Games for Actors and Non-Actors

In a Durham mining town during the 1984 strike, eleven-year-old Billy is sent to boxing lessons and sneaks into the ballet class next door. His father and brother are on the picket line, and the idea that Billy might dance is almost as hard for them as the strike. It is a family story, a class story and a story about who is allowed to want what.

Why it’s here: It's a film about what a community does with a kid who doesn't fit. What's punk is the strike behind the story: the film doesn't treat the picket line as a backdrop. What's pedagogical is the question it asks at the dinner table: who decides what boys are allowed to love? Pairs with Pride (suggested 10-14), The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists and Julian Is a Mermaid. Note: strike-era police violence and homophobic and gender-policing insults; PG-13 equivalent (15 in the UK).

In 2021, twenty-six royal treasures looted by French troops from the Kingdom of Dahomey in 1892 are returned to Benin. Diop follows one artifact, a statue numbered 26, as it is packed up in Paris and carried home, and ends with Beninese students arguing over what the return means and who it is for. Part documentary, part essay, with the statue itself given a voice.

Why it’s here: It's a film about what it takes to return what was taken. What's punk is a statue that speaks and a room of students who tell the government it's not enough, twenty-six pieces out of thousands. What's pedagogical is the debate at the end: who owns history, and who decides? Pairs with Open Veins of Latin America, King Leopold's Ghost and Discourse on Colonialism. Note: short (68 minutes), slow and poetic; French, Fon and English with subtitles.