LSFF: Express Yourself

Express Yourself, the 6 films programme we are hosting, a day before its official presentation at the ICA, is curated by Philip Ilson and offers a glimpse into the minds and methods of artists at work, tracing, sometimes quite intimately, the creative process.

Express Yourself films:

Stupid Little Films, dir. Vladislav Bolshakov, UK 2025, 2mins

A short animated documentary film about a young boy discovering animation. A short film that feels like an uncensored stream of consciousness illustrated by a wide-eyed, precocious child. Cheeky!

Crit, dir. Isabel Lea, UK 2025, 15mins

A disillusioned student questions the value of her art education, while she struggles to find the meaning and motivation in making. The inner life of an artist, complete with her hopes and doubts, inspirations and struggles, is communicated discretely, unannounced, but raw and without apologies, in this visually soft, but sharp in every other way (art) character study.

I Saw the Face of God in the Jet Wash, dir. Mark Jenkin, UK 2025, 17mins

The filmmaker travels the world with his work. In the liminal spaces between screenings he muses on cinematic influences, ponders cultural history and reflects upon the sea. One of the most exciting, distinct, new, British cinematic voices, Jenkin (Bait – “One of the defining British films of the decade” according to Mark Kermode), who is also a LSFF alumnus (Enys Men), shares a companion piece to/backstory of/working notes for his latest feature film Rose of Nevada – an unsettling, seafaring, time traveling mystery. A short that, although mysterious and uncanny itself, plays like a strangely familiar super 8 amateur film you can’t take your -full of nostalgia- eyes off.

Apocalypse, dir. Benoit Méry, France, 2024, 14mins

Deep in Hellfest, a gigantic metal festival, music gradually takes possession of metalheads. A silent (short) film like no other. With no dialogue and the music heard muffled via headphones or protective ear plugs, more by the gut and less by the ears. Making this a visceral, collective experience that catches you unawares.

Making Love to a Ghost, dir. Raj Chaudhuri and Rosie Litterick, UK 2024, 13mins

In his cluttered and oily garage in Forest Hill, surrounded by old cars and their dismembered parts, cutting through the noise of the blow torches, hammers and heavy drills, Fred, a car mechanic, discovers the haunting beauty of the illusive and strange instrument- The Theremin. The rough, heavy, very physical reality of the cars and their parts, is juxtaposed with the ethereal, intangible, anything but physical resonance of the theremin, in this unassuming documentary about the joy of taking the unexpected path, following our hearts.

The Girl looking for the cabin, dir. Phane Montet, France, French with English subtitles 2025, 30mins

During the winter of 2011, the young street artist Bilal Berreni travelled to the far north of Sweden and locked himself away in a wooden cabin, to live as a hermit. He wrote and drew “The Cabin Notebook”. Ten years later, after Bilal’s death, a girl follows his footsteps, looking for his cabin. Looking for the world he depicted. Perhaps also for him… In this mesmerising hybrid of live action and animation, memory and dreams bleed into reality, colouring it black and white and every shade of grey, turning into magic. Borderless and unruly, unframed and immersive.