Merry Christmas from Keswick Film Club

A Small Act brings us to the end of our Autumn season of films. We're now taking a short break over Christmas but we'll be back on January 8th with The Well Diggers Daughter. There are another 10 films in the Spring Programme as well as an evening of short film and around 30 films on offer at the 13th Keswick Film Festival in February.

Merry Christmas.

A Small Act - Sunday 18th December 2011

And so to our final film of 2011. It only seems like a week or two ago that Adele Blanc Sec kicked off the autumn programme.  A Small Act, on Sunday shouldn't contain any battle scenes, nor any embarrassing nuptuals. From the Guardian:

Directed by an American graduate in African history from UCLA and the University of Nairobi, this touching documentary takes its title from the small amount of money given each month to pay for the education of a poor boy in rural Kenya. Hilde Back arrived in Sweden as a refugee in 1940; her parents died in the Holocaust. The beneficiary of her generosity, Chris Mburu, subsequently went on to Harvard Law School, as did his cousin Jane, and both are now leading figures with the United Nations...

The Princess of Montpensier - Sunday 11th December 5pm

In the run up to Christmas, this week's film, The Princess of Montpensier, should be lighter than last week's. Bertrand Tavernier has been directing films since the 1960s (remember 'Sunday in the Country' or 'Round Midnight'?). He is one of the most prolific and generous of directors, and there is no word that summarizes a "Tavernier film" except, usually, masterful.

The story here is of a noblewoman forced to marry a man she has never met. It is set against the religious wars of the 16th Century in France, but it tells mainly of the  the contradictions between her value as a possession and as an object of desire, between her desires (for both knowledge and passion) and her complete lack of rights to decide for herself.

Outside The Law - Sunday 4th December 5pm

This week's offering looks good - Outside the Law, set in the time of the struggle for independence in Algeria. I am particularly looking forward to seeing one of my favourite actors, Jamel Debbouze in a more serious film - he was the Grocer's assistant in Amelie and the lead in Luc Besson's Angel A, if that rings any bells.

TimeOut described it as follows

French-Algerian filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb’s ‘Outside the Law’ is a fierce historical tale with Jean-Pierre Melville’s ‘Army of Shadows’ (1969) written all over it. Even more sweeping and provocative than his ‘Days of Glory’ (2006), which honoured the contribution of North African troops to the liberation of France in 1944, Bouchareb’s latest fictionalises the origins and campaign of Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN), the movement that waged a campaign of violence in France and Algeria in the run-up to independence in 1962. It’s a big, bold film defined by a reserved passion, a stately style and strong performances from its three leads.