Four Parts of a Folding Screen (Anthea Kennedy & Ian Wiblin, 2018)
Based on documents found in Berlin archives, Four Parts of a Folding Screen explores exclusion, statelessness and the legalised theft and sale of everyday family possessions by the National Socialist regime.
A voice, enigmatic and sometimes uncertain, foretells of, relates and recalls the routine processes of injustice and their legacy: the creation of a diaspora of household objects, scattered amongst buildings that no longer exist.
As the camera probes the secrets of ordinary spaces, streets and buildings around the city of Berlin, semblances of a person and a history begin to emerge and coalesce. This experimental essay film explores the space between documentary and fiction.
Followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.
Four Parts of a Folding Screen will show at @closeupfilmcentre on the 13 May at 8.15pm.
Star Spangled to Death (Ken Jacobs, 1956-62/2004)
This screening of Star Spangled to Death is an epilogue to the retrospective Seeing Through Film: Ken and Flo Jacobs at Open City Documentary Festival 2026.
Celebrating the work and lives of Ken and Flo Jacobs, who both passed away in 2025, the programme coincides with the publication of I Walked Into My Shortcomings, an anthology of Jacobs’ writings edited by William Rose for The Visible Press.
Almost 7 hours long, Star Spangled to Death is Ken Jacobs’ magnus opus, his great New York film which would have to wait from 1959 until 2004 for completion as affordable digital video. Starring Jack Smith as The Spirit Not of Life but of Living and Jerry Sims as Suffering, this social critique of the USA, “stolen and dangerously sold-out” in Jacobs’ own words, feels as poignant and relevant today as in the 1950s when it was originally shot.
There will be 10-minute breaks between Parts 1 and 2, and between Parts 3 and 4, and a 30-minute break half-way through the screening, between Parts 2 and 3.
Star Spangled to Death screens Sunday 10 May at @barbicancentre , 11am
1-day course | Documentary, Mental Health & Wellbeing: Global Perspectives Through Film.
Exploring representations of mental health, wellbeing, therapy and the diverse filmic strategies used to convey psychological experience. Examined through global films, readings, and discussions.
In Person, UCL East, Stratford, London.
Run by Jasminka Letzas, a lecturer, artist and researcher
WHEN: 1-6 PM, Saturday, 30th May 2026. (with a 1-hour break)
BOOK: link in bio ❤️
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#ucl #filmeducation #shortcourse #london #mentalhealth #weelbeing #greygardens
The View from Our House (Anthea Kennedy, Ian Wiblin, 2013)
A woman witnesses the ordinary oppression and fear of the early years of National Socialism. She describes the sounds she regularly hears on passing a military barracks whilst walking from her house to the station. Images of the barracks recur throughout the film, suggesting the routine tyranny that precipitates the woman’s increasing fear and eventual journey into exile in London.
The film’s structure of repetition and retelling foregrounds the way in which her life is stunted by increasing marginalisation and terror. “I’m only just eighteen but sometimes I already feel so old that I think of dying,” she writes in a letter to her would-be lover.
The View from Our House is based in part on the memories, unsent letters and notebooks of a young photographer who lived in Berlin-Tempelhof. Aspects of her life are mapped out within this small area of Berlin through a succession of haunted images and sounds that imbue place with a sense of memory and history.
The film is the first in a loose trilogy of films focused on different members of the same family during the early years of the Nazi regime.
The View from Our House screens Sunday 3 May at @closeupfilmcentre , 8pm. Followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.
Built from archive news, cartoons and films, Star Spangled to Death (2004) is a daring, epic social critique of the USA.
This monument of cinema was directed by the late Ken Jacobs (1933–2025). It clocks in at a runtime of almost seven hours – and was almost fifty years in the making.
Piercing his country’s attitudes to race, religion, wealth and war, Jacobs’s critique of history is just as striking today as it was when the film was shot.
Round out a great season of @opencitydocs with this special screening on Sun 10 May. Tickets available via the link in our bio 🔗
The 2026 festival has now come to a close ❤️🔥
We would like to thank every single audience member, filmmaker, panelist, speaker, volunteer, projectionist, partner, sponsor and our amazing team.
Until next year!
Every year Open City Documentary Festival commissions a filmmaker previously screened at the festival to create the trailer for the following edition.
Our 2026 Festival trailer marks the 50th anniversary of John Smith’s classic film The Girl Chewing Gum.
We spoke with John about the film and reflections 5 decades on.
You can read the full interview via the link in bio 🔗
The Case Against Space (Graeme Arnfield, 2026)
Graeme Arnfield’s second feature The Case Against Space depicts, what appears to be, the first organised strike beyond Earth’s orbit. The film reconstructs the events of the 1973 Skylab 4 mission: in protest against the pressures and working conditions aboard their space station, commander, pilot and science pilot ceased work and cut communications with mission control.
Drawing on transcripts of exchanges between the crew and NASA, Arnfield combines extensive research with speculative interpretation, imagining the tensions and human dynamics that led to this unprecedented event. He employs a distinctly lo-fi aesthetic, recreating the Skylab space station in a studio. The astronauts’ testimonies are performed by actors and filmed in claustrophobic close-ups using 1970s CCTV black-and-white cameras.
The intersection between technology and ecology is a recurring theme in Arnfield’s work. This new project extends these ideas and upon his earlier found footage works to craft a compelling reconstruction of a unique moment in the history of space exploration.
The film closes the festival Sunday 19 April at the @icalondon , 7pm 🚀
