With both Bonfire Night and the Leeds International Film Festival taking place, we’ve decided to skip our usual First Thursday meetup on 5 November. Instead, we’ll be meeting on Thursday 19 November before the sold-out screening of The Devils. It will be a great opportunity to catch up and reflect on this year’s Festival, and we hope to see you there.
We’re also planning our Christmas screening for Tuesday 15 December, which means there may be no First Thursday meetup in December on 3 December.
At September’s meet up Yeong Sang-ho’s Colony went down well and we thought it was better than some of the reviews would suggest. We plan to meet again on Thursday 1st October at 7.30 to discuss this year’s LIFF programme which will be announced that day. You could also see one of three varied films Sense and Sensibility, Queen at Sea or Hope
We took a summer holiday break from FT in August but did enjoy The Dark Crystal on Yorkshire Day. We plan to meet up on September 3rd in the bar area from 8pm. As ever you can come along to chat about anything you’ve seen recently or see any of the great films screening that day. Two are new films from very interesting directors: Yeong Sang-ho’s Colony is an intense, but fun, blood-soaked horror; Pedro Almodovar’s Bitter Christmas explores meta-layers of story-telling. An alternative is the equally blood soaked and equally meta Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.
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
The Leeds International Film Festival (LIFF2025) starts today with Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon as one of the opening films at the Picture House. As well as the festival screenings, Bugonia and The Choral are also showing in the regular Picture House programme.
Other festival highlights included the free breakfast screenings of Holiday and Roman Holiday, It Was Just An Accident, Die My Love, Rental Family, Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, Game + Q&A and the Night Of The Dead all-nighter returns.
Four our First Thursday meetup we’ll be getting together in the bar around 8pm after the screening of La Grazia on the 6th November and hope to see you there.
Let us know what else you’re planning on seeing or if you have any recommendations in the comments below.
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!
That should give you time to see The Ballad of Wallis Island in screen 1 at 18:10 or screen 2 at 20:20 or The Phoenician Scheme at 17:50 in screen 2 or 20:40 in screen 1.
