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  • SEASON 15
    Threshold Between Worlds

    Season 15: AUTUMN 2025 • 10 films

    A brand-new series of films, Threholds Between Worlds, explores cinema's capacity to capture the moments where old certainties dissolve but new realities haven't yet crystallised. From Kurosawa’s moral doppelgängers to Greenaway’s encyclopedic survivors, each work functions as ethnography of transformation: people, places and eras in that unstable space between things. Changing, but into what?

  • The Machine that Kills Bad People

    Roberto Rossellini | (1952)

    EXIT

    The Machine that Kills Bad People

    Roberto Rossellini | (1952)

    Rossellini’s fantastical 1952 departure from neorealism is a Brechtian parable about the relationship between divine justice and human will. Emerging from post-war Italy’s crisis of moral authority, the film’s central premise – the existence of a camera that can eliminate evildoers – is a thought experiment that asks whether perfect justice is desirable. Rossellini’s camera maintains its neorealist commitment to pure observation, even as the story ventures into pure allegory, reflecting his belief that cinema's primary function is revelation rather than entertainment. The film’s raw comedy, though undeniable, masks serious engagement with questions of power, corruption and the seductive appeal of the absolute.

  • The Magic Flute

    Ingmar Bergman | (1975)

    EXIT

    The Magic Flute

    Ingmar Bergman | (1975)

    Bergman’s 1975 adaptation of Mozart’s most famous opera represents a radical departure from traditional theatrical film. Shot at the intimate Drottningholm Court Theatre, the film reflects Bergman’s belief in theatre as a sacred space, a belief inculcated in him as a child when he visited the baroque theatre Drottningholm, in Stockholm. The film – resulting both from that childish impression and a director at the height of his artistry – is a blissful, luxurious opera that promises to deliver the spiritual consolation that traditional religion fails to offer.

  • Stray Dog

    Akira Kurosawa | (1949)

    EXIT

    Stray Dog

    Akira Kurosawa | (1949)

    Kurosawa’s post-war thriller (1949) operates as a Dostoyevskian meditation on moral doppelgängers, where the prosecutor and prosecuted emerge from the same social wreckage of defeated Japan. Following a young detective whose pistol is stolen from his pocket and used in a series of crimes, the film’s existential framework draws from the concept of "après-guerre" – the lost generation theory that dominated Japanese intellectual discourse in the late 1940s – and Murakami's pursuit through Tokyo’s underworld becomes an allegory for Japan's search for moral identity. Tokyo’s sweltering summer heat functions as both literal atmosphere and metaphysical condition – the fever of a nation in moral crisis. 

  • Stolen Kisses

    François Truffaut | (1968)

    EXIT

    Stolen Kisses

    François Truffaut | (1968)

    The episodic structure of the 1968 comedy-drama Stolen Kisses reflects the influence of Italian neorealism on French New Wave aesthetics, where meaning emerges through the accumulation of observed detail rather than conventional plot development. This is experience over instruction, and feeling over form, and always hostile to institutional authority. The film follows recurring character, the serially unlucky Antoine Doinel (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud) as an embodiment of what Deleuze and Guattari would later call “becoming”—the process by which subjects transform through encounter with difference. 

  • The Falls

    Peter Greenaway | (1980)

    EXIT

    The Falls

    Peter Greenaway | (1980)

    Greenaway’s encyclopedic sci-fi comedy The Falls (1980) functions as poststructuralist meditation on narrative, classification, and the relationship between order and chaos. A story in 92 parts, it begins with the world being struck by a mysterious incident called the “Violent Unknown Event” . Though some might think the film's three-hour runtime is an endurance test for viewers, the absurdism and episodic lightness make it a dreamlike trip through pure creativity. It also might not be too foreign to the contemporary spectator: the film anticipates digital culture's information overload while maintaining faith in systematic organisation as a method for understanding complexity.

  • La Vallée

    Barbet Schroeder | (1972)

    EXIT

    La Vallée

    Barbet Schroeder | (1972)

    In Schroeder’s sly La Vallée, which follows a woman who goes on a strange and accidental voyage of self-discovery through the New Guinea bush, the Western search for authentic experience is revealed to be a reproduction of colonial self-inquiry. Vivianne, the protagonist, initially takes part in an expedition to find a rare exotic bird, but the search warps into a hunt for a cloud-obscured valley that appears on only one (destroyed) map. Schroeder's observational style maintains a critical distance from his characters' primitivist fantasies, while acknowledging his own complicity in the colonial gaze that the film critiques.

  • Edward II

    Derek Jarman | (1991)

    EXIT

    Edward II

    Derek Jarman | (1991)

    Jarman’s 1991 Edward II is pure, queer historical revisionism, revitalising Marlowe’s Elizabethan tragedy to explore how sexual dissidence continues to challenge state power. In Jarman’s characteristically anachronistic visual style, past and present exist simultaneously, in which homosexuality functions as both identity category and political position. Jarman’s punk aesthetic embodies what José Muñoz would later call “disidentification” – the process by which marginalised subjects transform dominant cultural forms to express alternative possibilities. Produced at the cusp of the mishmash of the 1990s and at the tailend of the AIDS pandemic, the film is a gutsy, poignant intervention in the very formation of history itself.

  • Crystal Gazing

    Laura Mulvey | (1982)

    EXIT

    Crystal Gazing

    Laura Mulvey | (1982)

    Crystal Gazing is applied feminist film theory – and spiritually transcendent. Four people – a science fiction illustrator, a saxophonist, an analyst of satellite photography and a PHD student meet at intervals in recession London. Each character represents different positions within the symbolic order that governs visual representation, and – drawing from Lacanian psychoanalysis – the work examines how subjectivity is constructed through the act of looking and being looked at, with particular attention to how women navigate patriarchal visual regimes. The science fiction elements function as estrangement devices in the Brechtian sense, making social relations appear strange and therefore open to critique – much as 20th century feminism sought to first name, and then make strange, the shadowy form of patriarchal authority.

  • Woyzeck

    Werner Herzog | (1979)

    EXIT

    Woyzeck

    Werner Herzog | (1979)

    Georg Büchner's book Lenz and Woyzeck – on which this film is based – is a proto-expressionist exploration of madness as rational response to irrational circumstances. The film, made in 1979, follows the eponymous Woyzeck as he begins to experience a breakdown in his small town, in an examination of how traditional moral categories collapse under the pressure of modern social organisation. Kinski’s characteristically nutty performance reveals the violence underlying civilised social relations through direct assault on spectator sensibilities, who are forced to watch him undergoing a series of menial experiments and then committing an act of true violence. As always, Herzog’s documentary approach to fictional material reflects his belief in cinema’s capacity to reveal hidden truths about human nature through careful observation of extreme situations. 

  • Bread and Roses

    Ken Loach | 2000

    EXIT

    Bread and Roses

    Ken Loach | 2000

    TRAILER

    "Bread and Roses" (2000) is Ken Loach's passionate exploration of labour organizing among immigrant janitors in Los Angeles. The film follows Maya, a young Mexican woman who becomes involved in the "Justice for Janitors" campaign alongside her sister Rosa, who works as an office cleaner.

    Loach collaborates with screenwriter Paul Laverty to create an authentic portrayal of precarious employment, workplace abuse, and the courage required for collective action. The film's title references the famous labor slogan demanding both economic security ("bread") and dignity ("roses"). Shot with Loach's characteristic naturalistic approach, it features a mix of professional actors and real activists, lending credibility to its political message.

    NB* We apologise for the poor quality of the the Print, its the only availible option currently and we hope it doesn't take away from the film's timely message.

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Seasons Library

SEASON 14 True Brit

Spring 2025 • 10 films

British cinema is synonymous with the kitchen sink drama and its claims to realism. On this season of Now Showing we present a series of realist classics from these islands that emerge not only from specific cultural and historic moments, but also interrogate the very nature of representation itself. Whether through the quiet serenity of turn-of-the-century Wales, the Technicolour vibrancy of the Swinging Sixties or the quiet despair of crisis-riven 1970s London, these films examine how British filmmakers have used the medium to explore the complexities of identity, class, race, and gender; not just documenting the world as it is, but questioning how we perceive it.

SEASON 13 The Stranger

Autumn 2024 • 10 films

What happens when a stranger comes to town? A staple of cinematic diets, this season considers characters who enter lives, communities, or even minds, serving as a catalyst for profound revelation. Featuring films by Francois Truffaut, Juliet Bashore, Isaac Julien, Yasujirō Ozu, Werner Herzog, Michelangelo Antonioni, Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, Claire Denis and Peter Greenaway, Season 13 of TANKtv Now Showing considers the Stranger: mysterious encounters, parallel selves, and the essential weirdness of one's own psyche.

SEASON 12 Lust for Life

Spring 2024 • 14 films

Guest-curated by filmmaker Andrea Luka Zimmerman, season 12 of Now Showing ranges across many decades of cinema in pursuit of the pulses of desire and resistance in lives and locations often deemed marginal. Season 12, featuring films by Robert Bresson, Dennis Hopper, Ron Peck, Kent Mackenzie, Mira Nair, Leontine Sagan, Bill Douglas, Sally Potter, Lorenza Mazzetti, John Akomfrah and Andrea Luka Zimmerman, both examines and embodies humanity’s limitless lust for living.

SEASON 11 Forbidden Colour

Autumn 2023 • 12 films

These kaleidoscopic films by visionaries Bergman, Bidgood, Bakari, Greenaway, Herzog, Pasolini, Ozu, Jarman and Rosso represent the most enchanting, troubling and shocking uses of colour in cinematic history.

SEASON 10 Lives of the Saints

Spring 2023 • 12 films

There can be no sainthood without struggle, and for Ingmar Bergman, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Robert Bresson, Margaret Tait, Carl Th. Dreyer, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Christopher Newby, Liv Ullman, Toshio Matsumoto, Timothy Neat, Jamil Dehlavi and Edward Bennett, the divine vision is in the details. Available for rental only.

SEASON 9 Conception

Autumn 2022 • 12 films

TANK’s ninth season, featuring films by John Cassavetes, Jean Cocteau, Terence Davies, Peter Greenaway, Werner Herzog, Derek Jarman, Takeshi Kitano, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Mike Leigh, Laura Mulvey & Peter Wollen and Yasujiro Ozu, show that between the idea and the story there is a universe of possibility. Available for rental only

SEASON 8 Escape

Summer 2022 • 10 films

With films by Kryzsztof Kieślowski, Deniz Gamze Egüven, Andrei Tarkovsky, François Ozon, Cristian Mungiu, Hal Hartley, Atom Egoyan, Jean Vigo, Michael Haneke and Louis Malle – offering stories that cross borders, identities and contexts – this season looks at escape anew, not as resignation from our environment, but as re-engagement with it. No Longer available.

SEASON 7 Back to Earth

Autumn 2021 • 10 films

TANK presents ten films selected by the curators at Serpentine Galleries, as part of their multi-year project Back to Earth. Showing films by Agnès Varda, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Gianfranco Rosi, Charlie Chaplin, Luc Jacquet, Bela Tarr, Thomas Vinterberg, Lars von Trier and Babak Jalali. No Longer available.

SEASON 6 Ritual

Summer 2021 • 10 films

This season, we present 10 films spanning six decades by directors who train their lens on this ancient human practice, who, in doing so, capture the often unsaid behaviours and gestures that make us us. Showing films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrew Haigh, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Haneke, Agnès Varda, Corneliu Porumboiu, Aki Kaurismäki and Atom Egoyan. No Longer available.

SEASON 5 Metamorphosis

Spring 2021 • 10 films

We are pleased to be showing you 10 films spanning seven decades from the greatest names in cinema, including Andrei Tarkovsky, Wim Wenders, Paolo Sorrentino, Agnès Varda, Béla Tarr, Paweł Pawlikowski, Gabriel Axel, Robert Bresson, Olivier Assayas and Atom Egoyan. No Longer available.

SEASON 4 On Versimilitude

Autumn 2020 • 12 films

This season, we are pleased to be showing 12 films spanning seven decades from the greatest names in cinema, including Andrei Tarkovsky, Michael Haneke, Paolo Sorrentino, Agnès Varda, Louis Malle, Roy Andersson, Andrea Arnold, Hal Hartley, Denis Villeneuve, Peter Strickland, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Mia Hansen-Løve. Through rich storytelling and technical nuance, these directors bring to light cinema's raw power to move and to persuade, and perhaps, to flicker more truthfully than life itself. No Longer available.

SEASON 3 Sculpting in Time

Summer 2020 • 12 films

We look at films spanning five decades that approach time in profound ways, featuring Abbas Kiarostami, Paolo Sorrentino, Agnès Varda, Yorgos Lanthimos, Roy Andersson and more. From the hyper-real to the arcane, each provides its own portal into what Tarkovsky described as the “inner, moral qualities essentially inherent in time itself”. No Longer available.

SEASON 2 Growing Pains

Spring 2020 • 12 films

Filmmakers return to childhood because while it is universal, it is rarely identical. Whether delving deep into the turbulent experience of our earliest years or tracing their reverberations into adolescence and adulthood, these twelve films journey back to where it all begins. No Longer available.

SEASON 1 Beyond Varda

Winter 2019 • 10 films

With director Agnès Varda’s death in 2019, the film world lost a leading (and too-often overlooked) member of the Nouvelle Vague, a cinematic innovator and a pioneering voice. This season of TANKtv marks that legacy with 10 films by female directors for whom Varda laid a cinematic foundation. No Longer available.

SEASON 15 Between Worlds

Autumn 2025 • 0 films