Hull Film Festival: Knife+Heart

Hull Film Festival: Knife+Heart

YORKSHIRE PREMIERE

Yann Gonzalez’s deliriously kinky queer horror thriller stars Vanessa Paradis and is set in 1970s Paris, following the dramatic breakdown of a relationship and the messy aftermath. Paradis plays gay porn producer Anne, who, after a break-up, launches herself into her latest and most ambitious film production. But as shooting gets underway, one of her stars is brutally murdered. Soon it becomes terrifyingly clear that a homicidal maniac is intent on bumping off the cast, one by one.

An erotically kitsch love letter to European Giallo, American grindhouse cinema and ’70s gay pornography, the film was shot on 35mm and is accompanied by a throbbing soundtrack from M83.

“This magical, erotic, disco-tinged horror-thriller is like cinematic candy.”

– Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times

Hull Film Festival: Dead Centre

YORKSHIRE PREMIERE

After waking up in a body bag, a mysterious John Doe disappears and finds his way to the hospital’s psychiatric ward, where he becomes the charge of a devoted doctor (Shane Carruth) who is fascinated by the man’s claims of being controlled by a “blackness” inside of him. Meanwhile, a curious medical examiner (Bill Feehely) searches for clues into the cause of the man’s disappearance. As the two men are drawn deeper John Doe’s psychosis they start to realize that the truth might be more sinister and ancient than they ever dared imagine.

The Dead Center takes on complex ideas about life, death and immortality, infusing them with a slick and unsettling injection of classic hospital paranoia. Bolstered by a riveting performance from Shane Carruth (Upstream Color), The Dead Center is a much-needed reminder that the most frightening moments can come from the most human of places.

“A creepy collision of the psychological and the supernatural…a masterclass in rising tension.”

– Anton Bitel, SciFi Now

Hull Film Festival: Gwen

YORKSHIRE PREMIERE

In the stark beauty of 19th Century Snowdonia a young girl tries desperately to hold her home together. Struggling with her mother’s mysterious illness, her father’s absence and a ruthless mining company encroaching on their land. A growing darkness begins to take grip of her home, and the suspicious local community turns on Gwen and her family. Anchored by terrific performances, Gwen is a stylish, atmospheric anti-patriarchal take on folk horror.

“Clever, beautiful and well-acted, Gwen proves to be an unexpected delight. It’s a slow burn, but one worth seeking out.”

The Last Tree credit Picturehouse Entertainment

Hull Fim Festival: The Last Tree

YORKSHIRE PREMIERE

Femi, a British boy of Nigerian heritage, enjoys a happy childhood in Lincolnshire, where he’s raised by doting foster mother Mary and surrounded by a tight-knit group of friends – until his real mum reclaims him and deposits him into a very different life in her small inner-London flat. With little emotional bond to his mother and no remembrance of their cultural heritage, Femi struggles to adapt. As he gets used to his new environment, Femi hardens himself, pulling away from the wishes of both of his ‘mothers’ and forging ahead in a brazen attempt to build his own identity.

Writer/director Shola Amoo pairs a lived-in honesty with a fresh, exciting stylistic panache in this depiction of the crooked –and at times perilous – path to manhood. The lyrical texture of Amoo’s filmmaking both visually and aurally expresses the changes in Femi’s internal state, while this unflinchingly unsentimental coming-of-age film consistently defies our expectations of what will happen next.

“Thoughtfully alternates universal adolescent insecurities with urgently specific minority politics.”

– Guy Lodge, Variety

Hull Film Festival: Transit

As fascism spreads, German refugee Georg (Franz Rogowski) flees to Marseille and assumes the identity of the dead writer whose transit papers he is carrying. Living among refugees from around the world, Georg falls for Marie (Paula Beer), a mysterious woman searching for her husband–the man whose identity he has stolen.

Adapted from Anna Segher’s 1942 novel, TRANSIT transposes the original story to the present, blurring periods to create a timeless exploration of the plight of displaced people.

Tell It To The Bees credit Vertgo Releasing

Hull Film Festival: Tell It To The Bees

YORKSHIRE PREMIERE

The Scotland of 1952 is no place for the fainthearted. When mill worker Lydia (Holliday Grainger) is abandoned by her philandering husband, she struggles to pay the rent and feed herself and son
Charlie (Gregor Selkirk). Local doctor Jean (Anna Paquin) is one of the few to help and a friendship develops that blossoms into a romance that will scandalise the town.

Director Annabel Jankel has crafted a sensitive adaptation of the Fiona Shaw novel that captures oppressive small-town life and the way love has the power to challenge narrow minds and deep-rooted prejudices.

“A sweet but sedate romance, anchored by a terrific turn from Holliday Grainger.”

– Lewis Knight, Daily Mirror

Humber Film Quarterly Screening

Humber Film is very pleased to announce the latest of our quarterly award winning film screenings.

Wednesday 1st May from 7pm at Kardomah94 featuring B-Negative, the full-length comedy feature film from Mollusc Films plus supporting shorts, Grimsby:RV from Focus 7 Ltd, and 200 Years.

GOOF-OFF

The first stage of Goof-Off, a film collaboration between Živilė Virkutytė and Ieva Šakalytė developed during a residency at Machol Shale, Dance House in Jerusalem. A work in progress it explores inner and outer boundaries, playing with our minds about the importance and statuses of ourselves and people around us. Watch the film alongside Živilė moving live in the space.

ONE LAST DANCE – The Films

One Last Dance – An Chéad Damhsa is a perambulating dance between Guildford (Rita’s home in the UK as an Erasmus student in 1994) and Cloughjordan (the rural Irish village where she moved post-Brexit). On her journey, Rita walked, danced and stayed with other EU citizens including some from Hull.

Watch the films made at each stage of the journey.

Pond Life (15) with Writer & Cast Q+A

It’s summertime 1994 in a quiet ex-mining village just outside Donacaster. Local teenagers Trevor, Pogo, Malcolm, Shane and David have nothing to do. When rumours of a legendary giant carp at the local ponds begin to swirl about town, this young community, led by Trevor, embark on a fishing expedition they will never forget. In a world of broken families, cassette tapes and rumbling political fever, these friends, each with their own struggles to bear, share a moment of harmony as they witness the carp for themselves.

With breakout performances by a cast of rising stars, the screening is followed by a Q+A with writer Richard Cameron and cast members Ethan Lee and Gianluca Gallucci.

Hull Independent Cinema: HIGH LIFE

Monte and his baby daughter are the last survivors of a damned and dangerous mission to the outer reaches of the solar system. The crew of death-row inmates led by a doctor with sinister motives has vanished. As the mystery of what happened onboard the ship is unravelled, father and daughter must rely on each other to survive as they hurtle toward the oblivion of a black hole.

A staggering and primal film about love and intimacy, suffused with anguished memories of a lost Earth, HIGH LIFE is a haunting, thrilling achievement from visionary director Claire Denis.

Featuring Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, André Benjamin

Awards and Reviews
Toronto Intl Film Festival, San Sebastian Intl Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam Official Selections

“The ending of HIGH LIFE arrives almost too suddenly, but that’s only incentive to seek out a second, third and fourth viewing as soon as humanly possible.” – The Globe and Mail

“High Life is a pensive and profound study of human life on the brink of the apocalypse.” – IndieWire

Certificate
HIGH LIFE is rated 18. Visit the BBFC website for full details (may include plot spoilers).

Hull Independent Cinema: MADELINE’S MADELINE

Madeline has become an integral part of a prestigious physical theatre troupe. When the workshop’s ambitious director pushes the teenager to weave her rich interior world and troubled history with her mother into their collective art, the lines between performance and reality begin to blur. The resulting battle between imagination and appropriation rips out of the rehearsal space and through all three women’s lives.

Starring Helena Howard, Molly Parker, Miranda July

Hull Independent Cinema presents MADELINE’S MADELINE
Josephine Decker | 2018 | USA | Cert 15 | 93 mins

Hull Independent Cinema: VOX LUX

In 1999, teenage Celeste survives a violent tragedy. After singing at a memorial service,
Celeste transforms into a burgeoning pop star with the help of her songwriter sister (Stacy Martin) and a talent manager. Celeste’s meteoric rise to fame and concurrent loss of innocence dovetails with a shattering terrorist attack on the nation, elevating the young powerhouse to a new kind of celebrity: American icon, secular deity, a global superstar. By 2017, adult Celeste is mounting a comeback after a scandalous incident that derailed her career. Touring in support of her sixth album, a compendium of sci-fi anthems entitled “Vox Lux,” the indomitable, foul-mouthed pop saviour must overcome her personal and familial struggles to navigate motherhood, madness and monolithic fame in the Age of Terror.

In Brady Corbet’s second feature, following his 2015 breakout debut The Childhood of a Leader — winner of the Best Director and Best Debut Film prizes at the Venice Film Festival — Celeste becomes a symbol of the cult of celebrity and the media machine in all its guts, grit and glory. Featuring original songs by Sia, an original score by Scott Walker, and a transcendent performance by Natalie Portman, personifying and pummeling the zeitgeist, VOX LUX is an origin story about the forces that shape us, as individuals, nations, and gods.

Featuring Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Stacy Martin

Awards and Reviews
Venice Film Festival, Toronto Intl Film Festival, AFI Fest Official Selections

“The film creates a universe where fame crowds out humanity. You can’t stop thinking about it” – Rolling Stone

“Brady Corbet’s VOX LUX, with a big performance by Natalie Portman, is an audacious story about a survivor who becomes a star, and a deeply satisfying, narratively ambitious jolt of a movie.” – The New York Times

Certificate
VOX LUX is rated 15. Visit the BBFC website for full details (may include plot spoilers).

Hull Independent Cinema: WOMAN AT WAR

Halla is a fifty-year-old independent woman. But behind the scenes of a quiet routine, she leads a double life as a passionate environmental activist. Known to others only by her alias “The Woman of the Mountain,” Halla secretly wages a one-woman-war on the local aluminum industry. As Halla’s actions grow bolder, from petty vandalism to outright industrial sabotage, she succeeds in pausing the negotiations between the Icelandic government and the corporation building a new aluminum smelter. But right as she begins planning her biggest and boldest operation yet, she receives an unexpected letter that changes everything. Her application to adopt a child has finally been accepted and there is a little girl waiting for her in Ukraine. As Halla prepares to abandon her role as saboteur and savior of the Highlands to fulfill her dream of becoming a mother, she decides to plot one final attack to deal the aluminum industry a crippling blow.

Starring Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Jóhann Sigurðarson, Juan Camillo Roman Estrada

Awards and Reviews
Winner, Best Feature – Hamburg Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival, Palm Springs Intl Film Festival, Melbourne Intl Film Festival Official Selections

“An artful fable that examines what it really means to save the world, Benedikt Erlingsson’s “Woman at War” is the rarest of things: A crowd-pleaser about climate change.” – indieWire

“Erlingsson has a magnetic heroine in Geirharðsdóttir, whose lithe and athletic without being a show-off, and underplays as a good soldier would” – New York Magazine

Certificate
WOMEN AT WAR is currently unrated. We expect it to be 15. Visit the BBFC website for full details (may include plot spoilers).

WeWatchFilms: THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY

There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend: Those with tickets for this movie, and those without. You know which you want to be.

Purse those lips and get your best whistle at the ready. Our June classic brings together a quiet loaner, a hitman and a bandit in THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. We’ll be screening the 2008 extended cut edition of the film, so be sure to stock up on popcorn and drinks before the movie!

While the Civil War rages between the Union and the Confederacy, three men – a quiet loner, a ruthless hit man and a Mexican bandit – comb the American Southwest in search of a strongbox containing $200,000 in stolen gold.

Starring Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef

Reviews & Awards
“The new length gives a clearer view of the civil war context: a nightmare of panic as the south flees before the Union’s advance.” – Guardian

“Sergio Leone’s grandiose 1966 western epic is nothing less than a masterclass in movie storytelling, a dynamic testament to the sheer, invigorating uniqueness of cinema.” – TimeOut

Certificate
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY is rated 15. Visit the BBFC website for full details (may include plot spoilers).

HIC & Yorkshire Silents: THE GENERAL

Live improvised score by Jonny Best on piano with Trevor Bartlett on percussion.

Many critics consider The General to be the last great comedy of the silent era, and it consistently ranks as one of the greatest comedies of all time on international critics’ polls.

Set during the Civil War and based on a true incident, the film is an authentic looking period piece. The title refers not to Buster Keaton’s character, but to his engine, ‘The General’ which figures prominently in one of the most harrowing and hilarious chase scenes ever filmed.

Buster Keaton portrays the engineer Johnnie Gray, who is rejected by the Confederate Army and then suffers the further humiliation of his girlfriend thinking him a coward. When a small band of Union soldiers penetrate far beyond Confederate lines to steal his locomotive, Johnnie sets off in hot pursuit. Seven of the film’s eight reels are devoted to the chase, with its orchestration of thrills and comedy. Keaton shot the film on the narrow railways of Oregon and used less than 50 titles to explain the whole story.

Digital restoration in 4K made by la Modern Videofilm under the supervision of Cohen Film Collection.

PLEASE NOTE: This film will play without any adverts or trailers, preceded by a short introduction from Yorkshire Silents.

Starring Buster Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavander

Awards and Reviews

National Film Registry, 1988

“Spectacular chases, fires and explosions are captured with fluid camerawork. There are no stunt doubles for Keaton and of course no digital effects.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“[Keaton’s films] have such a graceful perfection, such a meshing of story, character and episode, that they unfold like music.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times