Dear White People, USA 2014

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Screening at 8.50 p.m. on Thursday August 6th.

Dear-White-People-group

Another chance to see this distinctive and extremely relevant satire on US campus life. I found the film absorbing and interesting but somewhat flawed. Some others at the screenings were more more impressed and it it is certainly very funny at time, though also deliberately disturbing.

Set in the fictional world of Winchester University, the film explores the continuing racism to be found in US Higher Education. Like US police forces Universities over the Atlantic have faced a number of scandals in recent years and the film provocatively picks up on these.

The film makes effective use of film form and style, whilst the young cast are excellent. One of the merits of the film is how it handles a relatively large cast of key characters. These are not fully developed characters, they are there to serve the satire – directed at the white elite, the world of Education and, importantly, the media.

Film fans familiar with the work of Spike Lee will recognize a strong influence in the film. And whilst this first-time director has not yet developed his mature style, this film does offer many of the pleasures and stimulations found in the work of the major US filmmaker.

The Third Man, UK 1949

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Screening Sunday July 26th at 3 p.m.

the-third-man

This classic film is being re-issued as part of the Orson Welles Centenary celebrations. Certainly Welles, oozing both his onscreen charm but also his shadowy otherness, dominates the film. It contains some of his most memorable dialogue: his aside on the cuckoo clock is one of the most oft-quoted lines in English-language cinema.

But the film is also a tribute to the talents of a number of fine, mainly British, filmmakers. The director was Carol Reedis often dismissed by the appellation ‘metteur en scène’: a phrase that stresses reliance on collaborators as opposed to the supposed dominating talent of the ‘auteur’. In fact many of the great films depend exactly on such a constellation of talents, and this is especially true of British cinema where many a final film is much more than just the sum of its parts.

The film has a fine script by Graham Greene, adapted from his own short story. Certainly Reed’s direction benefits from the magisterial black and white cinematography of Robert Krasker. And his work depends to a degree on Vincent Korda’s atmospheric art direction. Both are ably served by the editing of Oswald Haffenrichter. And there is the inspired choice of Anton Karas’ music: his zither is as famous as dialogue of Orson Welles.

The cast, both leading and supporting players, is ‘pitch perfect’. Alongside Welles Joseph Cotton turns in one of his finest performances. And Alida Valli is hauntingly beautiful and tragic. Then there are Trevor Howard and Bernard Lee with brief but memorable appearances from Ernst Deutsch and Paul Hoerbiger among others.

It is the combination of all these talents that makes the occupied and divided post-war Vienna so believable. This is a perfect gem of a movie.

 

Yorkshire Day – 1st August

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Yorkshire Day Poster

Every year on August 1st we celebrate YORKSHIRE DAY, a wonderfully daft occasion where we screen a great movie from these here lands… Well this year we’ve decided to go all out, bringing you a day-long bonanza of free screenings, original artworks & fun activities, all celebrating film making and watching in Yorkshire!

We’ll be showing family friendly classic The Railway Children, contemporary short films from local filmmakers and artists, archive moving image from the Yorkshire Film Archive and a screening of the excellent Leeds Young Authors’ doc We Are Poets.

Alongside these screenings, there will be an exhibition of re-imagined Yorkshire film posters, featuring artists Lucy Sherston, Sam Hutchinson, Jake Blanchard, Siân Westcott, Karl Vickers and Kristyna Baczynski. We’ll also have projection room tours. And outside our friends at &/Or Emporium will be inviting local artists and makers along, plus there’ll be some tasty food stalls from the likes of That Old Chestnut, Leeds Bread Co-op and more TBC!

And the neat thing is, thanks to Leeds Inspired, everything here will be totally FREE, so you can come and go as you please!

Visit the Hyde Park Picture House website for more information about the day.  Continue reading →

The Promised Land / Ziemia obiecana, Poland 1975.

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Screening Sunday July 19th at 2.10 p.m.

Promised Land 10 This is another title in the series of Masterpieces of Polish Cinema. One pleasure of the series is in revisiting familiar masterworks: another is the chance to catch [as in this case] very rare films. To the best of my knowledge this film has not enjoyed a general UK release, so this is a not to be missed opportunity. It was directed by Andrej Wajda in 1975, the outstanding filmmaker in post-WWII Poland. The film runs for 170 minutes, which is the full length release version. It was filmed in the European widescreen ration of 1.66:1 and with Orwocolor, an East German variant on Agfa. This colour stock has particular characteristic including often fairly dark hues. These work well with some of the expressionist techniques used in the Cinematography by Waclaw Dybowski, Edward Klosinski and Witold Sobocinski.

The film is set in C19th Lodz, then a centre for textile manufacture, and follows the power struggles within a small group of would-be capitalist entrepreneurs. The story give expression to the dominant values in 1970s Poland. But there are also overtones reminiscent of some of the characters found in the C19th novels of Charles Dickens and also in the great cycle of Les Rougon-Macquart novels by Emile Zola. This is the period of capitalism, ‘red in tooth and claw’. This is an epic film, full of character and situation and filmed with impressive style.

2015: Your Thoughts So Far?

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Somehow we’re already halfway through the year and perhaps more surprising is just how many films have been shown at the Picture House. It felt like a good time to take a look back over the first half of the year and find out which films have impressed you the most. We’ve put together a poll featuring 18 new films all screened at the Picture House and all with a score of 90% or more on Rotten Tomatoes.

Narrowing down the full list to create the poll was hard enough so we’re allowing you three votes. Please feel free to leave comments explaining your choices.

PS If you’re voting “other” us admins can see your answers but other people can’t so please leave a comment so people can see how you are casting your vote.

Manuscript workshop and The Secret of Kells

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Anna Turner from Leeds University’s Medieval Society takes a look back at the first event at the Hyde Park Picture House as part of their International Medieval Film Festival

The Secret of Kells

Rainy Saturday mornings have a way of slipping away from you – lost somewhere between the duvet and the television. However, on this dull and grey Saturday morning a group of University of Leeds students gathered in Hyde Park Picture House to hold a small but effective protest against waste weekends. It’s not often that a revolution comes along in the form of a Medieval workshop and film screening – but there you have it. What could be more revolutionary than succeeding in getting a group of kids to part with their bed, teaching them about medieval print culture and having them sit silently through a beautifully animated movie about a unique artefact from Irish history, all before lunchtime?

I was one of three University of Leeds students lucky enough to be invited to lead a workshop about ‘The Book of Kells’, and medieval manuscripts more generally, as a sort of interactive introduction to their screening of The Secret of Kells. The event took place as part of the LUU Medieval Soc’s ‘International Medieval Film Festival’ – an offshoot of this year’s International Medieval Congress. The words ‘International Medieval Film Festival’ seem to conjure up images of stiff men in tweed jackets lamenting the lack of period-accurate armour in the latest Crusades docu-drama. Far from it!

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International Medieval Film Festival

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Rose Sawyer from Leeds University Union’s Medieval Society is one of the organisers of the Medieval Film Festival taking place this week. We invited her to tell us more about the festival and medieval studies in Leeds…

Did you know that Leeds is a major centre for Medieval Studies?

No really, despite the fact that during the medieval period, Leeds (or Leodis as it was called) was the sort of town that existed solely because there is only so much land you can have before you have to have something else; nowadays, Leeds attracts medievalists like honey attracts hand drawn bears. This is partly due to the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University (so good that Oxford copied it), but during the summer the main draw is the International Medieval Congress. The IMC is the second largest medieval conference in the world and Europe’s largest annual gathering in the humanities. Over two thousand medievalists converge on Leeds to give papers and cadge free wine, usually they huddle in the familiar confines of the University, but this year they might just be tempted outside of the academic bubble….

This is because the inaugural International Medieval Film Festival will be taking place from Saturday the 4th to Thursday the 9th of July in order to coincide with the International Medieval Congress.

The LUU Medieval Society is working in association with the Hyde Park Picture House and the International Medieval Congress, as well as with Leeds for Life Foundation funding, to present six diverse and fascinating medieval films from around the world. The intention of the festival is to explore how the medieval world has been represented through the modern medium of film in the past century. Rather than point to anachronisms, the intention is to encourage discussion about these visual portrayals and how they influence the public perception of the Middle Ages. In particular, we want to emphasise the breadth and scope of international cinema and its ability to advance cross-cultural understanding.

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The New Girlfriend / Une nouvelle amie, France 2014.

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Screening from Saturday June 4th.

the-new-girlfriend-

Friends familiar with the films of François Ozon, like Jeune & Jolie (2013) or Dans la maison (2012), will expect something  slightly off-key with his new film. Essentially this is a ‘rom-com’ [romantic comedy], but one that is atypical of the genre. Among the pleasures that it offers are wit, and humour but also the unexpected. Moreover, the film is adapted from a novel by Ruth Rendell, a writer who, like Ozon, is able to confound expectations.

The film opens with a family tragedy but then explores the development of a new relationship, one full of ambiguities and ambivalence. The film manages to offer moments of emotion together with frequent and pleasurable surprises: note the UK trailer unfortunately pre-empts one of the best of these.

The lead protagonist is David, played with assurance and a sense of enjoyment by Romain Duris. He is possibly the most gifted and charismatic of the younger French actors, and he is always willing to explore different roles. Opposite him is Claire, played beautifully by Anaïs Demoustier. At times she reminded me irresistibly of the young Isabel Hubert.

I found the film both entertaining and involving.

The First Film, UK 2015

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Screening on Wednesday July 1st at 8 p.m.

slide

The title may suggest Thomas Edison in New York: the Lumière Brothers in Paris: even the Skladanowsky Brothers in Berlin. In fact the events in the film took place in Leeds in West Yorkshire. Here in 1888 Louis le Prince shot several short film sequences onto a paper-backed cellulose strip using a camera that he designed and constructed. Recent research has shown that Le Prince was also working on the use of celluloid for the film rolls and was developing a projection system.

The signs of this key pioneer filmmaker can seen around Leeds. The display at the Oakwood Clock shows the site of a Roundhay Garden where he filmed two sequences. There is a Blue Plaque on Leeds Bridge where he filmed another sequence. There is a second Blue Plaque alongside the old BBC Building by the University to mark the site of his workshop. And there is an unmarked house in Chapeltown where he resided for a time.

People who attended the 1988 Leeds International Film Festival will remember how this celebrated the centenary of Le Prince’s pioneering films, including a restaging of the filming on Leeds Bridge. The Metropolitan University Film School used to have copies of the individual frames mounted on the stairwell and you could examine these as you ascended.

Both the Armley Industrial Museum and the National Media Museum have displays and artefacts about Le Prince. And the Museum has a series of online pages on his career,  his cameras and his films.

However you are less likely to come across Le Prince outside of the city and he is even not always credited in  academic histories of early cinema. This is because the life of Le Prince involves not just a first but also a mystery. This new film, a labour of love over many years by filmmaker David Nicholas Wilkinson’s  explores the life of the Pioneer, his film work and the unexplained events that meant that he failed to gain the recognition he deserved.

The screening at the Picture House is a Charity Premiere. There will be introductions, examples of Le Prince’s technology and in the film itself the audience will be able to see these creations from over a century ago.

‘The Cosiest Picture House in Leeds’.

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YEP Advert

This illustration is from the printed history of the Hyde Park Picture House published by the Friends in 1997: [copies still available at the cinema].

Recently a relative of Harry Childs, who was involved in the opening and running of the Hyde Park Picture House, donated a set of ‘Log Books’ that start with the opening of the cinema and carry on until the 1950s. The books record the daily performances, ticket sales in different price categories and the daily and weekly income. You can imagine that there are lots of figures to be analyzed. The performances and prices are shown in the above advertisement from the Yorkshire Evening News.

It is not clear how seats and customers were demarcated, perhaps the 1s. seats were in the balcony. The bulk of the customers fell into the 3d and 6d price range.

Firstly, the capacity of a standard rectangular theatre was increased by using a balcony .. [which] … allowed an astounding 587 people to be crammed in. [Since the 1980s the seating has been reduced to 350].

The records in 1914 offer no information about the films screened. However from early in 1915 the title of the feature is usually recorded in the margin. The norm appears to be two prrogrammes a week, one from Monday to Wednesday and one from Thursday to Saturday. This is done briefly, so it is not always possible to identify the film: and about two thirds of titles from this period have been lost. However there are also other sources.

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