ABIGAIL HUNT attends the London Short Film Festival, looking back on Pop: Contagion, Infection, Revolution! at the ICA.
Pop: Contagion, Infection, Revolution, a segment of the London Short Film Festival (LSFF) at the ICA, offered a sharp interrogation of pop culture’s layered meanings. Curated by Cici Peng, the programme brought together experimental moving-image works from across the globe, including Cuba, Palestine, Japan, the United States and Thailand. These films spanned three pivotal periods—the 1960s, the 2010s, and the present day —exploring pop’s dual role as both a tool for resistance and a mechanism of compliance.
The selection began with the 60s, a transformative decade when pop culture emerged as a global phenomenon, inseparable from youth movements and social upheavals. This era marked a pivotal shift, as pop aesthetics not only reflected the rise of capitalism and globalisation but also served as a powerful platform for rebellion and critique. These interacting mechanisms become evident in the relationship between identity, desire, and resistance inherent to pop culture—ideas reflected in the works of Kenneth Anger and Toshio Matsumoto.
Kenneth Anger’s Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965) mesmerised with its hyper-stylised vision of hot rods and surf rock, crafting a surreal ode to postwar consumerism. The work immerses viewers in a meticulously constructed vision of postwar American consumerism—a performance of manufactured desire. The film’s deliberate, almost ritualistic pacing and fetishistic focus on machinery and male bodies serve as critiques of the ways in which capitalism transforms identity into a commodified performance, masking existential voids beneath polished exteriors. The film’s glossy surfaces and sensory and textural overloading signaled a transformation of desire into commodity, a perversion of the American Dream into fantasy of masculinity and machinery. Meanwhile, Toshio Matsumoto’s For The Damaged Right Eye (1968), emerging from Japan’s political upheavals, shattered coherence with frenetic montages of protest clashes and psychedelic distortions. The brilliant collision of dissonant pop score with fractured images of rebellion presented instances of political oppression, repurposing visual and auditory clash and distortion into tools for dissent.
Through its more contemporary works, the programme examined how pop operates within today’s digitally-driven and commercialised world. Diane Severin Nguyen’s If Revolution is a Sickness (2021) stood out as an incisive exploration of cultural identity and political consciousness through the lens of K-pop. Centring on the Vietnamese diaspora in Poland, the narrative highlighted a complex interplay between shared cultural expression and commercialisation; revolutionary imagery appeared in striking dissonance to pop culture elements, underscoring the tension between local identity and global consumption running beneath the film. Revealing the hidden realities beneath K-pop’s polished aesthetic, the film suggested that even within commodified mediums, there lies potential for new forms of cultural and political expression. Similarly striking was Akosua Adoma Owusu’s Split Ends, I Feel Wonderful (2012), which added a joyous energy to the programme; this personal favourite of mine offered a kaleidoscopic celebration of Black women’s hairstyles, utilising archival footage from New York hair salons with a funk music soundtrack to create a unique experimental short. The film’s dynamic blend of vibrant visuals and funk rhythms not only highlights the creativity and cultural significance of Black hairstyles but also draws parallels to the 1970s pop music scene, where funk became a powerful expression of identity, empowerment, and pride.
Other notable contributions included Nicolás Guillén Landrián’s Coffea Arábiga (1968), which critiqued Cuban coffee production using surrealist humour to satirise the racial discrimination involved in Cuba’s agricultural policies; the incorporation Beatles’ tracks alongside images of Fidel Castro, Landrián subverts nationalistic narratives to expose racial inequalities in labor practices. Equally, Tulapop Saejaroen’s People on Sunday (2020) offered an expressive critique of the construction of “free time” under late-stage capitalism.
Overall, what united these works was their shared commitment to challenging familiar representations. Each film peeled back layers of cultural imagery often taken at face value, revealing deeper political and social undercurrents. In doing so, they transformed elements of pop—typically associated with entertainment or escapism—into tools for critique and reflection. Ultimately, Pop: Contagion, Infection, Revolution was more than an exploration of pop culture; it was a powerful critique of its complexities.
The programme highlighted how pop can inspire change while simultaneously reinforcing existing structures—a tension that lies at the heart of its influence. The refusal to simplify or romanticise its subject matter is what enabled this collection to capture what makes pop so compelling: its ability to provoke thought while remaining deeply embedded in everyday life. Beneath its surface lies a contested space where creativity and ideology intersect, challenging audiences to rethink their relationship with the cultural images that surround them. This nuanced approach echoes the work of cultural critics like Ellen Willis, who long argued for understanding pop culture as a complex site of both pleasure and politics.
Featured image: Still from For The Damaged Right Eye (1968), Toshio Matsumoto. Image source: asianmoviepulse.com.
