Another season has ended; Christmas is here again. We hope you have enjoyed the films this season; we visited twelve different countries and included five 'F-rated' films (films with 'significant female involvement'). There was an average of over 111 people at the shows, with an average score of almost 80% so It looks like you did enjoy it, or at least most of them. The lowest attendance was 61 (at Rheged for the classic 'The Graduate' - I guess we will stick to new films in future...), the highest was 170 for 'A Man Called Ove', whilst the score ranged from 44% for 'The Ghoul' to 91% for 'Land of Mine'. I think my favourite was probably 'Franz' - what was your favourite? Let us know over on Facebook or Twitter.
This Sunday at 5.00 we finish our season with our only Japanese film - After the Storm - where we meet Shinoda: down on his luck, trying to make ends meet as a private detective, not accepting the end of his marriage. His attempts to make up with his family are given a boost by the storm, which keeps all of them together over night at his mother's house. Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, "After the Storm is a family drama, a 21st-century variation on the classic Japanese style of which this film-maker is now the international standard-bearer... There is such intelligence and delicacy in Koreeda's film-making, such wit and understated humanity."– Peter Bradshaw, Guardian.
If you remember I Wish, or Still Walking, you will know what he means; this should be a gentle film, where food and family meals take on high importance....just right to put you in the mood for the Club Christmas meal which follows straight afterwards, and the Christmas break which we hope you enjoy until we are back on 7 January.
This Sunday at 5.00 we have a French treat - The Midwife - starring Catherine Frot (a French star since the 1970s who specialises in comedy roles) and Catherine Deneuve, who has been around French cinema even longer, playing almost any roles, but starting with ‘aloof, mysterious beauties’ - Wikipedia. The Midwife brings the two together in almost the opposite roles; Frot as a well-organised, contented midwife and Deneuve as the ex-mistress of her father, now a fun-loving lush.
All reviewers agree that the two actors are great, making the meeting between the two characters very memorable: "What brings the two women together after 30 years? ...With Martin Provost's film deepening pleasingly as it goes on, and both women (Frot and Deneuve) giving excellent performances, you'll enjoy trying to work it all out" – Matthew Bond, Mail on Sunday. (I don't think I have quoted him before, but I thought he said it all and that you might like to try to work out what 'deepening pleasingly' means at the same time!).
We have a mental twister for you this Sunday at 5.00 when we are back in the UK for - The Ghoul. Before you start thinking of zombies and ghosts, this ghoul is just someone who can't resist looking at crime scenes. Our hero, Chris is a policeman looking for a particular ghoul to help him solve a crime... OR is he a depressive who goes to a therapist for help?
"In other words, writer-director Gareth Tunley offers us not one but two diegetic routes through his feature debut, one paved in genre, the other in a more banal realism. While from early on it is clear – and meant to be clear – which is the master narrative and which the slave, the decision to present and interweave both through Chris's addled perspective ensures that fantasy continues to contaminate the most grounded of sequences, and vice versa" – Anton Bitel, Sight & Sound.
Four weeks ago we saw In Syria, experiencing the war from inside. In The Other Side Of Hope we have the story of Khaled, a Syrian refugee trying to make sense of Finland. It's a humorous look at two cultures ("Don’t smile in the street" another refugee advises, and the glum faces seem to bear that out.) It's also the story of numerous outsiders and misfits, not least Waldemar Wikström who gives him a job in a rather odd restaurant. Aki Kaurismäki gained the Golden Bear for best director at the Berlin Film Festival. It perhaps tells us something about all our attitudes to refugees.
On our filmic trip round the world, we are stopping off in India this Sunday at 5.00 for Hotel Salvation. Specifically, we go to Varanasi; for those of you have been watching Sue Perkins trip down the Ganges on TV, you will know that Varanasi is THE place to go for Hindus to die and to be cremated on the side of their sacred Ganges river, so much so that hotels have sprung up for these people to spend their last days. Well, this is the desire of 77 year old Daya, who decides he is about to die. The film is a comedy drama about Daya and his son Rajiv who travel there and book in to ‘Hotel Salvation’ to wait...there journey of joint discovery should give us moments of joy and laughs as well as plenty of reasons to think.
God's Own Country has been impressing critics and audiences alike since it was voted the best film at Edinburgh Film Festival earlier this year. As someone who came to Cumbria from Yorkshire it comes as a relief after looking at films based around war to find something more familiar. But the world of hill farms, not dissimilar to our own fell farms, is a hard one and none more so than here where the young man John feels himself imprisoned into running the farm after his father’s stroke even though he would rather be off to university with his friends. He is falling into depression when hope arrives in the form of a Romanian farm worker, Gheorge who possibly knows more about farming than John but certainly creates the love interest in the film. And with beautiful views of Yorkshire, what more could you want?
We are off to Rheged this week for a 'two pronged' evening; we start with a new 50th Anniversary 4K digital version of the classic The Graduate at 5.00pm, followed by a discussion on 60s films. For those who may never have seen it (does such a person exist..?!), or who may have forgotten, 'The Graduate' is played by Dustin Hoffman in the part that made him famous. He takes on both Mrs Robinson (Ann Bancroft) and her daughter (Katherine Ross) and they are all backed by the music of Simon and Garfunkel.
The added discussion on 60's film will be led by two professors from University College who have spent three years gathering memories of 1960s films. They will tell us what they have found out and add your thoughts to their findings.
So, all round, it should be an evening of great memories for us to remember!
Our October films have been dominated, with one exception, with war and occupation but all of them are very different. This is present day Damascus and told from the point of view of an ordinary family caught up in the never-ending conflict. In Syria (Insyriated) is almost entirely shot inside the last occupied apartment in a clock on a single day where a mother Oum Yazan (Hiam Abbass) tries to hold together her family and neighbours. Nearly all the actors, children included, are Syrian refugees showing us something of what life might be like now in Syria.
South Korea are our hosts this Sunday at 5.00 for The Age of Shadows, which promises to be "a giddily compelling South Korean movie about war, spies and resistance history" - so says Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times – while Geoffrey Macnab in the Independent thinks it "is pulsating storytelling, suspenseful and often very stylish too". Set within the Korean resistance, fighting for independence from Japan, there are infiltrators and double agents on both sides and leaks all round. 'Trust no-one' seems to be the adage. Expect an action packed thriller!
This week we're showing Frantz, the latest film from François Ozon. It is 1919, only a few weeks after the war has ended and the inhabitants of Quedlinburg - a small town in Germany - are trying to come to terms with losing the war and losing their loved ones. Anna cannot get over her fiancé, Frantz: she is even still living with his parents. She visits Frantz's grave every day. One day she sees a stranger placing flowers on the grave. He turns out to be Adrien...a Frenchman. What is he doing there? How did he know Frantz?
We are off to Brazil this Sunday at 5.00 for Aquarius, in the company of Sonya Braga who plays Clara, a retired music critic, more interested in enjoying life than taking the money offered to her by developers who want her to move out of her apartment. The film is more about time; about ageing; about enjoying the place you live your life, than it is about the fight with the developers, taking in corruption in the state along the way ('allegedly' the film and Sonya Braga missed out on Oscar nominations due to the makers protests at Cannes about the former Brazilian president). As Ann Hornaday from the Washington Post puts it, "Aquarius makes a compelling case for looking up from our ubiquitous distractions to take in the world around us - the one that we live in and, whether we're aware of it or not, lives in us". For us living in such a beautiful place as we do, this should be an easy lesson, but an enjoyable one too.
Certain Women is certainly a leading film for women in the cinema; written and directed by a woman (Kelly Reichardt) and starring four women (Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern and Lily Gladstone), it ticks all the boxes for an ‘F-Rated’ movie. Set in the heartland of Montana, the film focuses on the small events in the lives of these four women; there is little or no connection between them - it is the parallels between them that Kelly Reichardt is showing us. As Catherine Wheatley says in Sight & Sound, she does this with the help of some ‘breathtaking cinematography’ and some great acting – "They know to keep their counsel, these women: know the importance of restraint, silence, of knowing when to speak and when to act and when to stay still. So, too, does Reichardt". The result is "Powerful, focused, nervy, lean. Certain Women is a work of art produced by a director in full control of her material. It leaves you reeling". Prepare to be 'reeled'!
The Olive Tree (El olivo) is a gentle and often humorous Spanish and German film about the olive heritage of southern Spain. I was talking to someone after seeing it who had just been in Spain and said that a two hour high speed train journey south from Madrid went past little else but olive trees and the occasional farmhouse for mile after mile. But this is a very special tree, 2000 years old and reluctantly sold by our hero Alma's grandfather in Valencia when he was desperate for cash to a German energy giant. A decade later he is suffering from dementia and Alma (Anna Castillo) thinks getting the tree back might help him. The story of how it is eventually returned to its home touches on corporate greed, what the French might call terroir and the power of social media. In Dusseldorf the tree looks a bit like we now see animals in a circus. How can anyone not like this film about the values that matter?
Our Autumn programme starts on Sunday 10th September with A Man Called Ove, the third most watched swedish cinema-film in Sweden of all time. Other highlights include God's Own Country, which you'll no doubt hear a lot more about when it goes on general release next week. New films from acclaimed directors François Ozon and Kelly Reichardt, a celebration of 60s cinema with a 50th anniversary screening of The Graduate and a chance to find out how After The Storm ends. 15 great films from all around the world to take us through to the end of the year, take a look at the trailers below...