Deliciously funny and warm character study starring Sally Hawkins as the effervescent Poppy, a 30-year-old north Londoner with an irrepressibly bright outlook on life. She loves her job as a teacher, her friends and her freedom, and her cheer is irresistible to those around her, from her controlling younger sister to her grumpy driving instructor.

This is joyful and life-affirming film and proud of it. A good blast of fresh air that sweeps you off your feet.

www.happygoluckymovie.co.uk

For the children who call it home, Mulberry Bush is their last chance. Excluded from school for extreme behaviour, and often having suffered severe emotional trauma, they are given three years at the Oxford boarding school to try to turn their lives around. ‘Hold Me Tight’ is a heartbreaking, engrossing study of dysfunction. It also pays witness to the tremendous influence that adults hold, for bad and for good, upon growing children.

The best Italian film of the year is a finely honed portrait of Italian society in the turbulent sixties and seventies. Accio lives in a crumbling apartment with his older brother Manrico. Accio joins a neo-fascist party more to spite his family than from heartfelt conviction but with Manrico a committed left-wing activist it places the brothers on a certain collision course.

Luchetti sketches a beautifully modulated tale of rivalry, love and political differences.

Presentation and lecture by photographer Mark Edwards takes audiences on a journey through rainforests, man-made deserts, inside shanty towns and into communities of indigenous people living in the most remote habitats on earth. Accompanying book Hard Rain available.

“As moving a piece of work as I have seen for a long time. Hard Rain is important and timely because it is the sixties’ generation who now make up the bulk of the establishment.

"A reminder of how, little by little, our capacity for righteous anger has been eroded by the years of compromise so many of us have lived through, may just move us once more to remember what it is like to yell at the top of our voices, ‘enough’.”
Tim Smit, Chief Executive and cofounder, The Eden Project

Download more Hard Rain Slideshow information (PDF, 238kb)

Between 10 – 24 June the Gracefield Arts Centre hosts the stunning outdoor exhibition of soul-searching images from around the globe that reflects mankind’s destructive impact on our planet.

Inspired by Bob Dylan’s potent lyrics Hard Rain is displayed as a giant outdoor banner that should challenge us all. What’ll you do now?

Gorgeous and intelligent animated film that follows the life of a rebellious young girl growing up in 70s and 80s Iran and her exile in Europe, adapted from Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel. Marjane grows up in a liberal family in Tehran. As they watch the totalitarianism of the Shah give way to that of the Ayatollahs, her parents decide to send teenage Marjane to a French school in Vienna.

A touching, accessible and surprisingly funny account of life in political turmoil.

Gripping drama about culture clash and family loyalty in India set in the late 1950s based on a novel by Rumer Godden. A widowed official brings his two daughters from England to live with him in Delhi, but when his 15 year old daughter Una falls in love with a charismatic Indian poet Ravi shock waves to ripple throughout what was left of the British empire.

Coffee Club: Thursday 12 June

Intricately plotted, multi-layered drama moves easily between the seemingly divergent cultures of Germany and Turkey.

The powerful story about two deaths that bring strangers together is explored to dramatic effect. Once the opening titles warn us of “Yeter’s Death”, we see Turkish prostitute Yeter meeting an elderly client, Ali, in Germany and watch her fate unfold. Shifting to Turkey and Germany and back again, this spirited, beautifully acted drama follows both Ali’s son and Yeter’s daughter in the wake of the tragedy.

One of the founding fathers of American independent cinema, John Sayles reveals a total command of mood, character and location in a seductive piece of storytelling set in 1950’s Alabama.

Danny Glover struggles to keep his juke joint alive as he prays for salvation with a little help from the blues.

A film about the state of Chinese occupied Tibet and its history of oppression and resistance.

From rarely seen rituals in remote monasteries, to horse races with Khamba warriors, from brothels and slums in the holy city of Lhasa, to magnificent Himalayan peaks still traveled by nomadic yak caravans, the film brings audiences to the long forbidden “rooftop of the world” with an unprecedented richness of imagery. The dark secrets of Tibet’s recent past are chronicled through personal stories and interviews, and a collection of undercover and archival images never before assembled in one film.

Download more information about the film Tibet Cry of the Snow Lion (PDF, 112kb)

Recommended by one of our patrons and Free Tibet Campaign supporter Ann Maxwell. Screening will be followed by discussion.

At the stroke of midnight on 14/15 August 1947 India finally achieved independence from Britain. Sixty years on, ‘Before Midnight’ offers access to an unparalleled collection of films from the BFI National Archive exploring life in India during the early 20th century.

Some of the most potent records are to be found in the home movies - many of which are being made publicly available for the first time. The Maharajah of Jodhpur’s home movies provide an epic portrait of princely power in the 1940s, whilst those of the Craster family offer an intimate picture of British family life.

A young girl inhabits an isolated island with her scientist father and communicates with a reclusive author of the novel she’s reading.

Based on the book by Wendy Orr and Kerry Millard, this is a comical and inspirational adventure fantasy.

Filmed on location in Dumfries and Galloway last year, ‘Outpost’ follows a crack team of battle-hardened mercenaries on a routine mission to protect a mysterious businessman through the no-man’s land of wartorn Eastern Europe.

However, after he leads them to a long forgotten, underground bunker, they unwittingly reawaken a lurking terror that soon changes their mission from one of safe-guarding, to one of survival, as they desperately battle an enemy even they’ve never faced before.

• Read an article about the Outpost Filmmakers (PDF, 75kb)

Bette Davis at her best in an Oscarwinning performance as a haughty Southern belle humbled by that old devil called love.

The great William Wyler directs and it is showing in a shimmering new black and white print.

Unmissable.

Coffee Club : Thursday 26 June at 10.45am

Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson), two-foul-mouthed Irish hitmen, lie low in the medieval Belgian town of Bruges to evade police after a botched job back home. While awaiting instructions from their furious boss Harry, Ken braces himself for the worst ..

Wonderfully fresh take on the British gangster movie: far-out and very, very funny.