BFI Academy Young Film Programmer Season at Showroom Cinema
Tom Grieve, Cinema Editor
Sheffield’s Showroom have added a fresh perspective to their line-up this February by handing the keys to the cinema to 32 young film enthusiasts. The culmination of the BFI Film Academy Specialist Programming Course is a weeklong film festival curated by a group of talented young film programmers who have been given carte blanche to explore their cinematic interests.
They’ve come up with a programme that moves from cult Hollywood comedies to contemporary animation, from auteur classics to politically-minded art house fare. The selections fit into fiercely-named strands including “Obsession”, “Art Without Limit” and “Beyond the Gaze”, but there’s something for everybody here.
a group of talented young film programmers who have been given carte blanche to explore their cinematic interests
The BFI Academy Young Film Programmer Season kicks off with a Jim Carrey double bill that demonstrates the flip sides of the storied Hollywood actor, pairing classic comedy The Cable Guy from director Ben Stiller, with Michel Gondry’s mind-bending romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Other highlights include Celine Sciamma’s Tomboy which is presented as an example of the female gaze, with an eye on its particular perspective on gender identity. Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy is given a rare screening – it’s one of the director’s many works on male obsession, but has come under the spotlight again following Todd Phillip’s 2019 Joker, which borrows from Scorsese’s film with diminished results.
Studio Ghibli co-production The Red Turtle forms one half of a fun “Cinequarium” double bill with Wes Anderson’s eccentric submarine adventure The Life Aquatic. The season closes on A Quiet Place II, a post-apocalyptic tale chosen to highlight the work of actress Milicent Symonds, who is deaf and given a more prominent role in this sequel. The film will be accompanied by a selection of BFI Network Shorts that represent the disabled community and feature disabled and neurodivergent crew.
