Shorts starring Sally Hawkins and Maxine Peake among those in the line-up.

Sini Anderson’s feature documentary The Punk Singer, about Bikini Kill and Le Tigre frontwoman Kathleen Hanna, is to open the 11th London Short Film Festival (Jan 10-19). The opening night is presented in associated with Birds Eye View.

There will be a record 32 programmes of new short films in this year’s LSFF selected from open submission entries.

They include the opening night selection Funny Sh*t which will feature work ranging from Benjamin Bee’s one-minute Orange Charlie to Rémy Bazerque’s 15-minute Have You Seen Napoleon?.

Regular programmes include Femmes Fantastique featuring Mat Kirby’s The Phone Call starring Sally Hawkins, and Douglas King’s Let’s Go Swimming, starring Josie Long. 

Lo-Budget Mayhem will see 29 inventive works in the running for the Lomography Award, and Global Stories will present British filmmakers illuminating the world in works that will include Karen Martinez’s Trinidad-set After Mas’, and Assaf Machnes’ Auschwitz On My Mind, about Israeli schoolchildren on a trip to the former concentration camp. 

New sections include the experimental and documentary strand Celluloid Traces, which will screen Rob Munday and Vicky Dale’s Lady.Moving.Train.Man, made from the receipt stubs found on trains, and Magnus Irvin’s comedy Cake. 

 The Gothic And The Grotesque is a collaboration with the BFI’s Gothic season, while the late-night Thriller will feature tense, adrenalin-fuelled thrill-rides including Michael Pearce’s Keeping Up With The Jonses, starring Maxine Peake and Adeel Akhtar, and Matt Harlock’s The Monkey Cage.

The documentary programmes are titled Night Of The Living Docs, Long(er) Docs, A Window On The World and the experimental section Hinterland & Frontiers. 

LSFF takes place at venues throughout London including regular cinemas such as the ICA and the Curzon Soho, and also at bars in Dalston and Hackney and the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill.

A series of panel debates will take place throughout the festival called Discussion @ LSFF.  There will be retrospectives of the work of documentary filmmaker Eva Weber, and filmmaker Jane Linfoot. Both will take part in Q&As presented in association with Lighthouse/BFI.

            The work of UK writer Tony Grisoni and UK animator Chris Shepherd will also be showcased. 

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