Foreign language bookshops in London are hard to find and fragmented. All photos by Lillo Montalto Monella

There is nothing as heart-warming for foreigners after a whole day of processing things in a second or third language than to curl up with books in their familiar native tongue. However, finding them in the great tumble that is London can be a bit difficult.

There are bookshops out there dedicated to bringing the non-English speaker their favourite literature closer to home. They are not numerous, however, and the quality of these does vary. But here at The First Pint we have been able to enumerate a couple of places that should appease the international bookworm as well as the ever increasing number of polyglot Brits.

European Bookshop

The European Bookshop may not have the greatest variety of books, but it does have the best quality.

The First Pint’s favourite foreign language bookshop by far, the European Bookshop is a well-rounded, attractive place to get books in the major European languages. As part of European Schoolbooks, the European Bookshop has been around for 40 years and has sister shops around London such as the Italian Bookshop.

The biggest selection in the shop is for French books, with its first floor dedicated principally to the language. There is also a second floor which shares the other languages, mainly Spanish and German, but there are also books in Portuguese and Russian, and some learning materials for other languages such as Polish or Norwegian.

Pablo Argente, responsible for the Spanish section of the shop, said that there is a native speaker in charge of each of the major departments, assuring that the books ordered for each language is of the utmost quality and updated for the trends of every country. “We definitely have a good selection here,” Pablo said. “But there are still some things that people ask for that we don’t have. But we are constantly working to fix that.”

Despite Pablo’s humbleness, the selection in the European bookshop is great, where literature shares space with essays, poetry, and comics. It even has a part of the shop dedicated to children’s books called, appropriately, the Young Europeans Bookshop. In the Spanish section, you could even find La Vorágine, a Colombian classic which you wouldn’t expect to find in a small bookshop in Spain, not to mention in a bookshop in London.

At around £10 for paperbacks and £20 to £25 for hard-covers, even the prices are reasonable. There is really no excuse not to visit this treasure.

European Bookshop
5 Warwick Street, W1B 5LU
Opening hours: Mon-Sat 9.30-18h

Grant and Cutler

Grant and Cutler's language selection is so incredible that it has to be seen to be believed.

Perhaps the most complete of all foreign language bookshops in London, Grant and Cutler’s selection is mind boggling. Aside from all the major languages, the amount of other languages seen is incredible: from the more uncommon European languages like Catalan, Dutch and Albanian to the more obscure such as Pashto, Amharic, Swahili and Malay, visiting Grant and Cutler’s is just an exercise in bewilderment. The amount of help desks, learning materials and shelves is noteworthy and a pleasant feeling of finding a refuge for the world’s languages does make the imagination go wild.

The downside of such variety is its presentation. As a visitor to the shop told The First Pint, it feels like a warehouse where you would find your school textbooks in. Books are piled in the shelves with no apparent organisation, English translations and original language books are mixed together, and just finding things can be frustrating. That must be why there’s so many help desks. However, it does not give the feeling of a place where you would stay for hours browsing for your next read, but more of a utilitarian place where you would get your reading materials and leave.

Grant and Cutler may not be as inviting as other shops, but it does dedicate itself to bringing as much from different languages as possible. Besides books, it also has a great selection of World Cinema DVDs and curious souvenirs like versions of Scrabble in different languages.

Grant and Cutler
55-57 Great Marlborough Street, W1V 2AY
Opening hours: Mon-Wed, Fri 10-18.30, Thu 10-19h, Sat 10.30-18.30, Sun 12-18h

JP Books

Though a bit small, JP Books is the only Japanese bookshop in London.

Burrowed in the lower floors of the Mitsukoshi department store, JP Books is spread between two to three smallish rooms packed with different Japanese miscellanea, including small trinkets such as Totoro dolls. Books and magazines in Japanese can be found in good measure, and it definitely has a very distinct Japanese flavour to it – which is important since it is the only Japanese bookshop in London, as several people could confirm.

One of these, Ichiro Osako, said that even though the shop is good, it has a very general selection of books which would be very limiting for those looking for more specialised fare, such as business books. In his opinion, despite the shop’s selection not being the best, the alternative – ordering from the internet – is very expensive and some Japanese sites don’t even ship to the UK.

In regards to price, one of the shop assistants said that JP Books was a good shop even though the books could be almost three times more expensive than what you would pay in Japan.

However, when wanting to indulge in Japanese readings, what else can you do but visit JP Books?

JP Books
Lower Ground Floor, Mitsukoshi Dept Store
Dorland House, 14-20 Regent Street, SW1Y 4PH
Opening hours: Mon – Fri 10-18.30, Sun 10.30-16.30

Guanghwa Bookshop
If you are itching for Chinese reading materials, the Guanghwa bookshop located in Chinatown is a decent option.

This two-storey bookshop sells books ranging from classics to modern literature and from philosophy to cookery. It doesn’t matter if you are looking for masterpieces from 鲁迅 or 冰心, or the Chinese version of Twilight, you will be quite satisfied. The bookshop also sells Chinese magazines, including Newsweek Asia, Readers’ Digest and Cosmopolitan. The only downside is that they have an incredibly small collection of traditional Chinese reading materials – more than 90% of the products are in simplified Chinese. For Taiwanese and Hong Kong readers, you may be disappointed.

Also, Guanghwa is heaven for calligraphers. The basement displays a variety of calligraphy brushes, ink, paper and exercise books for professional and amateur alike.

The location of the bookshop is convenient and easy to find. But this petite book store is not somewhere you can spend hours feeding that Chinese bookworm of yours!

Guangwha Bookshop
7 Newport Place,
Chinatown, WC2H 7JR
UK
Opening Hours: Mon-Sat 10-19, Sun 11-19h

This list is ever expanding. So if you find a better foreign language bookshop, please tell us and we’ll send someone to investigate. Rumour has that The First Pint’s very own Angry Russian is scouring the city for his favourite Russian bookshops at this very moment! Watch this space.

Read more from The First Pint, the international's guide to all that London offers.

In Art on the Table, food is the main focus - including its decay and cultural significance. Photo credit: Jonathan López

In Spain, food is a great part of the culture. Big feasts are one of the rituals where every family awaits especially to gather all of its members. Spanish art has done its best to show food in its different representations.

To reflect this passion for food, the Spanish cultural institute in London, Instituto Cervantes, organised Art on the Table, an exhibition which brings together artists from Spain and the UK whose work focuses on food.

Showcased in the exhibition are two videos from Spanish artist Greta Alfaro, a young Spanish artist studying for a master’s degree in the Royal College of Art in London. In one video, she presents a banquet of vultures. This animal, for Spanish culture and many others, is a symbol of greed and darkness For Alfaro, in this work the vultures represent the values and the rules in the society, whose brutality is something to fear.

Her second video, ‘In Praise of the Beast’, shows a huge cake in the middle of a snowed forest where two wild boars eats ― or, better said, coat themselves in― the sweet. For the artist, the wild boars represent the fear of not knowing what is going to come, the wildness, the dirtiness.

British artist Lynne Collins showed ‘The Trespasser’, a series of photos which presented still lifes taken in the empty rooms of old abandoned mental hospitals, blending darkness and beauty. Collins explained that she was at great risk when she worked on this project: she had to break in to the hospitals which not only were difficult to get in but were about to collapse, adding to the risk.

The curator of the exhibition, London-based Spanish artist Marisa González, also had one work showing what the lemons look like after 18 years. An interesting perspective of how food gone bad can also be beautiful, or at least intriguing.

Other artists featured in the exhibition include Matthew Cowan, Spanish art collective anak&monoperro, and Natuka Hunrubia.

Art on the Table runs until 11 March at the Instituto Cervantes London.

Instituto Cervantes
102 Eaton Square
London SW1W 9AN

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Martin Rowson in his studio in Lewisham. All photos by: Lillo Montalto Monella

“One of the few things Britain can claim is that it had 300 years of uninterrupted satire,” cartoonist Martin Rowson told The First Pint in an exclusive interview. “You can trace it back to 1694, when they abolished the Licensing Act. Since then, everything came out from Pandora’s box.”

An irreverent satirist, Rowson has been named 2010′s Political Cartoonist of the Year by the Political Cartoon Society in December. His cartoons, which he describes as kinds of “gargoyles, sitting on top of the paper and doing funny faces,” have lightened the tone of serious publications like the Guardian, Time Out, the Independent and Tribune magazine for decades. “They make a page more interesting. You can have an article about holding the government to account, describing where the government is going wrong and then above it a picture of the PM shitting in his trousers. Both say the same things in different ways.”

“A safety valve for society”

Martin Rowson’s studio, the cartoonist’s atelier but also his refuge, reflects the qualities of the man: it is chaos tamed by the daily discipline of irreverence.

A great ‘arty’ confusion reigns all over his studio: used brushes, pencils and tubes of tempera are scattered all over the place and large sheets full of disordered sketches dangle over the tables. However, he is obsessive about details, and when he spots a folded corner of the carpet, his reaction is both quick and precise: he reaches out and fixes it, restoring its original perfection.

In the early afternoons, sunlight invades the gloomy atmosphere of the attic room on the third floor of his house, right in front of the green lung of Lewisham. His role in society can be compared to that beam of light, brightening up dark corners. “Satire has always been a sort of a safety valve for society,” he says, “It’s easier to tolerate it than to suppress it. We’re constantly looking up to people who think they’re better than us with suspicion and resentment, and one of the best ways to cope with it is to laugh at them.”

Rowson was named 2010's Political Cartoonists of the Year by the Political Cartoonist Society.

His style is visceral and deliberately offensive, and his resolute vulgarity has often brought complaints. Yet, what Rowson does is a deliberate cultural operation: by seeing himself as a disciple of eighteenth century satirist James Gillray, this self-taught artist has already proved himself worthy of a great British tradition.

His works include graphic adaptations of The Waste Land and Tristam Shandy. He was appointed Cartoonist Laureate in 2001 by former London mayor Ken Livingstone and turned his hand to prose in 2006, writing a novel called Snatches.

A standard conversation with him usually shifts from witty citations of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope to hilarious anecdotes about the darkest secrets of British MPs. The ridiculous mingles with the sublime, and interviews slowly turn into one-man shows.

Satire and Cameron’s Big Society

Despite his verbal and graphic incontinence, Rowson has never been sued, as he admits with a certain pride: “Only a foolish man would threaten to sue a cartoonist; in Britain, the worst thing that can happen to you is appearing to have no sense of humour.” When the conversation moves to more current themes like David Cameron’s Big Society, Rowson’s eyes shine as he knows it’s time for him to deliver his ultimate monologue. “It is a great idea,” he says, “if Cameron can get people living in Belgravia, Knightsbridge and Chelsea, to form groups of volunteers to go around picking up used condoms and scraping dog shit off the street, well, then the whole thing is gonna work.”

Rowson's new graphic novel will appear in stores in March.

The cartoonist, trustee of five different charities, distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association and die-hard atheist, does not spare reproachful words for the Tories, showing once more how important it is in his profession to always be a dissident. “They have this horrible view of the world where the only way you can interact with people is in economic terms. It’s funny: these aristocrats are essentially hard-line Marxists, with their view of the world which is all about economics and nothing else.”

On his desk, ready for its release date in March, sits his latest graphic novel, inspired by Gulliver’s Travels. It took him fourteen patient months to complete this uncanny depiction of English society. Quoting the Political Cartoon Society, it shows a dark underbelly “populated by pinstriped fat-cats, rabid demagogues, demented snowmen and other crazed monsters of modern capitalism, set amidst the detritus of consumer society.” In other words, a society that would not find its way out of the darkness without the guiding light of Rowson’s iconoclast satire.

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A Christmas Cracker, a staple of English Christmas, was made by Londoner Tom Smith. Photo credit: Sparkly Kate / Flickr

Staying true to its cosmopolitan nature, an amalgamation of imports greets a Christmas in the capital.

Like the Royal family, many of our traditions have been snatched from Germany: Christmas trees, glühwein and stollen cake, and even advent calendars.

But distinctly English elements remain, which baffle newcomers who spend the day in London.
On Christmas morning, with stockings discarded and wrapping paper littering the lounge, families and friends sit down for dinner and pull their crackers.

English folk fail to notice anything strange in donning rainbow-coloured paper hats like kings, reading jokes written by delinquents, and playing with plastic toys made for two-year-olds. It all stems back to Londoner Tom Smith, who in the 1840s used the gimmick of pretty wrapping and words to save his failing bon bon business. It worked, so unfold that paper crown and pass the gravy.

With piles of turkey, stuffing, parsnips, and a plethora of pigs in blankets, it was hoped that brussel sprouts could by now have been forgotten. But alas, they endure.

Filled with sweet alcohol, all English mums have their favourite Christmas pudding recipies. Photo credit: Matt Riggott / Flickr

Despite the majority’s distaste for this tiny green cabbage, they somehow make it to the dinner table every year, and onto everyone’s plate. Prepare yourself with the Attack of the Sprouts game.

But a sweet treat will follow, with the arrival of the hot Christmas pudding. Traditionalists still prepare the pud weeks in advance, leaving the fruit to soak up the spices, and then steaming it for hours on Christmas day. The topping is an integral part; soaked in brandy and set alight, or drizzled with brandy butter, or creamy custard.

After Christmas dinner

All must be consumed by 3pm, when Her Majesty takes to the airwaves and internet and telly to bring good tidings to the Commonwealth. The content is largely obsolete; the Queen’s Speech merely marks the shift from table to television just as the grey sky (for it is always grey) darkens. An alternative can be found on Channel 4, who since the nineties have broadcast everyone from Marge Simpson to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

After musing on the Royal reflections, flick through a copy of the Radio Times Christmas issue – which will list the reappearance of favourite films and comedy duos from years gone by. Be charmed by Wallace and Gromit, and avoid the melodrama of British soap operas, outdoing each other in scenes of social breakdown.

A couple of hours drift by before someone opens another box of Cadbury’s Roses, and the octogenarians in the room hunt out the sherry and the port.

Late night games

To wrap up your English Christmas experience, have a nice mince pie. Photo credit: Girl Interrupted Eating / Flickr

As evening draws in night, whether it is Scrabble, Monopoly, or something a little less timeless, no amount of technological advancement will prevent the appearance of the board game.

Warm mince pies keep the players playing, which for many years have had nothing to do with mince-meat at all. Packed with dried fruit and parceled in pasty, they vie for attention with Christmas cake. The latter however is merely fruit cake dressed up with a tartan ribbon and a festive message scrawled onto white icing.

The elderly snoring on the sofa marks the close of Christmas day. And so to bed.

To wake on Boxing Day, which once was used to give boxes or gifts to the poor or the workers. Now it exists as an overspill of Christmas, with turkey sandwiches, and television, and one more mince pie.

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Computer games creator and saxophonist Jim Cuomo is one of the Insider's highlights for the week. Photo credit: Diego DeNicola/Flickr

The Insider is The First Pint’s expert on all things cool and London. Picking out the best of the week’s events and activities; one-off or regular, unique or mainstream. So we have a day-by-day selection of the best events to keep you occupied all week long. Enjoy.

The Insider’s diary is constantly evolving. No, its messier than that. Let’s say it’s a mutating beast. A loosely ordered collection of notes and scrawls, torn pages from listings, beer-stained fliers and hastily snapped photographs of posters in darkened music venues which all contribute to the ordered cultural listing presented here. This week though, if The First Pint hadn’t stepped up to organise an event I’d be starting with a blank page. So this is an exercise in what is possible if you are sitting around on a Sunday morning thinking ‘What can I do with my week?’.

Monday

I understand the arguments against Kings Place. It is out of the way behind Kings Cross station and the space itself can be said to lack character, but personally I like the cavernous culture airport feel and the actual auditoriums are not that austere. Whatever your reaction to the building itself, the Outhear series of Monday nights should have something to entice you. An eclectic mix of contemporary music for under ten pounds, tonight it’s 8-bit computer music pioneer Jim Cuomo who has gone on a musical journey that takes the Gameboy to the concert hall. Come along and be part of the retroVOLUTION!

Tuesday

I found one of those scrawled notes to remind me that Nina Nastasia was due to play The Scala tonight, but sadly I’ve just seen that the gig has been cancelled due to illness, so I’m scrambling around for something else to do. It will be a last minute decision, looking like a very film-heavy week. So I might skip Antonioni’s La Notte (8pm, £5), showing as part of the Jeanne Moreau season at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, in favour of a night of free music at 93 Feet East on Brick Lane. They are both close enough that I can drop in for a bagel at the top of Brick Lane and see how the mood takes me.

Wednesday

We all know that drugs sell, so the High Society exhibition at the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road has been garnering plenty of publicity. The Packed Lunch: Drugs talk should attract a crowd, being a talk on medical research on illegal substances by someone with a licence to administer them. I take it that no samples will be on offer, but some might question the wisdom of styling this as a ‘bring your own lunch’ event. After a lunch of ketamine and cannabis it seems appropriate to suggest an evening off.

Thursday

The recently inaugurated Iranian Studies Department at SOAS is holding monthly film screenings. This month they offer a rare chance to see The Cow directed by Dariush Mehrjui, a  good example of pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema. The suggested donation to attend the event is £2, but it’s free if you are stuck for funds. The film starts at 7pm in the Khalili Lecture Theatre. Afterwards I’ll be hopping on a bus to Shoreditch to see Cold in Berlin play a free set at the Macbeth on Hoxton Street.

Friday

It’s The First Pint’s Scandinavian Night, why would you be anywhere else? If the lure of free Danish beer and other delights from Europe’s Northern realms can’t tempt you to Bethnal Green maybe the event I crossed out of my diary will be of interest. The Research Group in Philosophy at Goldsmiths are screening Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights, followed by a discussion. It starts early at 5pm, but that means you can still change your mind and join us for a beer afterwards.

Saturday

Earlier this year the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine published their list of the best films from the last decade. This weekend you have the chance to catch two of them (See Sunday for Tropical Malady at the ICA) and avoid the start of the Christmas shopping rush. Today at the Cine Lumiere see Agnes Varda’s documentary on modern rural poverty, La Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (£9/7, 6pm).

Sunday

The posters have sold me on this one: I can’t claim any advance knowledge of the current exhibition at the Royal Academy, but Pioneering Painters: The Glasgow Boys 1880-1900 has got my attention. It runs until 23 January so please don’t all turn up today. Afterwards I’ll take a short stroll to the ICA, where they are taking advantage of the interest in this year’s Palme d’Or winner, Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, by showing some of his earlier films. Tropical Malady from 2004 screens at 2pm today.

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Pelicano's portrait of rural desertification resonates far beyond Portugal's Tua Valley. Photo courtesy of Jorge Pelicano

The Portuguese documentary Pare, Escute, Olhe (Stop, Listen, Look) brought the curtain down on the recent European Documentary Festival, held this year in London.

Directed by Jorge Pelicano, the film portrays the story of a village left to decay and rot by politicians who neglect the countryside and inhabitants of the Tua Valley in Northern Portugal.

The documentary shows how the Portuguese political elite build a dam and destroy the railway that connects the inhabitants of Tua Valley with the world. In the name of progress, the dam supposedly provides clean energy, but many experts argue the more sensible option would be for Portugal to reduce the amount of energy it consumes.

The First Pint caught up with director Jorge Pelicano at the screening in the Hungarian Culture Centre to find out a little bit more about the inspiration behind the documentary.

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Maxim Jakubowski is known as the 'king of the erotic thriller'. Photo credit: Rachel Kramer Bussel/Flickr

Maxim Jakubowski, the so-called ‘king of erotic thriller’ writes spicy, tangled stories that perfectly mixes sex and crime. His new book, I Was Waiting for You, tells the story of a young stripper and killer for hire who works between Rome and Paris on the track of a new mission to kill. As in most of his fiction, Jakubowski uses Italy and its people as a source of inspiration.

Italy is the focus of a series of encounters being held in the Italian Cultural Institute in London called “In Conversazione”. The previous conversation was with English writer Iain Pears and means to get English writers who have experience of living in Italy to discuss the Mediterranean country.

“I’ve always loved to travel and to write. Then it came natural to me to deal with topics as sex and crime,” said Jakubowski. “Italy turned out to be a perfect place for all of this!”

In the talk with journalist Barry Forshaw, Jakubowski ran through the Italian literary themes and outlining his privileged relationship with some of the leading contemporary Italian writers.

“It was thanks to the Festival of Courmayeur that I got in touch with Carlo Lucarelli, Gianrico Carofiglio and Marcello Fois,” Jakubowski said. “Their way of writing crime fiction really caught me. It’s clever and sharp.”

Italian thrillers and the UK

Being a writer and an editor, Maxim has gathered over years a lot of experience in the field and a lot of contacts with Italian writers as well.

Nonetheless, he finds that Italian culture still has some difficulties to get into the UK.

“Why do you think, for instance, that Scandinavian thrillers like Larsson’s [Editor’s note: Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo] have had such a great success and the Italians find it so hard to do?” asked the interviewer.

“I think it’s a problem of translation. ‘Traduttore, traditore’, they say in Italy, which means ‘translator, traitor’,” Jakubowski said. “It is true in a way, Italian is a very complicated language and not many people in the UK know it well enough to translate. I myself I wouldn’t do a great job!”

Sex and crime

Going back to his new book I Was Waiting For You, Jakubowski tells how difficult it was to dig it out from his mind: “It was supposed to take one year and it actually ended up being a 4-year-long project.”

“Why do you like talking about sex and crime? Is there a particular reason for that?” asks Forshaw.

“Well, it’s not that I specifically write about sex and crime,” Jakubowski said. “I like writing about human beings and about the way they interact with each other. Sex and crime just come into the plot naturally.”

The Maxim Jakubowski debate at the Italian Institute of Culture was the third of a series of meetings about English writers and their relationship with Italy. The next event will feature Australian-born writer Michelle Lovric and will be held on 6 December.

For more information, check the Institute’s website.

Italian Cultural Institute, 39 Belgrave Square London SW1X 8NX 020 7235 1461

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Fantastic Mr. Fox has nothing on this cosplayer. Photo Credit: Caroline Bodin

Have you ever fantasized about having superpowers? Do you dream of becoming a superhero? Does the flamboyant side of you wish you could wear tights, underwear as outerwear and accessorise with large weapons? Or maybe you just want to look choo-kawaii (supercute).

Hopefully any First Pint readers who do harbour these kind of leanings were at the Cosplay event in the Barbican last weekend. For those of you who couldn’t make it, or haven’t plucked up the courage to sew your own home-made hero costume, we have a picture slideshow of the amazing costumes on display at the Cosplay LATES night.

Cosplay is a Japanese phenomenon which allows the shyest person to don a costume and transform themselves into their favourite anime or manga character. There were a huge range of fabulous, terrifying, hilarious and out and out cute costumes on display. From celebrated manga and anime like One Piece to popular video games like Final Fantasy.

Ever been to a maid cafe? These ladies want you to experience it in London next month. Photo credit: Caroline Bodin

Next month, two of the London Cosplayers, bedecked in maid costumes, will be running a Maid Cafe in London. Maid Cafes sprung up in Tokyo a few years ago. In Harajuku, one of the city’s trendiest spots, you can go to a cafe to be attended to by girls in elaborate maid outfits.

The Cosplayers at the Barbican were a mixture of enthusiastic locals, hooked on the adrenaline of stepping into fantasy shoes while Japanese and other foreigners enjoying cosplaying in a new environment. The event opened with a parade of all brightly coloured costumes. This fashion show stood out from the regular though in that much of the audience was as well put together and outrageously costumed as the models sashaying down the runway.

Check out the pictures here:

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Hanna Vojackova, from the series 'Ridinghood from East End'. Photo courtesy of Czech Centre

Feel like exploring new contemporary cinema? The 14th edition of the Czech Film Festival is kicking off tomorrow Thursday 11 November in London. Films will be shown at the Prince Charles Cinema, the Riverside Studio and the Barbican .

This year’s festival is full of award winning features exploring different themes – history, politics or biopics, and different genres, ranging from documentaries to sci-fi.

The opening gala screening

The festival opens with the gala screening : Marek Najbrt’s Protector (2009). The screening will be introduced by screenwriter Robert Geisler. Marek Najbrt’s Protector has won this year’s Czech Lion awards, shared with and Tomas Masin’s Three Seasons in Hell (2010).

Gypsy night at the Barbican

Plenty of events will fill this year’s festival with a special night marking the bicentennial of Czech poet Karel Hynek Macha. A unique screening of Karel Anton’s silent film Gypsies (1921) will be accompanied with live music by Irena and Vojtěch Havel as a part of the Barbican silent film series, on 18 November. Tickets are £8.50 online, £10.50 full price.

Lost in translation?

The First Pint will be attending the première screening of the short documentary Czechin’ London by Tomáš Doležal and Marta Svobodová. The screening will be followed by the opening of the Lost in Translation? exhibition where you’ll be able to meet the artists and share your experiences of London. The screening starts at 4.15pm on Sunday 14 November at the Riverside Studio, tickets for the premiere are £5 but the exhibition is free!

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Iranian contemporary artist Hossein Khosrojerdi. Photo courtesy of the UKIFF

For the very first time in London, Iranian cinema will screen its best productions at the Iranian Film Festival from 19 to 24 November.

A lot of people, including The First Pint, took part at the preview that was held last week at the Roxy Bar in Tower Hill to launch the event. One of the aims of the festival is to gather people together and to give those who are interested the opportunity to get in touch with people working in the industry.

As a member of the Selection Committee, leading Iranian contemporary artist Hossein Khosrojerdi was there to bring the account of his experience of artist and intellectual in the country.

Hossein has now been living in London for the last year and a half taking part of the intellectual life of the city and promoting his country’s culture.

“I was honoured to be chosen as a member of the Selection Committee,” he said “I think Iranian cinema has a lot to say to the rest of the world.”

Thanks to the work of directors like Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iranian cinema is famous worldwide for its hinting at hidden meanings, conceptual concerns, and its silent and contemplative atmosphere.

“I think Iranian movies at their best have some peculiarities. Not only in the content, but also in the way of displaying images and in the use of light in photography,” Hossein added.

“A work of resistance”

Hossein Khosrojerdi tells us about the resurgence in Iranian culture and film after the revolution. Photo credit: Lillo Montalto

Not only is Iranian cinema clearly a “work of resistance,” as Pejman Danagi, one of the organisers of the Festival, said. After the revolution of 1979, and even more lately after the rise of Ahmadinejad in the tragic circumstances of June 2009 election, the intellectual life in the country significantly changed.

“It’s strange actually,” Hossein says “it seems like arts and culture got a big speed-up. The intellectual community grew bigger and bigger. Most of all, before the revolution there was a unique understanding of Iranian culture and afterwards everything fell apart and artists started to experiment in every direction.”

This is exactly what the festival aims to do: showing to English public the results of those experiments and giving an account of the cultural life in Iran.

“In Iran everything is hard, but I still believe in my culture and I think the 1^st Iranian Film Festival has done a praiseworthy job to promote it,” said Hossein in the end.

The 1^st Iranian Film Festival runs from 19 – 26 November. For more information, visit the Festival website or check out The First Pint’s preview of the event..

There is also a free film screening at the Brunei Gallery at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) on 16 November at 18.30h. Registration is required for the event – for more information, visit the website.

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