Past Events and Screenings

Join friends and former colleagues from Kabul for a catch-up at the annual Afghanistan Christmas Drinks at the Frontline Club. For the fourth year in a row the Club is hosting the evening. No entrance fee is required and there is a pay bar – This year please register to attend through the Frontline Club.

We are delighted to welcome Anthony Loyd to present his classic piece of war writing My War Gone By, I Miss It So, reissued in November 2015 with a new introduction by the author. Please join us for a delicious three-course dinner and an evening of captivating discussion.

A monthly social evening for journalists and others in the London media world. The London Press Club, which has been bringing the industry together since 1882, has resurrected the tradition of regular drinks, on the back of popular demand.

Several acclaimed documentary filmmakers come together for an evening discussing the art of character-driven documentary and working with characters.

We welcome our members to join us in celebrating the end of another incredible year of inquisitive debate, delicious food and drink, compelling documentaries, insightful discussion and stimulating company. There will be entertainment, canapés and cocktails courtesy of Chivas Brothers.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Adam Sjöberg. I Am Sun Mu documents the life and work of North Korean defector and pop artist ‘Sun Mu’. In North Korea, Sun Mu was a prolific propaganda artist for Kim Jong-un’s regime. After swimming to safety and beginning a new life in South Korea, Sun Mu turned his skills against North Korean leadership, satirising those who he once worshipped.

The Club Quiz returns in November with quizmasters Caroline Johns and Dr Keith Surridge. They have prepared questions that will test your knowledge and live up to the reputation of being billed as one of ‘the hardest quizzes in London’. Teams can consist of up to six people, and there will be five rounds of 10 questions. The entry cost is £5 per person, with all money raised going to the Frontline Fund, assisting families of fixers around the world killed or injured while working with the international media.

One Second of Light is the culmination of a decade of experience observing and capturing the lives and stories of people around the world. Giles Duley will be joining us to present his work, to talk about how his approach to photography has changed and how this has affected the projects he embarks on and the work he produces.

Spotlight tells the astonishing true story of The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Spotlight” team of investigative journalists, who in 2002 shocked the city and the world by exposing the Catholic Church’s systematic cover-up of widespread paedophilia perpetrated by more than 70 local priests.

For this special event we are delighted to be joined by the film’s director and co-writer Tom McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer, along with The Boston Globe journalists that the film is based on: Sacha Pfeiffer and Mike Rezendes.

We are delighted to welcome Max Porter to present his exceptional new book Grief Is the Thing with Feathers. This deeply moving study of loss is partly based on the author’s life and partly inspired by Ted Hughes’ Crow. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.

Gulwali Passarlay was only 12 years old when he left his home and family in Afghanistan. He would be shot at, imprisoned and almost drown before he reached his new home in Britain. We welcome Gulwali Passarlay to the Frontline Club to share his story as documented in his memoir The Lightless Sky, and to offer his personal insight into the current refugee crisis.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Farid Eslam via Skype.

From the early days of the Arab Spring that sparked hopes for change to the years of instability and political tension that followed, this enthralling documentary follows the stories of young prominent underground artists from across the Middle East during the period of 2009 to 2013.

For this unique event a selection of short documentaries by celebrated ethnographic filmmaker Vincent Moon will be screened in alternation with an informal discussion by the director of London’s Institute of Philosophy Dr Barry Smith. He will explore the neural correlates of meaning, music and language in the context of each film, to offer the audience an explanation of the role of language in subjective mental life.

We are pleased to welcome Sandra Rodríguez Nieto to the Frontline Club in conversation with Ed Vulliamy, writer for the Guardian and Observer. They will be discussing the poverty, deep levels of corruption, incapacitated government institutions and US meddling that have combined to create an explosion of violence in Juárez.

For our fourth in a series of events in collaboration with the Scientific Exploration Society, we will be exploring the relationship between water shortages and the large population movements we are seeing today. We will be looking at how the effects of climate change are being seen across the Middle East and North Africa, the supply and control of water in the region, and the technologies that are being developed to combat the problem.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with producer Hugh Hartford.

Kisilu tells the story of Kisilu Musya, a Kenyan farmer living at the front line of our changing climate. The film intimately documents his family’s struggle against the extreme storms and drought that threaten to destroy their home and crops. Determined to educate his community about methods to combat the damaging impact of extreme weather, Kisilu becomes an impassioned advocate of climate change awareness.

James Harkin and Theo Padnos will be joining us to discuss the dangers to freelancers in Syria and how to avoid them, how to survive captivity and torture, the descent of Syria and the rise of the Islamic State.

This event is off the record, please refrain from filming and reporting the discussion.

Join us for an evening of short documentaries from different parts of the world, covering a wide range of topics. Shorts at the Frontline Club showcases moving, striking and funny films, exploring the diverse faces of documentary filmmaking.

The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement, put an end to the most violent conflict in Europe since World War II. But 20 years on have the divisions been bridged? Have the wounds healed? We will be joined by a panel of those who were involved in the negotiations along with those who covered the war to reflect on the events of 20 years ago, the process of peace and reconciliation that followed, and whether the country today is reconciled.

For an estimated ten million people around the world, the question “what am I without a nation?” is a constant reality. Photojournalist Greg Constantine has spent the past decade documenting the lives of the stateless around the world. He will be joining us to present Nowhere People, a body of work that reveals the human face of statelessness whilst providing tangible evidence of a problem that is far too easy to ignore.