Visionary

There are cult films, and then there are films that seem almost to disappear. For this special edition of Visionary, part of our Future Vision summer series, we unearth a conversation with the late Mike Hodges, the director who gave British cinema Get Carter, to revisit its stranger, more playful follow-up: Pulp.Hodges tells Benjamin Wilson how the 1972 film grew out of his fascination with B-movies, postwar Italy, political extremism and the strange scandals of the paparazzi age, before taking shape with an extraordinary cast led by Michael Caine and Mickey Rooney.But at the heart of the conversation is Lizabeth Scott. One of film noir’s most distinctive stars, Scott had largely retreated from the screen when Hodges persuaded her to return for what would become her final film appearance. He recalls their delicate first meetings, her anxieties about returning to the camera and the moment she decided to take the role – before dismissing some of the rumours that have followed her performance ever since.A rare encounter with a great British filmmaker, looking back at a forgotten Hollywood star and one of the most curious films of his career.

Hollywood once had the studios, the money and the tools. Not anymore.AI is making visual effects cheaper, professional kit is increasingly accessible and filmmaking is spreading far beyond Los Angeles. Meanwhile, a new generation of directors is honing its craft on YouTube and Instagram rather than working its way through the studio system.So who gets to make a movie now? Does Hollywood still matter? And could the next great director already be building an audience online?From Backrooms to blockbusters made across London, Glasgow and Sydney, Benjamin Wilson reports on the technology, talent and new production hubs reshaping how films are made — and who gets to make them.

What does the end of civilisation look like when you strip away the Hollywood spectacle?In this episode of Future Vision, our special series exploring the future of creativity and filmmaking, film journalist Caspar Salmon examines Sirāt — Oliver Laxe’s haunting vision of a world coming apart at the seams, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2025.Set among ravers travelling through the deserts of North Africa as war unfolds somewhere beyond the horizon, Sirāt approaches the apocalypse at an unusually human scale. There are no collapsing skyscrapers or armies of extras. Instead, Laxe draws on non-professional actors, documentary-style filmmaking, an unforgiving landscape and a story deliberately untethered from conventional geopolitics.From its echoes of Mad Max: Fury Road to the remarkable performance of Sergi López, Caspar explores how Sirāt blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality — and how its small-scale, independent approach creates a depiction of societal collapse that feels all the more immediate, elemental and unsettling.

Hand-drawn animation changed cinema forever. Long before CGI and artificial intelligence transformed the screen, pioneers like Max Fleischer proved that imagination, craftsmanship and technical invention could create entire worlds from pencil and paper.In this special edition of Visionary's Future Vision series, Jane Fleischer Reid, granddaughter of the legendary animator, reflects on the extraordinary legacy of the Fleischer Studios – the creative force behind Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman and some of the most inventive cartoons ever made. She tells the story of Max Fleischer's restless curiosity, the invention of the rotoscope, the studio's surreal artistic style, and the painstaking restoration of more than 100 classic films from original archive materials.As digital tools make image creation easier than ever, Fleischer's work feels even more relevant. In an era of AI-generated content, audiences are rediscovering the value of artistry you can feel in every frame. The imperfections, ingenuity and unmistakably human touch of handcrafted animation are becoming a premium once again – reminding us that the future of entertainment may depend as much on preserving creative craft as inventing new technology.

Gattaca imagined a world where every aspect of human potential could be measured, optimised and ranked. Nearly 30 years later, that future feels uncomfortably familiar.In this narrated exploration, writer Caspar Salmon revisits Andrew Niccol's 1997 science-fiction classic to ask whether Gattaca was really about genetics — or whether it foresaw today's culture of relentless self-improvement, biohacking, productivity and optimisation.As AI, genetic testing and performance-enhancing technologies become part of everyday life, the film's central question feels more relevant than ever: what happens when the pursuit of perfection becomes society's defining value?Future Vision is Visionary's special summer series focussing on the future of cinema and what it tells us about the direction of our real world. Brought to you by Here East, London's home of innovation.

We're pausing our usual format over the summer to bring you Future Vision — a special series exploring the changing film and television industry. Over the coming weeks, we'll examine everything from visual effects and production design to the rise of the creator economy.We begin with Supergirl. Not the version currently in cinemas, but the original 1984 film that first brought Superman's cousin to the big screen.Helen Slater was just eighteen when she landed the title role, fresh out of drama school. She was flown to Pinewood Studios to train in trampolining, sword fighting and horse riding before joining a cast that included Faye Dunaway, Peter O'Toole and Peter Cook.Recorded before the release of the 2026 reboot, Slater reflects on a film that has since become a cult classic. She recalls the technical challenge of its ambitious flying sequences, the script rewrites that reshaped the production and the experience of carrying a major studio franchise at such a young age. She also offers a candid assessment of why Supergirl failed to match the success of its Superman predecessors, and what that says about Hollywood's long struggle to build enduring female-led superhero franchises.With the new Supergirl also filmed in the UK, the conversation offers a timely perspective on how blockbuster filmmaking has evolved — and on the pressures that still accompany launching a superhero franchise.