Films 2022/2023

These are the films that we are showing over the next 12 months

18th September 2022 After Love GB, 2020 – Aleem Khan – 89 mins	Mary Hussein (Scanlan) in her early 60s, a convert to Islam at marriage, lives quietly with her husband Ahmed. But when he dies, she discovers, a day after the burial, he had a secret life just 21 miles away from their Dover home, in Calais. As she struggles with her shattered sense of identity, her search for understanding has surprising consequences…
16th October 2022 I Am Not a Witch GB, 2017 – Rungano Nyoni – 93 mins	Shula (Maggie Mulubwa – mesmerising) is a serious, silent 8-year-old accused of being a witch. Attached to a huge spool of ribbon, she is pulled this way and that by the absurd expectations, hostilities and demands of those around her. Satirical, surreal, memorable, original and intensely moving. Zambian-born writer/director Nyoni’s dazzling debut.
20th November 2022 L’Homme du Train France, 2002 – Patrice Leconte – 88 mins	A gangster (Hallyday) alighting at a deserted train station, reluctantly accepts the hospitality of a retired teacher (Rochefort) only too happy to have company. But the longer this odd couple are together the more each begins to realise that something might be said for the other’s way of life… A sly, charming, melancholic, genuinely funny divertissement.
11th December 2022 The Epic of Everest GB, 1924 – Cpt. John Noel – 87 mins	Extraordinary, compelling and moving as (mute) historic record of Mallory and Irvine’s tragic expedition, BFI restoration and Simon Fisher-Turner’s haunting music raise this to higher levels still. The serendipitous result: a vivid encounter with palpable, implacable Otherness (‘The Goddess-Mother of the World’; our deaths) rarely equalled on film.
15th January 2023 That Sinking Feeling GB, 1979 – Bill Forsyth – 87 mins	Unemployed teenager Ronnie (Buchanan) and hapless pals spend their time hanging around Glasgow’s rainy parks and dingy cafes, but everything changes when he hatches a plan to make them rich by stealing a job-lot of sinks. Hilarious and inventive, Forsyth’s zero-budget debut supplies a potently authentic depiction of 70’s Glasgow youth culture.
19th February 2023 Bicycle Thieves Italy, 1948 – Vittorio De Sica – 93 mins	In poverty-stricken 40s Italy, a working-class man’s bicycle is stolen. Without it he will be unable to do the job he’s just landed, so he and his son set out on a desperate search through Rome to find it again. A simple, gritty, grounded story of ordinary lives directly and captivatingly told, and the (justly) famed foundation-stone of postwar neo-realism.
26th March 2023 The Bride Wore Black France, 1968 – François Truffaut – 107 mins	The husband of Julie (Jeanne Moreau) is inexplicably shot dead on the church steps on their wedding day. Truffaut (avowedly and playfully drawing on his idols Hitchcock and Renoir for inspiration), follows her systematic and deadly revenge, as she tracks down, charms and kills the five men responsible, with a light, idyllic style. Elegant – and wicked.
16th April 2023 The Wind that Shakes the Barley GB, 2006 – Ken Loach – 127 mins	Against the backdrop of the Irish War of Independence, in 1920 two brothers (Cillian Murphy, Padraic Delaney), fight a guerrilla war against British forces. Not simply a denunciation of British beastliness, but an evocation of the futility and fratricidal despair seemingly encoded into the Free State at birth by the brutality employed in its self-becoming…
21st May 2023 City of God Brazil, 2002 – Katia Lund & Fernando Meirelles – 124 mins	In the favelas of Rio, two kids’ paths diverge as one struggles to become a photographer, the other a drugs kingpin, in a live fast, die young world. Superb location photography, a pacy, punchy editing style, an ingenious, imaginative approach to narrative, terrific performances and expertly choreographed action. Hyperkinetic, and hugely impressive.
18th June 2023 Tokyo Story Japan, 1953 – Yasujiro Ozu – 135 mins	From the simple tale of an elderly couple visiting their grown-up children in Tokyo, Ozu draws compelling contrasts between the measured dignity of age, the hurried insensitivity of a younger generation, and a daughter-in-law’s sympathy. Ozu’s most enduring masterpiece, and a beautifully nuanced exploration of filial duty, expectation and regret.
2nd July 2023 Three Colours:Blue Poland, 1993 – Krzysztof Kieślowski – 100 mins	The first of the trilogy exploring the French Revolutionary ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity, starring Juliette Binoche as a woman who tries to build a new, independent life after surviving the accident that kills her young daughter and composer husband. A lucid and arresting study of the notions of individual freedom in the modern world.