Mixed Messages

It is the year 2060 and AIDS has been eradicated. However, in some, the HIV virus has now mutated into a gene from which a drug can be produced that has become the white powder of the twenty-first century. With a virtually supported scanning system, secret police are trying to identify anyone who carries this gene. Filmed in Berlin, Taiwan-born multimedia artist and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang’s science fiction dystopia revolves around a struggle to gain control over the production and exploitation of bodily fluids. Her film is like an orgiastic opera; a breathless round of bodies, secretions, performances and sexual acts often performed in the service of an overriding economy. An unusual, largely experimental and deliberately parapornographic drama in which the borders between the sexes as well as homo-, hetero-, bi-, trans- or intersexual are constantly blurred.

Three days in the life of four friends after which there's no going back. That moment in your life when everything changes forever. The boyish Liza and the girly Sally live in a messy London flat, where they consume rather a lot of alcohol and drugs. Sally is working in a cafe, while Liza works on songs for their post-punk band. But Liza is also consumed with jealousy over Sally's ex, who lives in Germany. Kanchi Wichmann’s promising debut contains plenty of sights, sounds and sensations that will be familiar to those acquainted with the east London queer scene – indeed, a timely sense of place is one of the strengths of this twentysomething drama.

Girlfriends Liza and Sally hover precariously between trying to fix their troubled relationship and chasing success with their band, while their friends: sex worker Vin and bartender Jamie, each have desires to make big changes to their lives. Kanchi Wichmann's director's cut is a provocative ode to the vibrant, thriving 24-hour party scene of London's alternative music bars and queer clubs.