City Screen celebrates Women's Work in season spotlighting writers, directors and screen stars

The first movie in the spotlight that night at 8.30pm will be New Zealand director Jane Campion's 1993 drama The Piano (15), starring Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Anna Paquin and Sam Neill.

The setting is New Zealand in 1851, when mute pianist Ada (Hunter) travels with her young daughter (Paquin) and beloved piano to the colonies for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner. Her stern and practical new husband (Neill) sells the instrument to his neighbour, George Baines (Keitel).

Attracted to Ada, Baines agrees to return the piano in exchange for piano lessons that become a series of increasingly charged sexual encounters. By the way, Campion’s exquisite work remains the only female-directed film to have won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

"Like many industries, commercialism has a tendency to fade out the women who engineered its success and with Hollywood’s big-buck rise came the suppression of females in film," says City Screen marketing manager Dave Taylor. "Women’s Work politely reminds us that movie making isn’t just a man’s game and women are as at large now as they were then. The full eight-week season reveres new films from intriguing new directors and nods fondly to those who’ve paved the way."

In Jenny Lu's The Receptionist (18) on August 7 at 6pm, Tina (Teresa Daley), a Taiwanese graduate living in London, starts working at an illegal massage parlour as a receptionist when unable to find a job. As she comes to know the women in this most dysfunctional of artificial families, where sex lies at the core of everything, she sees how they struggle to find a way to make their lives work, with an undercurrent of violence and danger always lurking. "Inspired by a true story, The Receptionist is a powerful and award-winning exploration of dashed migrant dreams on Europe’s mean streets," says Taylor.

City Screen will show a preview screening of writer-director Desiree Akhavan's The Miseducation Of Cameron Post (15) on August 22 at 8.30pm. Chloë Grace Moretz plays the title role, Cameron Post, who looks the part of a perfect high-school girl, but after she is caught with another girl in the back seat of a car on prom night, she is shipped off to a conversion therapy centre that treats teens “struggling with same-sex attraction”.

At the facility, Cameron is subjected to outlandish discipline, dubious “de-gaying” methods and earnest Christian rock songs, but this unusual setting also provides her with an unlikely gay community. For the first time, she connects with peers and is able to find her place among fellow outcasts.

Writer/director Akhavan (Appropriate Behavior) and co-writer Cecilia Frugiuele have adapted Emily Danforth’s coming-of-age novel to create a refreshingly original teen movie. Balancing drama with understated humour, the film portrays a teenage girl grappling with pain and loss who, at the same time, creates a family on her own terms and learns what it means to empower herself by having confidence in her own identity.

Deborah Haywood's new film Pin Cushion (15), on August 28 at 6pm, stars Joanna Scanlan and Lily Newmark in the story of eccentric single mother Lyn and her teenage daughter Iona moving to a new town hoping to make a fresh start.

Glenn Close in The Wife, previewed at City Screen on September 26 as the finale to the Women's Work season 

Their relationship treads a fine line between heartbreakingly tender and unsettlingly creepy. As Iona tries desperately to fit in with the cool clique at school, she distances herself from Lyn, whose hunchback and distinctive dress sense make her an easy target for mockery. A rift grows between the pair, whereupon they retreat further into their respective fantasy worlds with disastrous consequences.

On September 4, at 6pm, the spotlight falls on the Women Over Fifty Film Festival. As #MeToo and #TimesUp shine a light on the film industry's dark side, this festival fights back, showing "short films that amuse, astound and agitate, celebrating the work of older women on both sides of the camera".

Chloé Zhao made an impressive directorial debut in 2015 with Songs My Brothers Taught Me, set among Native American Indians living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Born in Beijing but raised in Britain and the United States, Zhao returns on September 11 at 6pm with The Rider (18), once again set in South Dakota and this time focusing on the broken dreams of a young cowboy.

Performed by non-actors, including Brady, Tim and Lilly Jandreau, and based partly on their real-life experiences, Zhao's film constructs a portrait of frustrated youth and American cowboy culture, filmed beautifully by God's Own Country cinematographer Joshua James Richards.

Brady Jandreau plays a semi-autobiographical version of himself, coming to terms with a near fatal rodeo accident that leaves him unable to ride again on the advice of his doctors. Struggling to leave the sport he loves and the horses and riders of a tight-knit community, Jandreau is the soulful presence at the heart of this sensitive and emotionally gripping drama.

In a preview screening on September 26 at 8.30pm, Glenn Close stars alongside Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater, Max Irons and Elizabeth McGovern in Bjorn Runge's The Wife (certificate TBC). Close plays Joan Castleman, who has spent 40 years sacrificing her own talent, dreams and ambitions to support her charismatic husband Joe (Pryce) and his stellar literary career.

Ignoring infidelities and excuses made in the cause of his art, she has put up with his behaviour with undiminished grace and humour. The foundations of their marriage have been built, however, on a set of uneven compromises and Joan has reached a turning point. On the eve of Joe’s Nobel Prize for Literature, she will confront the biggest sacrifice of her life and some long-buried secrets.

Based on Meg Wolitzer's book, The Wife is a poignant, funny and emotional journey, a celebration of womanhood, self-discovery and liberation.

Tickets for Women's Work are on sale on City Screen's new phone number, 0871 902 5747, in person at the Coney Street box office or at picturehouses.com.