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.