PAST PRODUCTIONS 2019/20

Director: Autumn de Wilde
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, James Cosmo and Mia Goth

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich is a self-proclaimed matchmaker who meddles in the romantic relationships of her friends. She thinks she knows best but in reality, wreaks havoc. Her misguided matches and romantic missteps eventually lead her to find love that has been there all along in plain sight.

A glittering satire of social class and the pain of growing up with plenty of romantic intrigue and gender politics.  Certain liberties are taken with Austen’s original text to often hilarious effect, which just adds to the fun.

All the performances are excellent.

Director: Terence Davies
Cast: Jack Lowden, Peter Capaldi, Kate Phillips

Benediction explores the turbulent and tragic life of the WW1 poet Siegfried Sassoon (younger Jack Lowden, older Peter Capaldi) who was a soldier as well as a writer. He was a complex man who survived the horrors of the trenches and was decorated for his bravery, but later became a vocal critic of the government’s continuation of the war. He was adored by members of the aristocracy and the London theatre world and embarked on a number of unsatisfactory affairs. He suffered the pain of being a gay man in an unforgiving culture and attempted to come to terms with his sexuality and his war time experiences in a quest for salvation through marriage and religion.

“A profoundly affecting drama” – Rotten Tomatoes

Director: Olivia Newman
Cast: Daisy Edgar Jones (Normal People)

This film, which is based on a hugely successful and much-loved book has completely divided the critics and audiences. Critics reviews have been withering whereas audiences have loved it. This is a coming-of-age story about Kya, an abandoned girl who raised herself in the dangerous marshlands of North Carolina in the 1950s. Drawn to two young men from town Kya opens herself to a new and startling world. When one of the men is found dead Kya becomes the primary suspect.

“A particular treat for viewers who loved the book Where the Crawdads Sing offers a faithfully told, well acted story in a rich, beautifully filmed setting” (Audience review - Rotten Tomatoes)

Mary Cassatt was born in America and became one of America’s most well-known artists. She made a career painting the lives of the women around her. Her radical images showed them as intellectual, feminine and real, which was a major shift in the way women appeared in art. Presenting her astonishing prints, pastels and paintings, this film introduces us to the often-overlooked Impressionist whose own career was as full of contradiction as the women she painted. She printed, sketched, and painted dozens of images of mothers and children yet she never married or had children herself. She was a classically trained artist but chose to join a group of Parisian radicals – the Impressionists – a movement that transformed the language of art. The world’s most eminent Cassatt curators and scholars help tell this riveting tale of great social and cultural change; a time when women were fighting for their rights and the language of art was completely re-written. Mary Cassatt and her modern women were at the heart of it all. Despite being a prolific painter of women, Cassatt detested being described as a ‘woman painter’.

Director: Colm Bairead
Cast: Catherine Clinch, Carrie Crowley

This beautiful and moving Irish language film is based on a novella by Claire Keegan and is set in rural Ireland in the early 1980’s.

A silent and neglected 9-year-old girl is sent away from her dysfunctional family for the summer to live with foster parents. She blossoms in their care but in this home, where there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers a painful truth.

“One of the most exquisitely realised films of the year” (Wendy Ide (Observer))

Director: Toby Amies
Cast: Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies, BFG) Sally Hawkins (Happy go Lucky, Shape of Water)

This heart-warming true story is about Maurice Flitcroft, one of life’s true eccentrics and optimists. This humble shipyard worker from Barrow-in-Furness somehow managed to gate-crash the British Open Golf Championship in 1976 by claiming he was a professional golfer, when in fact he had hardly ever played golf before. He believed that something called ‘Open’ should be just that

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“Rylance’s pitch perfect turn” (Guy Lodge – Guardian)

In the spring of 2023, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam will open its doors to the largest Vermeer exhibition in history.

With loans from across the world, this major retrospective will bring together Vermeer’s most famous masterpieces including Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Geographer, The Milkmaid, The Little Street, Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid, and Woman Holding a Balance.

This new Exhibition on Screen film invites audiences to a private view of the exhibition, accompanied by the director of the Rijksmuseum and the curator of the show. A truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! As well as bringing Vermeer’s works together, both the Rijksmuseum and the Mauritshuis in the Hague have conducted research into Vermeer’s artistry, his artistic choices and motivations for his compositions, as well as the creative process behind his paintings. For the first time the newly restored Girl Reading a Letter at the Open Window will be displayed.