Our sponsored screening for Yorkshire Day this year is the epic fantasy The Dark Crystal, Saturday 1st August 11am, which has a pre-screening puppet-making activity from 10.30am. The film’s connection with Yorkshire is its use of several famous landscapes in the county including Gordale Scar, Brimham Rocks and Ilkley Moor. As this is already a ‘Pay what you can’ screening there are no member ticket reductions this year.
The screening is part of the No Strings On Me: Cinema’s Living Puppet season which also features Muppet Treasure Island, Pinocchio, The Neverending Story, Return To Oz, Team America and a number of puppet workshops.
Please note that our First Thursday meetup will be taking a summer break for August (6th) but we’ll be meeting again on Thursday 3rd September and at our AGM on the Sunday 13th September
My name is Jon Holmes and I’m a former Friends of HPPH member who lived in Headingley for 12 years, leaving in 2013 to continue pursuing a career in sports journalism. The Picture House was one of the most important places in my world – I loved our Film Club meetings and getting to chat about whatever movie we’d just seen that night.
Before writing this, I looked up an old film blog I used to keep from 2010 to 2012. It mentions many of the HPPH screenings I saw around that time – from “A Single Man” to “Submarine”, from “Laura” to “Lilting”… Film Club was always “An Education” and I got to connect with lots of beautiful people along the way.
I recently reached out to Stephen and the team because on Saturday 18 July (1.15pm), I’m helping to bring a new documentary to the Picture House for a special screening and Q&A event.
“The Last Guest of the Holloway Motel” (2025) is about a forgotten professional footballer called Tony Powell who left England in 1981 and within a few years, had completely cut ties with family and friends back home. He’s discovered at the eponymous motel in West Hollywood, L.A., and he has a remarkable tale to tell. By sharing his life story with the film-makers, it opens the door to a reckoning and perhaps a chance to alleviate the pain of the past…
Supported by Leeds Queer Film Festival and the Premier League, there will be a special introduction and a post-screening Q&A (it’ll be an honour for me to host that in the Picture House), followed by drinks and networking at Brudenell Social Club. The event continues into Leeds Pride weekend, with World Cup ‘watch party’ opportunities and the parade on the Sunday.
If you’re reading this in time, and can come along, we’d love to welcome you to see “The Last Guest of the Holloway Motel” and be a part of our wider weekend event. Tickets are on sale now from the HPPH box office; you can read more about “Football Pride” here; and if you’d like to connect around anything you’ve read here, just drop me an email at jon@footballvhomophobia.com.
And to all the Friends of HPPH, I know you’ll all keep up the excellent work, and continue to make the cinema a place where everyone feels welcome to enjoy the films their way and take part in great conversation. Thanks for being there for me!
We very much enjoyed last month’s First Thursday with people stopping by to chat after Slow or before heading in to see The Blue Trail. There was an appreciation of Mark Jenkin’s films and anticipation for Rose of Nevada (should we see it now or wait until the 35mm screenings on June 6th and 7th?)
We will be meeting again on Thursday June 4th when you will have to make a difficult choice from a very varied selection. As part of the Cinema Africa strand there is the great opportunity to see the best Nigerian shorts from the 2025 Lagos Film Festival. You might be in the mood to challenge your comfort levels in abandoned spaces by watching Kane Parsons’ sci-fi horror Backrooms or you might prefer to play it safer and go with the feel-good pairing of Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas in John Carney’s Power Ballad. We aim to be in the bar between the early and later evening screenings from 7.30pm. As ever you can just come along to chat about these or any films you’ve seen recently without necessarily seeing them on the night.
We will be meeting again on Thursday May 7th when the Picture House is screening four very different but equally special films. You might enjoy a bit of early evening horror in Hokum or the much more gentle 16mm Lithuanian film Slow which premiered at Sundance in 2023 and closed LIFF2023.
You could also see Primavera which explores aspects of Vivialdi’s life or the amazing Brazilian feature The Blue Trail which follows the adventures of 77year old Tereza as she challenges her society’s expectations for older citizens.
We aim to be in the bar between the early and later evening screenings from 7.45pm. As ever you can just come along to chat about these or any films you’ve seen recently without necessarily seeing them on the night.
We very much enjoyed First Thursday on 5th February when Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice was the most popular choice of the evening.
We will be meeting again on Thursday March 5th when we will aim to be in the bar between the early and later evening screenings from 7.30pm. Lots and lots of choice this month “Wuthering Heights”,If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and Sirat and as ever you can just come along to chat about these or any films you’ve seen recently without necessarily seeing them on the night.
Our first event of our 2026 calendar will be First Thursday on 5th February. We will aim to meet in the bar around 7:30pm between the screenings of Nouvelle Vague at 17:40 and No Other Choice at 20:10 and some of us will stay to watch No Other Choice.
We’re just coming back to bleary–eyed reality after spending the eighteen days of Leeds International Film Festival dashing in and out of darkened rooms seeing fabulous films. Now we have December’s First Thursday and our Christmas screening just around the corner.
For our December meet up on Thursday 4th we will be getting together in the bar area from about 8pm between the 17.20 screening of Wake up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery and the 20.45 screening of Pillion. We hope to see some of you there for a drink and chat.
Our Christmas Screening this year is Tokyo Godfathers on Wednesday 17th December, doors will be open from 5:30pm and you may want to come along early for some extra festive treats. We’ll have more news on that soon
Sunday 10th August from 2pm Hyde Park Picture House Screen 2
Our Annual General Meeting covering the financial year from April 2024-25 will be taking place in Screen 2 at the Picture House on Sunday 10th August after a screening of Gianni Di Gregorio’s modern Italian classic Mid-August Lunch, “a wonderfully patient, delicately observed film; warm, generous, never for a moment sentimental or patronising, never exploiting dottiness and eccentricity” (The Observer).
“Mid-August Lunch is a film of rare benevolence that treats its subjects with dignity and playfulness.” Catherine Shoard, The Guardian
2pm – Film: Mid-August Lunch (U, 2008, 71mins) introduced by the Friends
3:20pm – Break for refreshments and membership payments
3:50pm – AGM
5pm – AGM concludes
We would be glad to see as many of you as possible there but you will need to be signed up to our Pay What You Decide membership scheme in order to vote at the AGM. You can join online now or there should be opportunity to join in person during the refreshment break.
For June’s First Thursday we’ll be meeting this Thursday 5th around 8pm in the cinema bar to chat about films we’ve seen recently, films we want to see, films we’re sad we’ve missed!
Please join us on May 1st at 9pm onwards in the cinema bar to discuss all things film including but not exclusively Licorice Pizza which HPPH is screening as part of its Philosophy and Film strand that evening from 6pm.
Licorice Pizza has been selected by Dr. Colette Olive and will be followed by a short talk from Colette exploring the philosophical themes raised.
Tickets are already selling fast for this screening so we recommend booking if you want to join us.
‘First Thursday’ is our monthly meet up to give members and anyone interested in the Friends, or cinema in general, a chance to get together.
Please note: due to a licensing issue the screening will no longer be from 35mm and will be projected digitally.
Friends of Hyde Park Picture House 