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Contemporary Films Ltd

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Contemporary Films Ltd

Celebrating 75 years of Contemporary Films
Screenings across London
3 September - 4 October

cf75.co.uk

21/08/2026

One of cinema’s greatest humanists.

Satyajit Ray transformed Indian filmmaking through profoundly compassionate stories, elegant craftsmanship and an enduring belief in the dignity of ordinary lives.

🎟️ See Mahangar on the big screen
📍 Phoenix Cinema
📅 11 Oct | 🕖 2pm
🎫 Tickets via the link in our bio

20/08/2026

MAHANAGAR (THE BIG CITY)
+ Introduction by Manish*ta Dass

Satyajit Ray’s classic exploration of the problems for women in Indian society, told with his trademark humanity and with a wonderful central performance by Madhabi Mukherjee.

Arati, the wife of a bank clerk, is forced to take the initiative as bread-winner when her husband loses his job. This reversal of roles creates great conflict within the family. To everyone’s surprise, Arati is a great success; she becomes the favourite of the boss and is soon promoted to head saleswoman. With her new status comes an independence which Arati has never before experienced and which gradually becomes a necessity to her.

She makes friends with an Anglo-Indian colleague and when her friend is victimised because of her race, flies to her rescue. It is during this incident, when a moral stand is forced upon her, that Arati becomes fully aware of what it means to be responsible for one’s own actions…

Out of this disarmingly simple tale, Ray has fashioned a superlative quiet epic, an eloquent testimonial to the innate courage of ordinary people caught in the complex shifting society of urban Indian life.

No filmmaker is more important to the history of Contemporary Films than Satyajit Ray; Contemporary’s release of ‘The Apu Trilogy’ (Pather Panchali, Aparajito and Apur Sansur) were important offerings at the Academy Cinema in Oxford Street during the key period for foreign cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Charles and Kitty Cooper, who enjoyed personal relations with Ray and his family, distributed many of his subsequent films and later helped found the Satyajit Ray Foundation which provided scholarships to new filmmakers.

Writer and researcher Manish*ta Dass will introduce the film, its themes and place within Ray’s oeuvre.

🔗 Find out more at the link in our bio.

19/08/2026

The filmmaker who captured cultural history in the making.

Murray Lerner transformed documentary into a front-row seat to defining moments in music and social change. With an instinct for performance and the politics surrounding it, his films preserve not only legendary artists, but the spirit of an era.

✨ Experience Festival! on the big screen in a rare 16mm screening.
📍 The Castle Cinema
📅 8 Oct | 🕖 7:30
🎟️ Book now via the link in our bio.

18/08/2026

FESTIVAL! (1967)

Murray Lerner’s brilliant documentary on the Newport Folk Festival brings some of the greatest names in folk and blues to the screen including Bob Dylan ‘going electric’.

This film may seem simply the record of several dozen singers and groups in performance at Newport – there is generous footage of many favourites of the era – but what emerges through the songs and off-stage interviews of the participants is far more searching and significant than the format would imply. We hear the voices of young Americans affirming their hopes for peace and brotherhood and their hatred of war and injustice. All captured by Lerner with remarkable immediacy offering a compelling charge through a phenomenal musical roster, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, Odetta, Pete Seeger, Mississippi John Hurt, Judy Collins, Johnny Cash and many others.

The film will be screened on 16mm as part of the Ciné Real film club, and introduced by CINÉ REAL.

🔗 Find out more at the link in our bio.

17/08/2026

The father of soviet montage.

Sergei Eisenstein revolutionised film language, proving that editing itself could generate emotion, meaning and political power.

🎟️ See Battleship Potemkin on the big screen
📍 Birkbeck Cinema
📅 2 Oct | 🕖 6pm
🎫 Tickets via the link in our bio.

16/08/2026

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925) + SHORTS
+ Introductions by Ian Christie, Bev Zalcock & Sara Chambers

Sergei Eisenstein’s mesmerising foundational stone of cinema — a century old yet still freshly arresting in its stunning compositions and revered editing style.

In the Soviet Union 1925 was an anniversary year. It was one of the duties of the appointed jubilee committee to assign and supervise the production of films to celebrate the 1905 Revolution. One of the approved scripts, Year 1905, was assigned to Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein’s only completed feature film at this point was Strike, which had not yet been released. The scenario of Year 1905 covered the Revolution from the Russo-Japanese War to the armed uprising in Moscow. When filming began, however, Eisenstein decided to make the mutiny aboard the Potemkin the central episode of 1905. In the cutting-room it became apparent that this single episode contained all that was typical of the whole revolution. In the final cutting, all material but Potemkin was dropped, and thus evolved what has been called the most perfect and concise example of film structure. The importance of cutting and editing as a creative process was perhaps the most widely recognised revelation of Battleship Potemkin. The sensations of fear on the quarter-deck, panic and machine-like murder on the Odessa steps and tension on the waiting ship could only have been communicated by this revolutionary cutting method, which remains a yardstick for visual storytelling today.

The film, which represents the longest association with any film for Contemporary founder Charles Cooper (he admired and handled it for the whole of his adult life), will be accompanied by two British shorts that were directly inspired by it: Bread from 1934, made by the Kino group of which Cooper was a driving force, and Oh Odessa!, an homage made in 2002.

Oh Odessa! will be introduced by its directors Bev Zalcock & Sara Chambers. Bread and Battleship Potemkin will be introduced by Soviet film expert and writer Ian Christie.

🔗 Find out more at the link in our bio.

15/08/2026

BLANCHE (1971)
+ Introduction by Daniel Bird and Kathleen Wallfisch

Walerian Borowczyk’s critically acclaimed and influential medieval tale — a beautiful tragedy told with pitch-black humour and the director’s remarkable idiosyncratic inventiveness.

Arguably Borowczyk’s most ambitious film, a meticulous recreation of medieval life by way of references from the history of art, not least Giotto’s religious paintings. Occupying the space between Pasolini and Parajanov as a sort of flat, two-dimensional moving tapestry, Blanche is based on a drama by the great Polish romantic poet Juliusz Słowacki, Mazepa. Featuring one of the last performances by the Swiss actor Michel Simon, not to mention a spirited turn by the late Jacques Perrin (also serving as an uncredited producing partner here), Blanche herself is played by Ligia Branice as a Sadean stock character whose innocent gothic beauty evokes male lust inevitably followed by bloody violence.

While Borowczyk was able to realize his medieval masterpiece with complete artistic control, Blanche was a critical if not commercial success in France, but fared much better during Contemporary’s British run where it played for 20 weeks at Contemporary’s Paris Pullman cinema alone.

The screening will be introduced by Daniel Bird, Co-founder of Friends of Walerian Borowczyk, a non-profit association based in Paris that manages the rights to the painter, sculptor and filmmaker. He will discuss Borowczyk’s association with Contemporary, and will be joined by Kathleen Wallfisch, Music Supervisor for film and TV, to talk about the music of the film and how it is arranged and presented on screen.

🔗 Find out more at the link in our bio.

14/08/2026

A trailblazer of LGBTQ+ documentary.

Rob Epstein has preserved pivotal histories through compassionate films that have become landmarks of q***r cinema.

🎟️ See The Times of Harvey Milk on the big screen
📍 The Rio
📅 24 Sept | 🕖 6:30
🎫 Tickets via the link in our bio.

13/08/2026

THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK (1984)
+ Director Rob Epstein in conversation

The powerful documentary on the life and career of the first openly gay man to win political office in a major American city, and his horrifying assassination.

Harvey Milk never had time to become a household name – he was murdered in 1978 (along with Major George Moscone) by fellow San Francisco official, Dan White, who fired five bullets into Milk as he sat, unarmed, at his desk.

Narrated by Harvey Fierstein, the film tells of the extraordinary rise to power of Harvey Milk, a long-haired, gay camera store owner from the sleepy Castro District, who became one of the city’s most colourful and influential elected officials as well as one of the decade’s most prominent leaders of the le***an and gay rights movement.

Using interviews, TV footage, snapshots and archival film, directors Rob Epstein and Richard Schmiechen show us Harvey Milk’s background, his aspirations and how his political reputation in the community gradually changed from scepticism to admiration.

After the screening director Rob Epstein will discuss the enduring legacy of Harvey Milk and the film, via live Zoom from Los Angeles.

🔗 Find out more at the link in our bio.

11/08/2026

A pioneer of the artist documentary.

Jack Hazan dissolved the boundary between documentary and fiction, creating intimate portraits that transformed how artists could be represented on screen.

🎟️ See A Bigger Splash on the big screen
📍 Phoenix Cinema
📅 20 Sept | 🕖 2pm
🎫 Tickets via the link in our bio.

Address

8 Dickenson Road
London
N89EN

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

+442074826204

Website

http://www.contemporaryfilms.com/, http://cf75.co.uk/

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