November 2019 sees the return of both the Doc ‘n’ Roll music documentary festival and the London Korean Film Festival.
A couple of very different but equally essential film festivals arrive in London in November, before spreading highlights across the UK later.
Doc ‘n’ Roll returns for the sixth year, from the 1st to the 17th of November, with some thirty new music documentaries spreading across the city. It’s an impressive sounding line-up, most of which (in classic documentary style) have self-explanatory and enticing titles – include A Dog Called Money: PJ Harvey, Disco Confessions – John Morales, A Life In The Mix, Gina Birch – Cracked Open, Keyboard Fantasies – The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story, Where Does a Body End? Swans, There Will Be Rock – The Legendary Promoters of Rock, Show Me The Picture – The Story of Jim Marshall, Underground Inc. – The Rise & Fall of Alternative Rock, The Heart Is A Drum – NEU! & Klaus Dinger, It Must Schwing! The Blue Note Story, WITCH – We Intend To Cause Havoc, and David Crosby – Remember My Name.
In fact, the entire festival looks pretty interesting, particularly if you believe – as I do – that there’s the potential for an interesting story to be told about even the most appalling music, and we at The Reprobate are huge fans of music docs in general. Hopefully, we’ll be able to review at least a few of these. Where Does a Body End? Swans will also be touring to Brighton, Newcastle, Nottingham, Glasgow, Bristol and Manchester, complete with director Q&A. The other films play across London, at the Barbican, the ICA, Rio, Picturehouse Central, Curson Soho and Ritzy Cinema among others.
Full details and individual tickets can be found at https://www.docnrollfestival.com/.
If music documentaries are not your thing, maybe you’ll be more interested in the 14th London Korean Film Festival, which also takes place from the 1st to the 24th of November across London, and tours Edinburgh, Bristol,Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester and Nottingham from the 18th. 2019 marks the centenary of Korean cinema, and this year’s festival is a history of the nation’s movies, starting with 1949 melodrama A Hometown in Heart and running through to 1999’s Peppermint Candy. There are also strands for modern film – ranging from drama to noir to horror-comedy, a celebration of the work of Ha Gil-jong, the work of female directors, animation, documentaries, shorts and experimental film. Something, you could reasonably say, for everyone. The films are showing at Regent Street Cinema, Picturehouse Central, Close-up Film Centre, Phoenix Cinema, Rio Cinema, ICA, Barbican, British Museum, LUX, Birkbeck’s Institute of Moving Image, and KCCUK. The full, vast programme, can be found at http://koreanfilm.co.uk/.
