The Courtyard Cinema celebrates two independent filmmakers in December

Looking forward to our Cinema screenings in December, we are very pleased to welcome two films from independent film makers – Kie Cummings and João Ganho.

Kie Cummings will be known to some of you as a past practitioner of the Courtyard’s Film Making Club, and we will be presenting his short film ‘Focus Throw’.

‘Focus Throw’ was created through Voices With Impact, an international programme in Canada that commissions just ten filmmakers worldwide each year to create new work exploring mental health. Kie’s proposal was selected as one of ten recipients. The film closed out the premier festival in Vancouver earlier this year and Kie was invited to attend on an all expenses paid trip!

Highlighting the success of Dan Pembroke a world-class javelin thrower living with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a progressive eye condition that is slowly narrowing his sight ‘Focus Throw’, in its short 6min running time, follows Dan through training grounds, home life, and moments of profound honesty, revealing the private challenges behind public triumphs. Created by local filmmaker Kie Cummings, blends poetic visuals with intimate documentary storytelling, offering a rare insight into Dan’s resilience, identity, and the emotional landscape behind Paralympic success. Filmed with sensitivity and a strong visual signature, it traces Dan’s journey from childhood ambitions to world-record gold — and the unseen struggles he carries along the way.

Following this 6min short is Play it Again, Yuki.

Yuki Rodrigues is herself an unusual story. Her childhood in Japan and adolescence in Portugal, alone and away from her closest relatives. The integration in a culture that was simultaneously familiar and very distant. The classical music world experienced as a female and above all abandoning a career at its leverage point due to an unexpected and unexplainable lesion.

Devoting herself to overcome a diagnosis and unwilling to surrender for 18 years, Yuki lived the restlessness, the anger, the hope and the light, in a stoic path that took her from leaving music behind to getting back to composing and recording. Her return in 2023 is marked by an album, where she presents herself for the first time as a composer, recorded in the famous Henry Wood Hall located just off London’s Borough High Street and set in the beautiful conservation area of Trinity Church Square. Yuki’s album Search for Eden – Namban Crossing is, in her own words, a hymn dedicated to all those who suffer or have suffered a significant loss.

We are excited to welcome both Kie and Portuguese director of Play It Again Yuki João Ganho to introduce the screening and a post screening Q&A on Tuesday 9 December at 7.45pm. We will have an additional screening of both films on Thursday 11 December at 2.30pm.