13th Keswick Film Festival - 23rd-26th February

I'm sure you need no reminding that the 13th Keswick Film Festival starts on Thursday evening with the party for pass holders and a screening of In Love With Alma Cogan followed by a Q&A session with its director Tony Britten. There are lots of other films over the weekend and more premieres and pre-releases than ever before (I think!).

We're delighted to welcome back the Lancaster Millennium Choir on Saturday evening. Tony Palmer will talking about his epic adaptation of Wagner (showing all day Sunday) and Bird On A Wire (Sat 10pm), plus teenage actor Alex Etal will be on hand for questions at the family screening of Ways To Live Forever.

Of course we're really excited to be joined by John Hurt throughout the festival. If you need a reminder of why you should be excited just take a look at this wonderful video:

Post Mortem - Sunday 19th February 5pm

The Pope's Toilet - Sunday 11th February 5pm

We stay in Latin America for Sunday's offering, The Pope's Toilet, set in Uruguay. According to the Evening Standard,

This small but perfectly formed Uruguayan comedy from César Charlone and Enrique Fernández has the fetching Cesar Troncoso as Beto, a financially strapped petty smuggler from the small town of Melo near the Brazilian border, who hopes the Pope’s 1988 visit will provide his wife and daughter with financial succour as well as the appropriate blessing.

Though this is a comedy, it is also shrewd and humane about its peasant characters, painting the leading character’s wife and solemn little daughter (the marvellous Virginia Ruiz) who wants to be a radio announcer rather than a seamstress, with real sympathy. It’s charming in a proper way, entirely avoiding sentiment and, with Olivier Assayas’s Summer Hours, can be counted one of the best films in town.

Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) - Sunday 5th February 5pm

The film we have this Sunday WILL be different to anything else you see, and defies normal description!

 'Surviving Life (Theory and Practice)' is a surreal tale from Czech director Jan Svankmajer  based on the premise that it is 'your dreams that are real, while your waking life is an exotic, strange tissue of unreal diversions' - Peter Bradshaw, Guardian. Our hero, a happily married man, has vivid dreams of a beautiful woman dressed in red. He goes to a psychoanalyst for help...to remain IN the dreams, not to escape them... The film itself is a mix of live acting and animated cutouts, including models of the actors themselves...we have pictures on the wall of Freud and Jung coming to life to discuss the results of their work... so think Terry Gilliam meets Woody Allen. As David Jenkins, Time Out, say, the result 'harnesses the skewed workings of the subconscious, confirming Svankmajer as a master filmmaker and knocking films like ‘Inception’ and ‘The Matrix’ into a cocked hat. Just dreamy!' I will say no more; come along and see for yourself!