Bluecoat: Let’s Make Films: The Director Series
Date: 1.9.26 - 15.12.26
Time: 17:00 - 20:00
Location: Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool, L1 3BX
Join Let’s Make Films for their new weekly series exploring filmmakers, with sessions offering a deep creative breakdown of their films, influence and wider place in cinema.
Weekly sessions from Tue 1 Sep – Tue 15 Dec
Led by Sammy Holden, The Director Series focuses on four directors: David Lynch, Agnès Varda, Jafar Panahi and Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Each month explores a single filmmaker, with sessions offering a deep creative breakdown of their films, style, themes, visual language, sound, editing, influence and wider place in cinema.
£8 per session
David Lynch: Dreams & Subconscious Logic
The Director Series begins with the dream logic of Mulholland Dr., before we build a short dream sequence of our own
Tue 1 Sep, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
David Lynch: Industrial Sound & Uneasy Spaces
Using selected extracts from Mulholland Dr., we look at how Lynch uses sound to disturb an ordinary space before anything is revealed.
Tue 8 Sep, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
David Lynch: Doubles & Fractured Identity
Through the Mystery Man scene in Lost Highway, we examine how performance and film form can make a character’s identity begin to slip.
Tue 15 Sep, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
David Lynch: Making the Influence Your Own
For our final Lynch session, we take what his films have taught us and use it to shape a new scene without copying their familiar surface.
Tue 22 Sep, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
Agnès Varda: The Everyday as Film Material
Beginning with The Gleaners and I, we look at how Varda builds cinema from the objects, routines and details that people often pass by.
Tue 6 Oct, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
Agnès Varda: Voice, Memory & Self-Portrait
Through The Gleaners and I, we look at how a filmmaker can enter their own work without taking control of everything it means.
Tue 13 Oct, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
Agnès Varda: People, Politics & Care
Using Black Panthers, we look at how a political portrait can hold a clear point of view while giving the person on screen room to speak for themselves.
Tue 20 Oct, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
Agnès Varda: Serious Subjects, Playful Form
For our final Varda session, we explore how a serious subject can meet a playful form without losing its meaning.
Tue 27 Oct, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
Jafar Panahi: Restrictions as Structure
Beginning with This Is Not a Film, we examine how Panahi uses one room, an absent film and the limits of the frame.
Tue 3 Nov, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
Jafar Panahi: Cars, Rooms & Moral Pressure
Using the opening of Taxi Tehran, we look at how one fixed camera and a cramped car can hold an argument much larger than the space itself.
Tue 10 Nov, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
Jafar Panahi: Where Fiction Meets Documentary
Returning to Taxi Tehran, we examine how a film can move between observation and construction, and the responsibility that comes with bringing real life into the work.
Tue 17 Nov, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
Jafar Panahi: Urgency at Low Volume
For the final Panahi session, we ask how a film can feel urgent without becoming overtly loud.
Tue 24 Nov, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Atmosphere & Quiet Fear
Using the Forbidden Room sequence from Pulse, we look at how distance and time can make an ordinary room frightening without a jump scare.
Tue 1 Dec, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Technology, Loneliness & Unseen Threat
Through Pulse and Cure, we ask what carries more fear: seeing the threat or only sensing that it has entered the room.
Tue 8 Dec, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa: The Slow-Burn Clock
Using Cure, we trace how small changes in time and control build dread without rushing towards a conventional payoff.
Tue 15 Dec, 5-8pm
£8 (booking required)
