We’re excited to present the second part of a programme of films by Michel Lipkes, in collaboration with Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and Birkbeck Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies. Lipkes’s films explore human solitude and yearning in a context of overwhelming urban alienation, in which relationships of power condition existential predicaments. His films convey a sense of cinema based on a variety of influences that go from Nicholas Ray to Robert Bresson and from Samuel Beckett to JG Ballard. These references enrich his fictionalised portrayals of a contemporary Mexican reality in which people are marginalised within a space that crushingly determines their fate.  

Spitting Against the Wind
Michel Lipkes, 2005, 28 min

Cyrille Henry Revueltas is a young musician, who after finishing school in Mexico City lived in Brussels and suffered many tribulations due to his alcohol addiction. Coming out of rehab in the city of Chihuahua, he decides to restart his life.

Strange but True
Michel Lipkes, 2017, 91 min

The love story between Jonathan and Yesi, two trash collectors who work under the authority of a despotic and violent crew leader.  

Followed with Q&A with the filmmaker  

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Mexican filmmaker Michel Lipkes has dedicated much of his professional life to programming, by means of which he has been able to participate in many festivals and institutions such as Cineteca Nacional, Guadalajara International Film Festival, and FICUNAM (former artistic director). He has also collaborated as a producer with Raya Martin, Manuela Laborde, Philippe Grandrieux, Lav Diaz, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Mara and Eugenio Polgovsky.  

Programme 1 of “Alien Nation: The Cinema of Michel Lipkes”, will be presented at Birkbeck Cinema on Friday 21 October 2022, 6pm and followed by a Q&A with Michel Lipkes. For more information visit: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/remote_event_view?id=33615