Back again for it’s 14th edition, the London Short Film Festival (LSFF), with it’s sizeable programme and unusual offerings, can be a daunting festival to delve into. We select five treats you might want to look towards.

Leading the theme of the festival, subcultures, is the LSFF’s Riot Grrl related event, White Trash. ’90s shorts from Jennifer Reeder, Sadie Benning, Tamra Davis and others showcase a style of female filmmaking informed by the political girl punk of the time and related feminist movements. Attendees to the screening get a zine made specially by Clara Heathcock for the LSFF, and panelists will weigh in after on on the content and ethos of the films, as well as drawing modern parallels with current DIY minded movements and initiatives.  

Maybe the most enticing, promising event in the festival is Free, White and 21, put together by the British Council’s Jemma Desai, as part of her excellent independent curatorial project I Am Dora. Subtitled with a quandary: “how do you survive London in 2017?” the event will place short films investigating the experience of marginal groups in the city – films that explore tensions between “artists and institutions, activism and the state and media, rave culture and gentrification, immigration and belonging” – alongside conversations surrounding related matters. Alongside films from Mark Leckey, Alnoor Dewshi and Menelik Shabazz, Jemma has assembled a formidable panel to follow – Shola Amoo (A Moving Image), Cassie Quarless & Usayd Younis (Generation Revolution) and journalist Kieran Yates (co-author, Generation Vexed and editor of the British Values zine). This is one not to miss.

Similarly unique, the event designed by by the LSFF’a Young Programmer Laura Perrachon – What Matters Deafness of the Ear, When The Mind Hears? aims to be accessible equally to people with hearing impairments as well as hearing audiences. Screening a number of silent 16mm and 35mm works from people like Stan Brakhage, Cecil Turner and Florence Hepworth, Perrachon will present her selections without any live accompaniment as is often the custom for silent works. Sharing this absence, hearing and hearing-impaired viewers will be immersed in a cinema of silence together. The post film Q+A with the BFI’s Bryony Dixon (BFI) and Silent London’s Pamela Hutchinson will be accompanied with sign language interpreters.

A curveball in the lineup, 2003 Britney Spears vehicle Crossroads has the recently returned pop star road tripping with friends in pursuit of her estranged mother. Read journalist Simran Hans on the film, then see her chat to director Tamra Davis after the screening. “Camp, in all its tender sincerity, prevails.”

Special events are all well and good, but the bulk of LSFF in in it’s new shorts programmes. Over 500 shorts from hundreds of new and exciting filmmakers are spread across 46 programmes show what the LSFF is really about, showcasing work for emerging talent and a finding place for short film in cinemas. Selecting which to go to is a difficult task, but programmes are divided into doc, experimental, comedy and mid length strange, as well as divisions under other guiding themes. Take a shot.