20th Keswick Film Festival

Film, films, films, guests, Osprey Awards...and more

Here we go again! Our normal one film on Sunday is replaced by 30+ films from Thursday night till Sunday night; our normal one venue is enhanced to four - the Alhambra, Theatre by the Lake (Main House and Studio) and Rheged - AND we have guests, The John Hurt Patron's Legacy Project (including free films) and the Osprey Awards: a Cornucopia of Filmic Fun!

Hopefully you have all got your programmes and your tickets or passes by now; if not, you can always buy on the door. All the details are on the festival website, but don't miss out; a reminder that you need to get a ticket for anything at the Studio even if you have a Festival Pass (though it will be free with a pass) - make sure you get this well in advance as there might be a queue at the Theatre box office.

So come on down and have fun! Bring your friends, try and help anyone looking lost (we are the Friendly festival!) and enjoy yourself; which film is going to be the one we all remember (the 'I didn't expect that to be so good' film)?  Which one will get the highest vote? Why not tweet your thoughts too? The more we get mentioned, the more people will notice...and you might be the one who makes them think it is worth coming along.

See you there!

Colette - Sunday 24th February 5pm

This week our film is Wash Westmoreland’s take on Colette's early life; she meets Willy, author of many (often ghost written) novels, marries him and becomes his most successful ghost-writer, before branching out on her own.

"All the affairs and scandals that a French literary genius could wish for, with the bonus of a modern heroine and a story that acknowledges the diversity that has always been with us." - Empire

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Widows - Sunday 17th February 5pm

This weekend, Widows should give us all enough twists and turns and plots within plots to satisfy the best thriller-lovers, whilst also being an indictment of the US political system...all with a feminist slant. Directed by the great Steve McQueen and featuring many big stars, what’s not to like? After '12 Years a Slave', a feminist heist movie comes as a big surprise to the world, but "McQueen largely succeeds at something few directors even try: to set a satisfyingly twisty crime plot in the broader social context of political corruption and systemic racial and gender bias" - Dana Stevens, Slate.

Watch out for a  car scene with the camera facing out: "The external view is both striking and damning, turning a piece of expositional dialogue into something approaching agitprop; this is the world Veronica and her team are operating in, one where the heist has been ongoing for decades, at an institutional level. It's the clearest use of the blunt-force power of visual filmmaking I've seen in a while, in one of the best films of the year" – David Sims, The Atlantic.

"Playing like a badass big sister to the dizzy 'Ocean’s 8', this riveting thriller...fashions a female-driven heist from a heady intersection of violence, intimacy, political hypocrisy, patriarchy and power" - Sarah Stewart, New York Post.

Adapted from the Lynda La Plante TV series, we can't wait to see what it looks like with McQueen's magic touch.

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Waru - Sunday 10th February 5pm

An eight year old boy - Waru - has been killed by the person supposedly caring for him. The local Maori community is devastated by the loss. The producers of Waru, Kerry Warkia and Kiel McNaughton charged eight female directors with the remit to produce a ten minute vignette each, to be shot in real time in no more than one day; put together, each vignette is a chapter in the community's reaction.

 "Joined together, the shorts are a powerful chorus of female Maori voices united in finding a way to protect all that is vulnerable" - Gayle MacDonald, Globe and Mail.

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