Unorthodocs at Somerset House

The new documentary film season at Somerset House aims to display the most quirky, surreal and profound films produced in recent years – specifically films that might be out of register with what makes its way on to British television – its main aim being to reveal 'documentary at its most innovative.' Each screening will be followed by a Q&A with members of the filmmaking teams. The films will be screened on select Mondays throughout February and March. 
The season kicks off with Basically: Johnny Moped on the 9th February; a funny and moving documentary alongside little-seen archive about punk's forgotten band. Then on the 23rd of February comes Oscar-nominated How To Survive a Plague, which depicts the continued struggle by a group of political activists against political indifference and religious hostility in the midst of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.  The screening will be followed by a Q&A with aids activists and academics. 
In March, Swedish documentary Concerning Violence will be showing on the 2nd, which documents the writings of pioneering anti-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon as African colonialism drew to a close in the late 1960s. Her narration rolls over archival footage of the liberation struggles on the continent which unsettled the world order in the 1960s and 70s.
To finish off the season comes a pertinently timed screening of Fredrik Gertten’s 2011 Big Boys Gone Bananas! which tells the story of the legal action successfully brought against the multinational Dole Food Company, which was followed by a defamation lawsuit against the filmmakers, and the ensuing legal struggle. The film's focus on the fragility of freedom of speech has particularly current resonance and will undoubtedly make for fascinating watching.