Culture Diary w/c 08-07-2024

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…

Monday – The Conversation 5.10pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8

“People were hurt because of my work, and I’m afraid it could happen again…” Francis Ford Coppola’s grimy 1974 surveillance thriller, The Conversation, is back in cinemas on the occasion of its 50th anniversary restoration. This stone cold classic of the period shares DNA with Alan J. Pakula’s trio of Klute, The Parallax View and All the President’s Men, as well as Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor, as 1970s Hollywood turned its attention to the politics of paranoia.

Tuesday – Exhibition Continues: R.I.P. Germain & Sara Sadik 6pm @ FACT Liverpool – FREE

Discover immersive installation and interactive film respectively in this pair of exhibitions freshly opened last week at FACT, where hidden worlds, fiction and documentary collide. Explore interdisciplinary conceptual artist R.I.P. Germain’s analysis of ‘the hyperobjects of Black culture’, and get involved in Sara Sadik’s Xenon Palace Championship, a safe space inspired by video games, anime, science-fiction and French rap.

Wednesday – Last Chance to See: You Get A Car [Everybody Gets a Car] Resolve Collective @ Tate Liverpool + RIBA North – FREE

Final days of the exhibition, pictured above, that saw Resolve Collective work with different creative communities from across Merseyside to redistribute and repurpose a host of material from the gallery’s currently closed Albert Dock site. The installation at Tate Liverpool + RIBA North, includes videos, sculpture and more.

Thursday – Alison Cotton 7pm @ Quarry, Liverpool – £11.50

Dark, avant garde, drone folk from Alison Cotton, whose 2024 album Engelchen tells the story of Ida and Louise Cook, the sisters who risked their lives to help those fleeing Nazism.  

Lauren Elkin discusses Scaffolding 6.30pm @ Waterstones, Liverpool – £5

Lauren Elkin, who came to many people’s attention with memoir, Flâneuse, and her recent exploration of feminist artists, Art Monsters, arrives in Liverpool (a city she used to call home) in support of debut novel of ‘ghosts, homes and the cycle of history’, Scaffolding.

Friday – MUBI FEST Manchester Aviva Studios – £Various

Self-described streaming service, curator, publisher, distributor and, crucially, cinema lover, MUBI FEST launches tonight with a mix of music, director Q&As and, of course, screenings (including Levan Akin’s Crossing and the Ross Brothers’ Gasoline Rainbow). Expect, among other things, a purpose-built cinema screening short and feature length films all weekend; Skepta’s directorial debut, Tribal Mark; and talks with Dazed x MUBI Cinema Club. With a cornucopia of paid and free events, MUBI FEST promises something for cinephiles of all stripes.

Liverpool Arab Arts Festival – £Various

The reliably excellent LAAF returns (from Friday) with the usual fantastic mixture of talks, art, screenings and family-orientated events taking place across the city. Highlights include: Port Cities (at Space Liverpool), a group exhibition exploring the social, economic, political and cultural heritage shared by port cities both here and in the Arab region; Marina Barham, General Director of Al Harah Theatre in Bethlehem Palestine, discusses the theatre and culture of the West Bank; and The Ayoub Sisters play Liverpool Philharmonic Music Room.

Saturday – Yawn Again from 1pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – £25

Future Yard’s all-day festival returns with Wirral’s favourite son, Bill Ryder-Jones, whose recent release, lechyd Da, arguably his best yet. Headliner Ryder-Jones is joined by Swim Deep, Amelia Coburn, Pet Snake, Holy Gloam, Nathaniel Laurence and Louie Miles.

Sunday – Amélie 5pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8

Following a trio of French New Wave classics with the French capital as their backdrop, Picturehouse’s ongoing Paris on Film season reaches the 21st Century, with Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 winsome romantic comedy, Amélie, in which our eponymous dreamer charms her way through the lives of others.

Mike Pinnington

Images/media, from top: The Conversation; Resolve Collective, Tate Liverpool; Alison Cotton; The Ayoub Sisters