Feb-mar 08 brochure copy
From The Star And Shadow Cinema Wiki
Star and Shadow Cinema Programme for February and March 2008 Star and Shadow Cinema, Stepney Bank, Ouseburn, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 2NP 0191 261 0066 info@starandshadow.org.uk www.starandshadow.org.uk Film prices are £4/3 unless stated otherwise. Annual membership £1
Fri 1 Feb - A Bit Crack- Storytelling Night 7.30PM Under the Cloak - Helen East and Rick Wilson Stories and music of unseen worlds, skulduggery and sweet secrets. Spellbinding storytelling woven around songs, gongs and sinuous stringed sound underpinned by rollicking rhythms. www.abitcrack.com
Sat 2 Feb - British Federation of Film Societies event, 12:30-5pm
Film fans in the North East who 'do it themselves' have the opportunity to get together. The British Federation of Film Societies (BFFS) and Northern Film and Media have teamed up to provide a free event where film clubs and community cinema representatives will meet up to share experiences and advice. This is also an opportunity for people interested in setting up their own film club to find out more. To book contact Ros Hill on 0114 221 0314 info@bffs.org.uk
Sat 2 Feb Tell me what it is… the scenario… The Ghetto Method presents the first of a series of exclusive, themed, mixed media events, delivering an evening of film, music and live art all tied together through a unified theme, or Scenario. The Scenario for the first event will be ‘The Devils That Stand Between Us’ and all the selections for the night, the film chosen, records played and visuals created, will be informed by this theme and ideas around inter couple relations. Film, 7pm - £3 / 4. DJs & Art, 8.30pm -1am, £5 / 6. Price for all events, £6/8
Sun 3 Feb FILM: ‘The War Game’ followed by discussion. 3pm Dir. P.Watkins, 1965, English, 48mins, Cert:12
A classic BBC movie made by Peter Watkins in 1965, which
describes a 'limited' nuclear attack in Kent. Kept off TV screens until 1985, the film is just as relevant today. Said critic Kenneth Tynan: 'It may be the most important film ever made'. Tyneside Medact (Medical Action for Global Security) is screening the film for a rare public showing followed by a discussion on how to prevent nuclear war ever happening, with a notable national speaker.
Sunday 3rd Feb
FILM. ‘Iag Bari: Brass on Fire’ 7.30pm
Dir. Ralf Marschalleck, 2002, Germany, 60 mins, Cert 15.
A vibrant, swinging musical documentary about Gypsy musicians Fanfara Ciocarlia (The Skylark Brass Band). Don't miss this ear-bursting, award winning roma-road movie.
Tues 5 Feb Glimpses of Autonomy, 6pm Get together, talk, watch movies, eat, drink- take action to change injustices in the world and at home, Free.
Thurs 7 Feb
CINEMA OF THE WORLD: Greek film night! 7.30pm
Set the record straight- My Big Fat Greek Wedding sucks. Come along tonight to enjoy Greece's rich culture. We will be screening films and playing real underground 'rebetiko' music with 'Olympias'Farm' live on stage after the films.
Fri 8th Feb
William Burroughs 'WORD' 7.30pm "Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer..." WSB Burroughs is back to haunt you! Featuring a filmic homage to Burroughs with live soundtrack by Helictite, and Anthony Balch's legendary 'Towers Open Fire'. £6/£3
Sat 9 Feb . 7.15pm-11.00pm
Penny Callow- An Evening of Music and Poetry with Ellen Phethean, Uplifted Women's Choir, Flamingcellos, Lady Caroline Mary, and InCahoots (Latin/Funk) with proceeds to Musicians Union Benevolent Fund and a local Breast Cancer Charity in memory of Julia Darling, Keith Morris, Joe Scurfield and Dave Rowley. Further info- hewal@onetel.com £5/£4
Sunday 10 Feb Tyneside Socialist forum. Open Forum: How can we work together? - 2pm - 5pm Anarchists, socialists, anti-capitalists, all activists who are concerned about war, the arms trade, climate change, racism, inequality, oppression, class struggle, opposing capitalism...The left spends a lot of our time shouting at each other. This is an opportunity to look at where we agree and how to work together. Facilitated by TSF, but individuals and groups determine their own contribution. Contact: gerrybeee@yahoo.com, 0191 253 7543 to book a slot for your campaign/ group.
Sunday 10th Feb Film: Year of the Beaver 7.30pm Director: Steve Sprung, Sylvia Stevens, Dave Fox, 1985, 71 Mins
Year of the Beaver investigates the events surrounding the Grunwick strike of 1977, the first in Britain in which Asian women took a leading role. Compiled from TV and independent interviews, news, radio and newspaper reports, this documentary builds up to a powerful indictment of the vacillation, compromise, and eventual betrayal by the official labour movement leadership.
Thurs 14 Feb Valentines Melodrama Special- The Saddest Music in the World 7.30pm Dir. G. Maddin, 2003, Canada, 100mins, cert.15, 35mm
A comic musical about the collective expression of grief. Fittingly, and in keeping with uber-imaginative director Guy Maddin's obsession, it is set in an absurdist version of the melodramatic world of early cinema. Isabella Rosellini plays a beer magnate (whose false legs are glass and full of beer) who holds an international competition in depression era Winnipeg to find the saddest music in the world.
After the film stay with us for some melancholy cocktails and weepy music in the bar!
Friday 15 Feb
Exhibition: ‘Finding it’ Opening 7pm A photographic exhibition by Carlos Pequenino including live music at the opening which will be provided by musicians captured in his work around cultural festivals, as part of the social and cultural networking he is involved with in Newcastle. This exhibition will be up until 27th February and on view when the cinema has events on.
Sun 17th Feb
The Truth About Weapons Of Mass Destruction 5:30pm
Fourman films, Non- cert, 100 mins
A free screening to make up for the cancellation in November… In the best traditions of Paul Foot this film is an explosive critique of the Ministry of Defence, the Weapons dossier and the ministers who voted for the war on Iraq. We will also be showing the short film, Echolalia, by Adrin Neatrour (UK 2007)
Sunday 17 Feb Film: The Forbidden Planet 7.30pm Dir. F.M.Wilcox, 1956, 94mins, 35mm In 2257 a reconnaissance spacecraft from Earth lands on distant Altair-IV to try to learn what happened to a research mission that left Earth 20 years earlier. Dr. Morbius is the lone surviving member of the ill-fated mission. Although it holds unknown terrors, Altair-IV also holds untold wonders, yet the deadly force that decimated the first crew reawakens… Tues 19 Feb
Glimpses of Autonomy, 6pm Free
Wed 20 Feb Film: Taking Liberties 7.30pm Dir. Chris Atkins, 2007, Cert.15
Shocking but hilarious documentary charting the destruction of basic Liberties under New Labour. Stories of normal people whose lives have been turned upside down by injustice - from being arrested for holding a placard outside parliament to being tortured in Guantanamo Bay. Followed by discussion of opposition to the government's ID Card and ID Register Presented by NO2ID – campaigning against the UK ID scheme.
Thurs 21 Feb Films: Schadenfreude 7.30pm
Various Artists, compiled 2006 by Tirdad Zolghadr. BetaSP
A new touring programme of international artists' work exploring questions of voyeurism and conflict - themes any activist photographer or film-maker must come to terms with. It aims to open a tiny patch of new ground for the usual, shopworn questions of representation and visual politics.'
Sat 23 Feb FILM/GIG: Ukelear Meltdown: Britain's first festival of 'extreme ukulele' 7.30pm We celebrate lo-fi, punk rock approaches to the cheapest, easiest-to-play, and most democratic of instruments, the ukulele. Highlights include live sets from Cockland and Patti Plinko, and a rare screening of ROCK THAT UKE "a quirkily philosophical cinematic love poem that examines the near mystical allure of the ukulele". Plus much much more! Sun 24 Film: Tovarisch, I Am Not Dead 7.30pm Dir: Stuart Urban, 2007, Digibeta, 83 min Garri Urban survived extremes of both Nazism and Communism. Attempting to swim an icy river from Soviet territory to Romania, he told snipers stooping to lift his apparently lifeless body; “no, tovarisch (comrade), I’m not dead” - before striking their officer. In 1992 his son, award-winning film-maker Stuart Urban, follows Garri into the former Soviet Union, discovering his ‘international spy” KGB records and the fate of his family in the Holocaust.
Q+A with the director follows the screening.
Wed 27 Feb Film and discussion with visiting Cubans. Details TBC, see website nearer the event.
AV FESTIVAL SECTION
Star and Shadow hosts a series of events as part of and to compliment AV Festival 08: Broadcast. International festival of electronic arts featuring visual art, music and moving image. 28 February - 8 March 2008 Newcastle, Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Sunderland. www.avfestival.co.uk
Thurs 28th Feb – 7.30pm
Film: Network Dir. Lumet, Cert 15, 121 mins, 1976
A warm up to our AV festival programme. Media madness reigns supreme in this scathing satire of network television. A veteran network anchorman is fired because of low ratings - his response is announcing he'll kill himself on live television two weeks hence. What follows is the anchorman's descent into insanity, during which he fervently rages against the medium that made him a celebrity.
Fri 29th Feb Exhibition opening 7.30- 9.30pm and showing whilst the cinema is open until Fri 7th March
Exhibition : "An effective/deadly chop severs the connection..." Investigating the concept of broadcast and the breakdown of production, Little Chops, a Newcastle based arts collective, explore elements of the theme of AV08 through various mixed media and multi-media experiments. The Star and Shadow Cinema provides the backdrop for Little Chops second excursion beyond formal gallery space. Featuring Artists: Alyson Agar, Jo Burke, Katy Cole, Scott Donohue, Oonagh Hegarty, Paul Raymond and Stuart Ward.
Sunday 2nd March Broadcast Yourself: In person and on screen 11.30am- 10.30pm
11:30am Join Sarah Cook and Kathy Rae Huffman, co-curators of the Broadcast Yourself Hatton Gallery exhibition, for brunch and Q&A session about the works on view in the exhibition. 1pm: Artists in the exhibition present their work and screenings of their projects. 3:30pm tea and scones 4:30pm Screening of Works for Television, Programmed by Gary Thomas for Animate Projects
7pm An American Family Revisited: The Louds 10 Years Later (1983) (DVD) (55 mins). Documentary highlighting the first-ever reality TV show, which followed the lives of the Loud Family and was aired in 1973.
8.30pm The Truman Show (1998) (103mins) (PG) "All the world's a stage" Peter Weir directs this Oscar nominated film about what happens when an insurance salesman (played by Jim Carey) discovers his entire life is actually a TV show. £4/£3
Mon 3rd Mar
Film Double bill: Harun Farocki and Spin (Part of AV Festival 08) 7:30pm
Videogramme einer Revolution 1992, 106mins, Germany. Farocki and Ujica's "Videograms" shows the Rumanian revolution of December 1989 in Bucharest in a new media-based form of historiography. Demonstrators occupied the television station [in Bucharest] and broadcast continuously for 120 hours, thereby establishing the television studio as a new historical site.
Spin, 1995, 57min, colour, USA Director Brian Springer will introduce his groundbreaking and innovative documentary about the 1992 US presidential election. Created from raw satellite feeds, the film reveals the behind-the-scenes of political campaigning, journalism, and the techniques of Spin.
Single: £4/£3 double: £6/£4
Tues 4 Mar
[6pm Glimpses of Autonomy]
Community Radio Night: Scattered Frequencies and Radio Favela 7:30pm
(Part of AV Festival 08)
An evening exploring community radio in other countries, introduced by NE1fm.
Scattered Frequencies 2002, Dir Micz Flor and Philip Scheffner, 31 mins, Documentary looking at the problems surrounding radio-making and free speech in Nepal. Radio is the only widely accessible medium in Nepal, and with recent issuing of licenses for independent radio stations, groups of radio-makers have been pooling their resources towards creating a functioning media network.
Radio Favela (Uma Onda No Ar )
2002, Dir Helvécio Ratton, 92 mins,
An uplifting story of friends who set up a community radio station in the Brazilian favela where they live. Through the expression of their reality and music over the radio, the friends amass a following of listeners, and run into conflict with the authorities. £4/£3
Fri 7 Mar
[7:30 A Bit Crack]
10:30pm Cult TV: The Prisoner (Part of AV Festival 08)
ITV, 100 min, colour, UK A special late-night screening of two episodes from this iconic 1960s drama. Part spy thriller, part Kafkaesque sci-fi, follow ‘Number 6’ as he tries to escape ‘the Village’. £4/£3
end of av festival events at our cinema-----------
Tues 4 Mar - Glimpses of Autonomy, 6pm
Thurs 6 Mar – FILM - "South" 7.30pm Director Frank Hurley, 1919. 88 mins, DVD Documentary film from origninal footage by Frank Hurley, expedition photographer, of Ernest Shackelton's expedition to the South Pole in 1916 and the battle for survival when the expedition vessel was crushed in the pack ice and sank. This film was origninally silent, but has been provided with soundtrack. The print has been restored and colour tinted. Fri 7 Mar
A Bit Crack; Storytelling Night 7.30pm
Clare Murphy and Diarmuid O' Drisceoil- two of Ireland's new wave of storytellers, telling stories from the Irish and Gaelic traditions
Sun 9 Mar - Douglas Sirk Season 7.30pm
La Habanera, Douglas Sirk, 1937, Germany, 100mins, U, 16mm
An example of Sirk's German work which treads similar melodramatic ground to later Hollywood masterpieces. Set in Puerto Rico where a local land owner marries Astree, a Swedish woman, who grows to hate her husband. Critics have pointed out that the tale of an Ayrian beauty in a ‘dangerous’ exotic location is a bit too much from a film made in Germany during the Third Reich but then complexity, subversiveness, and sympathy characterize Sirks work, you can decide for yourselves. Thurs 13 Mar PRESENTING FILM-makers night: Sarah Pucill 7.30pm Sarah Pucill is a British film-maker who works in 16mm film, both black and white, and colour. Her works are wide-ranging but seek to establish a visual language for the representation of lesbian desire, but also examining the process of mourning and the relationship with the mother, amongst other things. She will show her works and discuss them with Brighid Mulley and Craig J Wilson.
Fri 14 Mar - PRESENTING FILM-makers night: Bridge + Tunnel Productions 7.30pm Newcastle-based Bridge + Tunnel Productions has spent nearly ten years making films about cultural identity, migration and equality, specialising in working with refugees, asylum seekers and ethnic minorities in the region. We showcase their work, including recent projects and work-in-progress. Sat 15 Mar Gypsy Music and Film: Exploring Manouche Music. 7pm 'SWING' A film by Tony Gatlif. Characterized by both gentle and frenetic rhythms, the vibrant music of the Manouche resounds throughout 'Swing'. The Manouche are Gypsies living in the Alsace area of France whose music combines the rhythm, melody, and emotion of their own culture with the jazz, swing, and blues of American. Gypsies have been one of the most persecuted ethnic minorities throughout history, their numbers decimated during the Holocaust leaving their heritage in jeopardy. Live music from 9pm from Heartz; who have elements of Folk, Jazz, improv and contemporary classical music in their Sound. And at 10.30pm Caravan, who are strongly influenced by Manouche music and Django Reinhardt.
Sun 16 Mar - Douglas Sirk Season
Magnificent Obsession, Dir. Douglas Sirk, 1954, US, 108mins, U, 35mm
The breakthrough film which launched Sirk's Hollywood melodrama era and Also Rock Hudsons career. Sirk didn't want to make the film because it has a slightly daft storyline and a script he thought was beneath him (It's about a rich man trying to reach spiritual fulfillment whilst winning a woman whose blindness and widowhood he helped bring about). Dont let any of that put you off, if your heart doesn't melt watching this film it's because you dont have one.
Tues 18 Mar - Glimpses of Autonomy, 6pm Tues 18 March 7.30pm
Performance/film: Breaking the Silence
A performance, with film about Rachel Carson; scientist, writer and ecologist, who single-handedly challenged the US government and ahro-chemical industry in her ground breaking book 'silent Spring' published in 1962. This show is not a history lesson. It is not about fear or despair. It is a love story and we are all part of the story. £5/4
Thurs 20 Mar Jack Stevenson's Film collections…
7pm - Home movie meets radical newsreel (90mins, 16mm various) Introduced by the notorious traveling collector-curator-distributor, Jack Stevenson, this programme of citizen-led radical media from the 1960's and 70's reverberates with Jonas Mekas' words "Why should we leave all the reporting to the press and TV?"
8.45pm - Journey to the Centre of Grindhouse (90mins, lecture + 16mm) Jack Stevenson, for decades himself a 'Grindhouse enthusiast, presents an illustrated lecture that constitutes an entertaining plunge back into the dusty realms of American B-movie lore while at the same time attempting to define the term, brought to light recently by Tarantino and Rodriguez, with as much scientific objectivity as possible.
9.45pm - Savage Streets, (1984, 16mm USA D. Steinmann) Set on the mean streets of Los Angeles, this film features Linda Blair (The Exorcist) and the nastiest street gang since Clockwork Orange. Not for the faint hearted, this is one of the very last true Grindhouse films before the genre went "direct-to-video".
£5/6 for all night or £4/3 for individual screenings.
Sat 22nd March
Road to Rimini : Pasqua speciale II
Late night disco with Road to Rimini. Please see website nearer the date for details.
Sun 23rd Mar – Douglas Sirk season
All that Heaven Allows, Dir D.Sirk, 89mins, cert U, 1955, US, DVD
It ought to be called 'all that society allows' because it's about a woman who is denied happiness by those who purport to love her and to whom she has devoted her life. She has lost her husband and is losing her children as they grow up and leave. It is a tradgedy which is so banal in a way and yet in Sirks hands it seems to strike a beautiful and deadly blow to the heart. Rock Hudson plays a fantastic nature boy, such a seductive counterpoint to the society Jayne Wyman's character suddenly recognizes as empty and cruel.
Wed 26 Mar Divided states of America 7pm Dir. S.Podgorsek, 70 mins, 2005, DVD The legendary post-avant-garde group Laibach are documented in this film of their 2004 USA tour. The fans have to be seen to be believed with a variety of responses to the provocatively recycled religious symbols, Nazi art, and socialist realism used to brutally ironise the aesthetics of totalitarianism. Overshadowed by wars in Iraq & Afghanistan and the controversial presidential re-election, the Slovenian band let the music and images do the talking Thurs 27th March - Douglas Sirk season 7.30pm Written on the Wind, Dir.D.Sirk, US, 1956, 99mins, PG, 35mm
After the success of films like Magnificent Obsession and All that Heaven Allows Universal allowed Sirk the freedom to explore more adult themes. He also received bigger budgets. Written in the Wind is perhaps the ultimate highest order of high production value 'trash'. The quotation marks indicate that the film is no such thing but rather an awesome work of genius. It's technicolour cinematography is what retinas were probably made for. Features impotence, alchololism and nymphomania. Starring Lauren Bacall alongside Sirk stalwart Rock Hudson.
Sun 30 Mar - Douglas Sirk season 7.30pm
Written on the Wind, (see thurs 27th screening)
