Playback: The Rider Preview

Celebrate International Women's Day in style with Playback Festival 2018 and Birds Eye View, who are taking over the Genesis Cinema for an evening. 

Join us from 7pm for networking drinks—including the IWD2018 cocktail—with Birds Eye View and Playback/Random Acts crews, alongside protest art workshops and a preview screening of Chloé Zhao's The Rider, one of the finest examples of the female gaze you’ll see all year. 

Throughout the evening, artist Ruby Wright creates a 'Wailing Wall' of art, where you can let out every feeling about women's position in the world right now. You can choose from doing a collagraph, a collage or a stencil. 

From 9pm we watch two exclusive films—Crashing Waves by Emma Gilbertson and A Single Bracelet Does Not Jingle by Anita Safowaa—then preview The Rider, which has been lauded at the Cannes, Sundance and London film festivals (and is released by Altitude in September 2018, so this is a super-advanced sneak peek). 

South Dakota rodeo star Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) awakens from a severe head injury after a horse stamped on his skull. The doctors tell him he must give up the sport—one that is his passion but also his lifeline—for fear it may kill him. While his sister Lily is mentally disabled and his father drinks, gambles and womanises, Brady is the crutch that supports the family – but without the rodeo, he’s facing a life of misery.  

Playback Festival 2018 brings together the work of over 300 emerging artists in one interactive exhibition of short experimental films, alongside five days of screenings, live spoken word performances, discussions and practical workshops. Taking place at the Institute of Contemporary Arts from 21–25 March 2018, Playback Festival is free to attend. Playback is part of a joint initiative between Arts Council England and Channel 4's Random Acts. 

Birds Eye View, a charity run by film industry heavyweights whose mission is to bring ever greater audiences to films by women, building on their work as a film festival showing only films by women from 2003-14,  celebrate their 15th year of making a difference in 2018. They have 25,000 followers and an exciting programme to announce at this event, something to sign up for and help make a difference. 

Ruby Wright is an artist, musician and occasional radio maker. She has worked for BBC Radio 4, the Arts Council of England, Tate Modern and The Architecture Foundation, and had radio pieces broadcast on Resonance FM in London and NPR in the United States.