Films showing in the 2007 - 2008 season.

Pan’s Labyrinth
Fantasy, politics and horror are combined in a young girl’s perspective on post - Civil War Spain. Del Toro’s dazzling tour de force was recently voted 9th Best Ever Foreign Language Film.
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Shanghai Dreams
Enhanced by a stark beauty, this award-winning drama exposes inter-generational tensions. Industrial relocation sends an urban family to China’s grim countryside in the 1980s. The problems and frustrations -- and the tragic sense -- are universal.
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Keane
A distraught man with a photo buttonholes strangers. “ Have you seen my daughter ? ” But does she exist ? Keane meets a woman and her daughter ; the emotional rollercoaster begins. Damien Lewis as Keane : simply superb.
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Orchestra Seats (Fauteuils d'orchestre)
Popular French comedy evoking the recent AMELIE. Provincial girl, waitressing in Paris, meets drama, art and music types. They can’t wait to confide in her. Lively and intelligent entertainment.
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Snow Cake
Set in a wintry Canada, this chamber work brings together Sigourney Weaver as a hyperactive, autistic woman and Alan Rickman as a sardonic writer traumatised by recent tragedies. Occasionally soft-headed but gentle and haunting.
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Ten Canoes
Hints of Roeg’s WALKABOUT in this sophisticated, humourous fable of love, adventure and revenge set in Australia’s swamplands. Captivating to look at -- a thoroughly engaging treat.
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Little Miss Sunshine
Heroin-snorting, foulmouthed grandpa, young Nietzsche freak fulfilling a vow of silence, plus assorted members of a dysfunctional family. This is a comedy ? Assuredly, with numerous visual jokes, a surefire script and a wild climax. Enjoy!
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East of Bucharest
It’s sixteen years since Ceausescu was deposed. A regional TV station seeks to explore those days in a talk show. The chaotic results show the tradition of East European film comedy lives on.
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London to Brighton   
“Gritty, realistic treatment of a breathless crime narrative “ has been the standard comment. Anxiety and desperation seep from the screen. WARNING: Certificate 18, so expect ‘rough doings’.
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Offside
Jafar Panahi’s film follows a group of girls who try unsuccessfully to see a key international soccer game (from which, by Iranian law, they are banned). You’ll get a kick (oops!) from this first-rate semi-documentary.
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Stranger than Fiction
Will Ferrell as a tax inspector starts hearing a woman’s voice. She’s a novelist contemplating the death of a character -- him! A starry cast and a fine soundtrack for this ingenious London Film Festival comedy.
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Volver
The finest director of female actors since Cukor might have invented the term ‘tragicomedy’. VOLVER means coming back --to La Mancha and to the domestic and supernatural (!) concerns of women. Unpredictable and audacious.
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The Lives of Others
2007 Oscar Winner for Best Foreign Film and a triumph on every level : direction, acting, music and design. An ingeniously plotted thriller portraying a corrupt society where the personal inevitably becomes the political.
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The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Dark satire about a national health service (not ours !). Ecccentric widower is shunted from one unwelcomimg hospital to another. Social concern and accomplished performances distinguish the nightmare journey.
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The Big Sleep
Bogart, Chandler (original novel) and Hawks (director) ! Plus supporting cast of Martha Vickers (rich slut), the luminous Ms. Bacall and Dorothy Malone as a generous (!) bookseller. Expect a wealth of visual and verbal pleasures.
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Film Day

The Red Shoes
Joining the talents of designers, dancers and music-makers, Michael Powell (with Emeric Pressburger) brought a gaudy aestheticism to postwar Britain in 1948. A huge success at the box-office, THE RED SHOES uses a fairytale ballet to meditate on art, love and cinema.
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42nd Street
One of a trio of remarkable 1933 films that featured Busby Berkeley’s visually spectacular production numbers. It’s a backstage musical, more downbeat than the others, but sharing in their New Deal idealism. A camp classic and a window on America’s Great Depression.
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Chicago
Oscar-winning 2002 version of 1975 Broadway hit with songs by Kander & Ebbs responsible earlier for the dark decadence of CABARET. A stylish mixture of crime, ambition, celebrity and showbiz with strong echoes of legendary choreographer Bob Fosse.
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