2004-2005 PROGRAMME

Many of this season's films have an Official Site – click on the film's title to visit it.

17 September 2004: Girl With a Pearl Earring
Peter Webber, 2003, 95 mins, 12A
As Vermeer slowly draws the new maid into the world of his paintings, so does the film its audience. Each beautifully composed shot is a mini-portrait in itself.

1 October 2004: L’homme du train
Patrice Leconte, 2002, 90 mins, in French with English subtitles, 12
An ageing criminal arrives by train in a provincial town and strikes up an unlikely friendship with a retired schoolteacher. This gentle fable about two strangers whose lives intersect is a little gem: funny, literate, worldly and yet innocent all at the same time.

15 October 2004: Winged Migration
Jacques Cluzaud, 2001, 98 mins, U
Four migration routes are followed in this Oscar-nominated documentary about avian survival. Covering hundreds of thousands of miles and focussing on hundreds of different species, it celebrates the poetic beauty of flight.

29 October 2004: Russian Ark
Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002, 96 mins, in Russian with English subtitles, U
In a staggering feat of cinematography, this costume drama uses a single, continuous shot to take its audience through St Petersburg's Hermitage museum and into the dark recesses of Russian history, allowing it to wander through the Hermitage, admiring the art, eavesdropping on conversations, spying on Russian royalty, and slowly traversing Russian history from the 18th century to the present.

12 November 2004: The Man Without a Past
Aki Kaurismaki, 2002, 97 mins, in Finnish with English subtitles, 12
Another wonderful black comedy from Kaurismaki. The eponymous character is M, whose sojourn in Helsinki is cut short by a mugging. Pronounced dead at hospital, amazingly he returns to life, but can't remember a thing. He discharges himself and, bereft of his past, he chooses to build a new future.

26 November 2004: I Capture the Castle
Tim Fywell, 2003, 113 mins, PG
Set in the 1930s, this coming-of-age comedy revolves around 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain as she chronicles the struggles of her eccentric and alarmingly unworldly family. Lovingly adapted from Dodie Smith’s novel, the film manages to capture the painful glory of first love, misplaced love and the temptations of sex over true affection.

10 December 2004: Love Actually
Richard Curtis, 2003,135 mins, 15
Follows the lives and loves of eight very different couples in various loosely interrelated tales all set in London during a frantic week before Christmas.

7 January 2005: Lost in Translation
Sofia Coppola, 2003, 105 mins, 15
Two (relative) innocents abroad in Tokyo – a gorgeously warm and witty love story and one of the most popular films of last year – it won an Oscar for its writer/director Sofia Coppola. It is a funky little Brief Encounter for the new century.

21 January 2005: Talk to Her
Pedro Almodovar, 2002, 112 mins, in Spanish with English subtitles, 15
Two men meet and become acquainted in a hospital waiting room while the two women they’re visiting lie unconscious in the next room. The movie is as surprising and intriguing as a thriller, with frequent poignant humour.

4 February 2005: Lantana
Ray Lawrence, 2001, 121 mins, 15
Writer Andrew Bovell creates such nuanced, delicate, believable characters that the narrative coincidences are never questionable. And while, yes, Lantana is concerned with the human condition, its murder mystery provides an unpretentious hook off which hang the equally gripping character tensions.

18 February 2005: Good Bye Lenin!
Wolfgang Becker, 2003, 121 mins, in German with English subtitles, 15
E Germany, 1989. A young man's fiercely Communist mother collapses into a coma and doesn’t regain consciousness until after the Wall has fallen. Fearing that the shock will kill her if she finds out, her son and his friends arrange her life to make her believe nothing has changed. This is a remarkable film that makes you laugh and leaves you thinking.

4 March 2005: The Girl from Paris
Christian Carion, 2001, 103 mins, in French with English subtitles, 15
A young Parisian woman abandons a dull career in computing to follow her dream: taking over a farm in remote, rural France. But then a hard winter sets in, and she needs help …

18 March 2005: Rififi
Jules Dassin, 1955, 120 mins, in French with English subtitles, 12, b/w
Archetypal heist thriller, with a group of thieves banding together for a daring jewel robbery and falling out afterwards. Highly acclaimed for the 35-minute robbery sequence, conducted without a word being spoken.

1 April 2005: Frida
Julie Taymor, 2002, 123 mins, 15
Sumptuous biopic of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, from her days as a student in the 1920s, through a debilitating accident and a tempestuous marriage to fellow painter, Diego Rivera. The movie has an exuberant visual sensibility from beginning to end, tied closely and passionately to Kahlo's distinctive paintings.

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