FILM LONDON LODESTARS: Other Cinemas
“The work of Other Cinemas speaks for itself when you look at their programming. I genuinely have not found any distributors or programmers like them in London and would love for them to get the support to grow what they do so more people can enjoy their work. Turab Shah and Arwa Aburawa are in the business of genuinely making cinema more accessible."
Roxy Rezvany (writer/director of Little Pyongyang)
Photograph by Maria Alejandra Huicho
Other Cinemas is a Brent-based project focused on the transformational power of film that centres Black and POC communities and filmmakers. Arising out of Brent’s Borough of Culture 2020, they aim to take independent cinema out of the typical cinema and arts institutions and into their neighbourhood, in community spaces where attendees feel welcomed, important and safe. Many of these institutions have failed racialised communities and Other Cinemas aims to rectify that without compromising on quality.
Other Cinemas deliver film festival quality programming, with accessibility at its heart, and all screenings are free. They only screen the works of Black and POC filmmakers and have majority (75%) Black and POC audiences, reflecting the diversity of Brent.
Their various screenings include three weekend festivals, the most recent of which was Radical Films, Radical Forms (25-27 March) exploring revolutionary Arab documentary cinema.
