India Cabaret, dir. Mira Nair, India 1985, 60 min.
Book tickets
Two films about stripping and striptease.
Focusing on dancers from a Mumbai cabaret, this early documentary feature from Mira Nair attends to the tensions between the women’s daytime existence and their nighttime activities. India Cabaret is, in Nair's words, “about the unshakeable inviolability of double standards, of patriarchal values, of the strong conditioning of women never to question or challenge."
A portrait of stripper Ellion Ness in shimmering black and white, Gunvor Nelson’s Take Off takes off in several senses of the word. After removing her clothes, Nelson’s protagonist undoes her body parts as well before the film ends on an intergalactic note. Nelson’s camera encircles Ness with irony, humour and razor sharp critique.
Programme
India Cabaret, dir. Mira Nair, India 1985, 60 min.
Take Off, dir. Gunvor Nelson, USA 1972, 10 min.
This screening is accompanied by a newly commissioned essay by Devika Girish.
Focusing on dancers from a Mumbai cabaret, this early documentary feature from Mira Nair attends to the tensions between the women’s daytime existence and their nighttime activities. India Cabaret is, in Nair's words, “about the unshakeable inviolability of double standards, of patriarchal values, of the strong conditioning of women never to question or challenge."
A portrait of stripper Ellion Ness in shimmering black and white, Gunvor Nelson’s Take Off takes off in several senses of the word. After removing her clothes, Nelson’s protagonist undoes her body parts as well before the film ends on an intergalactic note. Nelson’s camera encircles Ness with irony, humour and razor sharp critique.
Programme
India Cabaret, dir. Mira Nair, India 1985, 60 min.
Take Off, dir. Gunvor Nelson, USA 1972, 10 min.
This screening is accompanied by a newly commissioned essay by Devika Girish.
The Machine That Kills Bad People is, of course, the cinema – a medium that is so often and so visibly in service of a crushing status quo but which, in the right hands, is a fatal instrument of beauty, contestation, wonder, politics, poetry, new visions, testimonies, histories, dreams. It is also a film club devoted to showing work – ‘mainstream’ and experimental, known and unknown, historical and contemporary – that takes up this task. The group borrowed their name from the Roberto Rossellini film of the same title, and find inspiration in the eclectic juxtapositions of Amos Vogel’s groundbreaking New York film society Cinema 16.
The Machine That Kills Bad People is held bi-monthly in the ICA Cinema and is programmed by Erika Balsom, Beatrice Gibson, Maria Palacios Cruz, and Ben Rivers.
The Machine That Kills Bad People is held bi-monthly in the ICA Cinema and is programmed by Erika Balsom, Beatrice Gibson, Maria Palacios Cruz, and Ben Rivers.
Book tickets
06:30 pm
Tue, 11 Nov 2025
Cinema 1
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Cinema 1
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