More than 400 short films will be screened across the city as part of the London Short Film Festival 2025.
From Friday, January 17th to Saturday, January 25th, there will be curated events and screenings including unseen 16mm films by Harry Hill and folk archive films from the Offbeat Film Club.
The festival will take in venues such as BFI Southbank, ICA, Curzon Soho, Rio Cinema, Rich Mix, and SET Peckham as well as see its free Mobile Cinema Bus touring London neighbourhoods.
Catch the early comedy shorts of TV Burp icon Harry Hill in Holidays on Mars and Nelly Ben-Hayoun curating a queer, colourful, experimental galaxy of new short-filmmaking called Alien Extravaganza
Representing taboo on-screen erotica, curators Helena and Harlan Whittingham, the team behind Sinéad O’Dwyer’s infamous London Fashion Week presentation, Lover Management, will present their own debauched evening film programme, Dark Fantasies.
Screenings will also underscore London’s urgent crises of rising gentrification and so-called “regeneration”, a severe shortage of affordable housing in a rapidly expanding city (with artists and curators Ed Webb-Ingall & Oliver Dixon) and powerful expressions of Black and queer cultures from Waywaad Collective, and Lauren Gee’s Everywhere We Are Islands, focused on new voices in Caribbean filmmaking.
Young cinema-goers can discover programmes of Soviet Children’s Animation and family-friendly films from Offbeat Film Club.
In addition, film critic and curator Cici Peng will present Pop: Contagion, Infection, Revolution! exploring Pop’s influence on counter-culture, as well as its power to obscure and distract - featuring global experimental moving-image works from 1968 to the present day, with a pop party at the ICA lasting all night.
From Friday, January 17th to Saturday, January 25th, there will be curated events and screenings including unseen 16mm films by Harry Hill and folk archive films from the Offbeat Film Club.
The festival will take in venues such as BFI Southbank, ICA, Curzon Soho, Rio Cinema, Rich Mix, and SET Peckham as well as see its free Mobile Cinema Bus touring London neighbourhoods.
Catch the early comedy shorts of TV Burp icon Harry Hill in Holidays on Mars and Nelly Ben-Hayoun curating a queer, colourful, experimental galaxy of new short-filmmaking called Alien Extravaganza
Representing taboo on-screen erotica, curators Helena and Harlan Whittingham, the team behind Sinéad O’Dwyer’s infamous London Fashion Week presentation, Lover Management, will present their own debauched evening film programme, Dark Fantasies.
Screenings will also underscore London’s urgent crises of rising gentrification and so-called “regeneration”, a severe shortage of affordable housing in a rapidly expanding city (with artists and curators Ed Webb-Ingall & Oliver Dixon) and powerful expressions of Black and queer cultures from Waywaad Collective, and Lauren Gee’s Everywhere We Are Islands, focused on new voices in Caribbean filmmaking.
Young cinema-goers can discover programmes of Soviet Children’s Animation and family-friendly films from Offbeat Film Club.
In addition, film critic and curator Cici Peng will present Pop: Contagion, Infection, Revolution! exploring Pop’s influence on counter-culture, as well as its power to obscure and distract - featuring global experimental moving-image works from 1968 to the present day, with a pop party at the ICA lasting all night.
Action-loving creative platform Babes with Blades will present short films focused on female representation in the action genre as part of the nationwide BFI Art of Action season.
For tickets and details go to shortfilms.org.uk.
For tickets and details go to shortfilms.org.uk.
Top left: La Voix des Sirenes (2023) dir. Gianluigi Toccafondo, top right: Masterpiece Mommy (2024) dir. Dorothy Sing Zhang, bottom left: Pirouette (2024) dir. Ann Oren, bottom right: Wander to Wonder (2023) dir. Nina Gantz