Keswick Film Club News

Summer Special Film Club: The Escape Sunday 9th June 6pm

2013-06-03T12:47:00.000+01:00

Next Sunday, 9 June at 6.00pm, there will be a 'summer special film club' showing of the Danish Film 'The Escape'. For those of you who have enjoyed the recent array of great Danish films at the cinema and on TV ('A Royal Affair', 'The Hunt', 'The Killing', etc), this should be a treat, especially as it will only cost you £2! Our thanks go to the Danish Film Institute who are offering several of their films for free... if this goes well, we might bring you another!

AGM and Let The Bullets Fly - Sunday 4pm

2013-04-06T07:46:00.003+01:00

Sunday will be your last chance to huddle together out of the biting wind for the collective warmth of the Keswick Film Club.

The afternoon starts with the AGM at 4.00pm, followed by (appropriately for such a politically charged outfit like KFC) Let the Bullets Fly, a chinese, period gangster movie that is breaking box office records out east. Not the usual film club fare but it promises humour and violence in equal measure. It stars Yun Fat Chow, who has an impressive resume and is directed by Wen Jiang, again a respected figure within the genre.

According to Village Voice:

" Decked out in designer suits and constantly bellowing with evil laughter, Chow makes for a regal baddie, and Jiang's agile direction ably keeps pace with the cat-and-mouse story's vigorous rat-a-tat dialogue. With Zhang driven by a desire to even the economic playing field, the film operates as an unsubtle but boisterous Robin Hood–style fable of socialist values."

AGM 2013 - Sunday 7th April 4pm

2013-03-31T17:05:00.000+01:00

The Keswick Film Club Annual General Meeting will take place on Sunday 7th April at 4pm in The Alhambra before the 5pm screening of Let The Bullets Fly.

Cloud Atlas - Sunday 31st March 5pm

2013-03-28T20:08:00.003Z

Only two films left this season, I'm sorry to say, but we are going out with a bang. This Sunday we have 'Cloud Atlas', based on the book of the same name by David Mitchell but I am told it is EVEN better than the book. The film covers three centuries, linking the lives of characters together by shared story lines and having the same actors playing different parts over the centuries. We have a big plot, big actors (Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving ...) Not surprisingly we also have a big budget for once - $100m+ The result is more than a blockbuster though; to quote Roger Ebert , himself borrowing from Churchill's description of Russia, '"it is a riddle, wrapped up in a mystery, inside an enigma"...But, oh, what a film this is! And what a demonstration of the magical, dreamlike qualities of the cinema'. Possibly a season highlight? Come along and find out for yourself. As the film is nearly 3 hours long, we will be starting the intro at 4.55, with the film starting at 5.00.

Safety Not Guaranteed - Sunday 24th March 5pm

2013-03-21T21:51:00.002Z

Safety Not Guaranteed looks like being highlight of the season - its hard to find a bad review. This from Digital Spy:

A low-concept film about time travel mightn't sound like much of a trip, but first-time director Colin Trevorrow offers good-natured fun and real substance in place of shiny surfaces and whizz-bang effects. He casts fellow indie filmmaker Mark Duplass as Kenneth, a possibly insane supermarket clerk who places an ad for a time travel companion, claiming to have the power at his fingertips.

Aubrey Plaza gets the closest to him as Darius, a moody intellectual who most men would find intimidating, but Kenneth is too crazy to care and he's heavily armed, too. More importantly, he feels a kindred spirit in Darius after they share their personal reasons for wanting to turn back the clock.

The Hunt - Today at 5pm

2013-03-17T08:46:00.000Z

Mads Mikkelsen (of 'a Royal Affair') plays a loner who takes on teaching the kindergarten in a small village school. All is going well until a small child makes an accusation which changes his life and the life of the community. Directed by Thomas Vinterberg, all the reviewers agree this is his best film since 'Festen' started his career in the 90s. The tense drama-thriller includes many gripping scenes, including one which Peter Bradshaw claims 'can only be watched through your fingers'. A must-see Keswick film; hopefully see you there!

No - Sunday 10th March 5pm

2013-03-07T21:58:00.000Z

Our film on Sunday is No, the final film in Pablo Larrain's Pinochet-era Chilean trilogy. It stars Gael Garcia Bernal, who is a familiar face (Even the Rain, Babel, Amores Perros, Motorcycle Diaries) and certainly enthused the audience at Cannes (don't worry, its the Cannes jury we have a problem with, not the audience) as reported by the Guardian:

Once in a while, a film comes along at Cannes that gets the blood pumping – a work that seems destined to break out of the arthouse ghetto, that feels, above all, like a fresh vision and voice. This year, that moment has come with No, a Chilean film tucked away in the Directors' Fortnight sidebar of the festival, its unpromising-sounding subject being Chile's 1988 referendum. Its premiere was greeted with whoops, cheers and seemingly unstoppable applause.

What Gael's character does is key to understanding present-day Chile, says Larraín. "Pinochet imposed a capitalist society in Chile: our character grabbed the tools of capitalism that Pinochet had provided – advertising – to pull him out." For all the film's humour and joy, there is an ambivalence at the story's heart: a hardnosed cynicism in the admen's tactic of selling the idea of l'alegría, happiness, to the populace, just as if it were a soft drink called Free.

Bullhead - Sunday 3rd March 5pm

2013-03-02T16:11:00.000Z

With the sun making Keswick the warmest place in England, I am not sure I should talk about us getting back to 'normal service' on Sunday after the excitement of the Festival weekend, but I will. We are showing another Oscar nominated film - 'Bullhead' - this time from Belgium. The plot of this film is a thriller about the illegal use of hormones in the cattle industry, but it is the underlying story of Jacky Vanmarsenille - the bull head of the title - that makes this a 'must see' movie. Played by Matthais Schoenaerts, we see a man tortured by his attempts to be macho and by events from the past that gradually show why he is this way. Schoenaerts' performance here won him the part in 'Rust and Bone', shown at the Alhambra earlier this year. Even the Daily Express are forced to say 'It looks fantastic, boasts an unusual storyline and Schoenaerts is as compelling as a young Marlon Brando'. I hope you enjoy too.

14th Keswick Film Festival: Thursday 21st - Sunday 24th

2013-02-18T08:45:00.000Z

Hopefully you are all ready for the 14th Keswick Film Festival which kicks off with Thursday's party from 6:30pm at the Theatre followed by Michael Winterbottom's Everyday at 7:30pm.

If you're still having trouble deciding what to see we've put together this collection of trailers for most of the films showing at the Festival:

Tabu - Sunday 17th February 5pm

2013-02-15T07:32:00.002Z

We have a much more Keswick-friendly film for you this weekend - TABU, the latest film from Miguel Gomes. Starting out slowly in in Lisbon, it builds the story of Aurora, an old woman who finds out she is dying. Unlike Amour , however, we do not stay inside her flat to see this. Instead she sends her neighbour Pilar in search of a man called Ventura. When Pilar finds him the film takes a different turn as he takes us back to Africa when Aurora was a young woman. Beautifully photographed, complete with some early 60s pop songs and a look at the colonial politics of that time, the result has left most reviewers ecstatic, with Andrew O'Hehir (Salon) claiming 'what you’ll see is not just the last movie released in 2012, but possibly the most original of them all'.

The Saragossa Manuscript - Sunday 10th February 5pm

2013-02-07T07:52:00.001Z

After Holy Motors one hesitates to use the S* word but that does crop up in reviews. Nonetheless The Saragossa Manuscript is a fascinating piece of film-making. There is a website devoted to it and the author of the website has produced an outline of the film which he urges viewers to either read before viewing or immediately afterwards. He claims it doesn't serve as a plot spoiler but helps to provide some context to the stories within stories within the film. I'll leave it up to you whether you wish to take his advice

Please note we only have a 3 hour gap between Alhambra screenings and the film is 3 hour and 2 minutes long! So we will be starting the introduction at 4.55pm and rolling the opening credits bang on 5.00pm.

Amour - Sunday 3rd February 5pm

2013-02-01T13:12:00.003Z

This weekend we have a real treat, probably the most anticipated film of the year for many people - 'Amour'. Several people who have already seen it have said it is their favourite film of 2012, David Calhoun of Time Out said '... a devastating, highly intelligent and astonishingly performed work. It's a masterpiece'.

The film follows the lives of an old couple after one of them has a stroke. It is the latest from director Michael Haneke (who brought us 'Hidden' and 'White Ribbon'), and has already won him the Palme D'Or at Cannes 2012. The film is nominated for both Best Film and Best Foreign Language film at the Oscars this year, as is Haneke for Best Director and Emmanuelle Riva for Best Actress. On top of that we get to see Jean-Louis Trintignant AND Isobelle Huppert...AND it is in French! Definitely a must see for the Keswick Film Club, I think you will agree.

Elena - Sunday 27th January 5pm

2013-01-24T08:00:00.000Z

Holy Motors split our audience last Sunday with nearly as many 5 star votes as 1 star ones. Perhaps there will be less scope for disagreement with Elena on Sunday. Described by Philip French as "a sharp, bitterly comic story of crystalline clarity about the moral and spiritual corruption of present-day Russia" it promises a number of strong performances. Philip French again: "It's a gripping, resonant tale, and Nadezhda Markina is outstanding as Elena, and far more sympathetic than perhaps she should be"

Holy Motors - Sunday 20th January 5pm

2013-01-18T08:55:00.004Z

This Sunday's film is definitely a highlight of the season; whether you will love it or hate remains to be seen!

Holy Motors has had much written about it, in many places and is hard to describe... a car trip around Paris taking the occupant from one strange encounter to the next, where the occupant changes his persona at each stop; is he just an actor going from one job to the next? Is it a dream? Or maybe an homage to film making? The director, Leos Carax has always been an enigma, bringing us 'Les amants du Pont-neuf' and 'Pola X' amongst others, but this film has the most critical acclaim of all; here are just a few of the critics reviews -

'Holy Motors, fuelled by pure feeling, is a dream of a movie you want to get lost in. '

'It's the coolest and strangest movie of the year, and once it gets its druglike hooks in your brain, you'll never get them out again.'

'Despite the millions of dollars fuelling 2012's special-effects extravaganzas, I doubt I'll experience anything as exhilarating or memorable this year. '

'Holy Motors is some kind of wonderful. '

'For all its disruptive energy, Holy Motors is also a thing of sublime beauty. '

Why not come long for the ride!

When Pigs Have Wings - Sunday 13th January 5pm

2013-01-10T12:52:00.005Z

A change of continent (and style) for Sunday as we move back east to Malta, masquerading as Gaza, for When Pigs Have Wings, directed by Sylvain Estibal. There are very few reviews for the film on the web but the Hollywood Reporter summarised When Pigs Have Wings as follows:

Estibal skewers both sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict impartially, with a keen eye for absurdities and class disparities. As a former reporter from the region currently based in Uruguay, he brings an outsider's eye to the Middle East conflict. If the why-can't-we-all-just-get-along message is simplistic, the film, shot in Malta, and occasionally rough-hewn, has its heart in the right place and is worth 90 minutes of anyone's time.

Margaret - Sunday 6th January 5pm

2013-01-05T10:02:00.003Z

As usual, we start early this Sunday; we'll be there at 4.15 to offer you a glass of wine to celebrate the New Year and to swap your Christmas stories with each other. It will also give you the chance to join the club if you haven't already done so - £7 gets you a pound off all films (INCLUDING the Festival in February!) - and give you the chance to buy a Spring Season Pass if you want one - £28 gets you in to all 13 films until Easter.

Our season starts at 5.00 with 'Margaret', an unusual starter for us in that it is from the USA, and one of those films that has 'got away'. It is a thought provoking film and has an amazing performance from its lead actor - Anna Paquin. Without giving too much away, the film shows Lisa, a spoilt 17 year old, whose thoughtless action at the start has terrible consequences. We follow her trying to come to terms with these consequences, and trying to make up for them. As Peter Bradshaw said in the Guardian 'the resulting movie is stunning: provocative and brilliant, a sprawling neurotic nightmare of urban catastrophe, with something of John Cassavetes and Tom Wolfe, and rocket-fuelled by a superbly thin-skinned performance by Anna Paquin'.

You will have noticed that it is called Margaret not Lisa; you will have to see the film to find out why...

Where Do We Go Now? - Sunday 23rd December 5pm

2012-12-20T18:53:00.001Z

So we come to the last movie of the year- it only seems like yesterday when we began. We hope you have enjoyed them as much as we have. We did a quick vote for 'film of the year' at the club Christmas party last weekend and 8 of the 15 films so far got at least one person's vote, so it seems we are still a club with a very varied choice.

This week's film is the Middle-Eastern 'Where Do We Go Now?', a light-hearted second look at the 'power of women'. In this view, we see the Muslim and Christian women of the village uniting to try to stop the men coming to blows over religion; their tactics start with sabotaging the TV and go on to some pretty irreligious methods of persuasion... a different take on Christmas, certainly, but definitely one that pushes 'good will on earth'...come along and enjoy the last club film of 2012!

Untouchable - Sunday 16th December 5pm

2012-12-15T09:41:00.004Z

This weeks film stars, Francois Cluzet (who was the lead in 'Tell No One', that fantastic French adaptation of the Harlan Coben novel of the same name) and Omar Sy. It has been described as a 'culture-clash buddy movie', which is now the most successful French language film at the global box office. Interestingly, Welcome to the Sticks, a highlight of the last Festival, was for a time the highest grossing French film and it also had an oblique take on disability in one of its early scenes. It must be a Gallic thing.

Extract from the review in Digital Sky:

In the hands of Hollywood, Untouchable could have been overly sentimental and clichéd (worryingly, a remake is already in the works), but writer/directors Nakache and Toledano strike gold with the casting of Cluzet and Sy. The latter invests Driss with a buoyant personality, expertly balancing pathos and a lightness of touch that's enough to ignite a spark in his new boss.
Cluzet, too, is excellent as the wheelchair-bound aristocrat, delivering an expressive performance with only his face. As he gradually becomes comfortable in the company of Driss, there's a sense that he's also getting more comfortable with himself, not allowing his wheelchair to hold him prisoner.

Mysteries Of Lisbon - Sunday 9th December 2pm

2012-12-05T22:32:00.002Z

A 93 minute film last Sunday can be considered a mere appetizer against the epic that is Mysteries of Lisbon, which due to its 4hr 30 minute running time will start at 2.00pm this Sunday. There will be an interval!

The Director, Raoul Ruiz, is little known in the UK, although Time Regained, with John Malkovich, did feature in the 2001 Festival Programme. The critics seem to love 'Mysteries, not least Philip French in the Guardian -

"The duration is intimidating, but the time flies by in an engrossing movie that covers three generations over the late 18th and early 19th centuries and deals with themes – chance, identity, manipulation, multiple personality – that recur in Ruiz's oeuvre. Like Jorge Luís Borges and Gabriel García Márquez (two Latin American writers he admires) and Italo Calvino, he is fascinated by the very act of storytelling, and the movie brings to mind Dickens, Balzac, Hugo and Dumas, but with a modernist twist."

Probably not many car chases then.

Beasts Of The Southern Wild - Sunday 2nd December 5pm

2012-11-29T23:34:00.001Z

We have another 'small but beautiful' film for you this weekend. Rotten Tomatoes has this to say in its synopsis -

'Beasts of the Southern Wild is a fantastical, emotionally powerful journey and a strong case of film-making that values imagination over money'

The story is based on a small child's determination to survive a flood that threatens to end the world she knows. Her imagination does the rest. The film's success (it has won awards from Sundance to the BFI to Cannes) is based on the freshness of the plot, the director and the actors, not least of whom is the 6 year old star Quvenzhane Wallis, who has herself won the Hollywood award for best newcomer. I have watched various trailers and, even from them, it is hard not to be won over.

Made on a relatively tiny budget (less than $2m), this was directed by an unknown director - Benh Zeitlin - using untrained actors and the result has surprised everyone; as Roger Ebert says 'Sometimes miraculous films come into being, made by people you've never heard of, starring unknown faces, blindsiding you with creative genius. "Beasts of the Southern Wild" is one of the year's best films'.Will Keswick agree? I suspect so...

Samsara - Sunday 25th November at Rheged

2012-11-22T13:01:00.001Z

And so to Sunday and our annual charabanc ride to Rheged. Samsara is one of those films that defy classification, suffice to say that it is bound to be a visual feast, played out to perfection on the giant screen. Be prepared for some jaw dropping moments and some thought provoking images. This is what the Guardian thought:

Although Ron Fricke's followup to the stunning Baraka arrives almost 20 years later with his methods virtually unchanged, it still seems just as fresh and interesting. His collection of beautifully shot, enigmatic images from his globetrotting large-format cameras are this time assembled to tell a non-narrative tale of human belief systems, congregations and wonders both man-made and natural. Each snippet tells only part of a bigger story, barely giving you time to process who you are looking at and what they are doing, but this makes the whole thing a more active experience than most films. Questions are provoked then dismissed as we move on, but the themes build up in the mind. It may be just more of the same from Fricke, but with his unique process, another incredible-looking lap around the world is more than welcome.

The Kid With A Bike - Sunday 18th November 5pm

2012-11-16T07:37:00.002Z

This week's film is 'A Kid With a Bike' - directed by the ever popular Dardenne brothers who, as Derek Malcolm says, 'have been called the nearest to Ken Loach in Europe, and it is a tribute they well deserve'. So expect a good social-realist drama - it won the Jury Prize at Cannes 2011.
Set in the back streets of Belgium, we follow 12 year old Cyril around on his bike looking for his father. Cyril cannot believe his father has abandoned him. His search brings him into contact with good and bad people, but he seems set on completing the ruin of his life his father has begun. The film, like the Dardenne films before ('The Son','The Child', 'Rosetta') brings out this influence of adults on children, in this case especially fathers. Can the good influence of Samantha, who befriends him, overcome the bad...?

GALA NIGHT - CELEBRATING NEW BRITISH DIRECTORS

2012-11-08T23:11:00.000Z

In the spirit of Keswick Film Club, we try to support up and coming British talent. This season we managed to get the directors to come along to meet us, though, unfortunately, Ben Rivers had to drop out at the last minute as he will be in France working on his next film.

At 5.00pm, we start with 'Two Years at Sea', a documentary following the life of a recluse in the Scottish Highlands. The film is directed by Ben Rivers and has had great reviews from both critics and audiences alike.

At 6.45pm, we go over the road to the Freemason's Hall for a free Buffet, where you will get the chance to talk to the writer/director/producers of our second film, Ant Neely and Sloane U'Ren. We will have their film at 7.45pm - which may win an award for the longest title (!) - 'Dimensions: A line, a loop, a tangle of threads'. Ant and Neely will introduce the film, which is...a period sci-fi, with a time travel element.. What more can we ask?! This is a film which has won awards in London and Boston, even though they still have no distributor.

So a very varied evening, which hopefully will give something for all. Feel free to come along to either or both films; it will only cost you the price of one film (or nothing if you have a season ticket, of course!)

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia - Sunday 4th November 5pm

2012-11-01T13:28:00.001Z

This week's film, 'Once Upon a Time in Anatolia', takes us on a mystery tour of the back country of Anatolia, following a group of men in cars looking for...what? The director, Nuri Bilge Ceylan is recognized as one of the great living directors. His technique is to let the film do the talking, not the plot. So at the start, we don't know what these men are doing, only by following the conversations and the camera do we gradually find out. You may remember 'Three Monkeys', the last of his films we showed, itself an intriguing mystery following a car accident at the beginning.

This weekend's film is generally recognized as his best yet and shared the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes with another film we are showing soon - 'The Kid with a Bike'. Philip French in the Observer couldn't be much clearer; 'Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of the most significant moviemakers to have emerged this century... His finest work to date, 'Once Upon a Time in Anatolia' is a carefully controlled masterpiece'.

The Source - Sunday 28th October 5pm

2012-10-26T09:00:00.001+01:00

What would you think if you had to walk up a dangerous mountain path each day to carry water back to your village?

For the second in our short season of 'the power of water' films, we are off to an un-named African country this weekend, where the stage is set for the local women to take on this centuries old tradition. Why should they have to carry the water from a mountain spring when their men could build a pipeline that would remove the danger? 'The Source' is a comedy drama which tries to bring out all sides of this argument, not just showing the men as lazy chauvinists, or portraying Muslim women as oppressed victims. The women decide to go on a 'love strike', which gets into the national press. Wrap this all up with some great acting and fantastic scenery and the resulting film is a kind of 'Made in Dagenham' for the Arab Spring.