Hackney’s Rio Cinema is celebrating 50 years as a community-run cinema this month with a series of celebrations, screenings and parties. The six-month-long season, Rio Forever, will be showcasing ‘what the Rio does best’ with ‘bold, eclectic programming; archival gems; and gatherings that bring people together’.
Movies are a big part of Rio Forever, of course, with 35mm screenings doubling up as fundraisers for this beloved venue. Legendary Londoner Sally Potter will be swinging by for a screening (and Q&A) of her epoch-hopping feminist masterpiece Orlando on Friday, April 24, with Hackney’s own Asif Kapadia (Amy, Diego Maradona) intro’ing a 35mm screening of The Godfather: Part II on May 8. Punch-Drunk Love lovers can book in for a screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s romantic-comedy presented by Molly Manning Walker (How to Have Sex) on May 19. Pretty Red Dress writer-director Dionne Edwards, meanwhile, is introducing the Wachowskis’ cult neo-noir thriller Bound on May 22. There’ll also be a tribute to Rio Cinema OG Clara Ludski, the Jewish Prussian immigrant who turned her family’s auctioneers into a cinema on Kingsland High Street – one of London’s first – in 1909.
