection. There’s lots of cool walking in Tarantino movies. An incredible cast with the ubiquitous Samuel L Jackson, an off the charts sexy Bridget Fonda and a shambling Robert De Niro. “When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.” Oh yes.
Sun 29 Oct 2pm at at The Electric, Station Street, Birmingham B5 4DY £9.50 www.theelectric.co.uk