Award Winners At Keswick Film Festival

Each year KFF offers an Audience Award for the best of the current crop of films, both features and documentaries based on audience ratings.

In terms of feature films, it was no surprise that Three Billboards topped the poll, although it is nice to see a film that actually lives up to the hype. Edie and A Fantastic Woman were worthy runners up – vastly different and so enjoyable.

There was a bumper crop of documentaries this year, all of which were well received. It was wonderful to see new faces at the Festival attracted by Our Last Tango and the positive response to Human Flow  and to Demain is cause for hope. Amazingly Our Last Tango and Human Flow both scored 90.63% followed by Demain with 86.2%.

Scores for all the films are now available on the website.

The 10th Osprey Short Film Awards took place on the Saturday at the Festival. The Judges Prize went to Best Of Three, created by a group of 16-19 year olds as part of the BFI Film Academy with Signal Film and Media. The Audience Award went to The Bob Graham Round: Running the Fells with Friends by Kaleel Zibe. Congratulations to all the filmmakers who took part.

Sunday at the Festival

It's the final day of the Festival but there's still lots to see:

10:00 Keswick Peace and Human Rights Group presents Open Bethlehem - Studio.
11:45 Gook - Alhambra.

13:45 The Square - Alhambra.
14:00 Human Flow - Rheged.
15:30 Neil Sinyard on George Stevens - Studio.

17:00 Shane - Studio.
17:00 The Third Murder - Alhambra.

20:00 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri - Alhambra.

Saturday at the Festival

It's a busy day at the festival with so much to choose from:

10:00 Keswick Peace and Human Rights Group presents Demain - Studio
10:00 10p entry: A Monster Calls plus Q&A with star Lewis MacDougall - Alhambra

11:15 Our Last Tango - Rheged
11:30 The Work - Theatre By The Lake

13:00 Osprey Short Film Awards - Free Entry - Alhambra
13:45 Human Flow - Rheged
14:00 Mountains May Depart - Theatre By The Lake

15:00 A Fantastic Woman - Alhambra

17:00 Tawai - A Voice from the Forest + Bruce Parry Q&A - Theatre By The Lake
17:00 Woman Of The Year - Studio
17:30 Dark River - Alhambra

20:00 That Good Night, introduced by Anwen Hurt - Theatre By The Lake
20:00 L'Amant Double - Alhambra

22:30 Scared Stiff in the 1960s A talk by Patrick Glen - Alhambra
23:30 Night Of The Living Dead - Alhambra

Friday at the Festival

It's the first full day of the festival and here's what's coming up:

12:00 La Isla - Theatre By The Lake
12:00 The Rider - Alhambra

14:30 A Woman's Life - Theatre By The Lake
14:30 Trophy - Studio
14:30 Directions - Alhambra

17:00 Heartstone - Theatre By The Lake
17:00 Talk: Cumbria On Film - Studio
17:00 Sami Blood - Alhambra

20:00 Sicilian Ghost Story - Alhambra
20:00 Clouds Of Glory - Studio
20:00 Blade of the Immortal - Theatre By The Lake

It's Nearly Time...

After many months of planning and anticipation, Keswick Film Festival starts on Thursday!

It looks like we are going to have a full house to welcome director Simon Hunter with Edie, our opening film.

Other guests are now packing their bags to join us over the weekend.

Friday’s guest, David Banning has honed his talk on Cumbria on Film and Lisi Tribble will be travelling north to introduce Clouds of Glory. We will also welcome Lewis MacDougall to Keswick before he hosts A Monster Calls on Saturday morning.

Our Latin American formation dance team have been practising hard for their display after Our Last Tango on Saturday and of course, explorer Bruce Parry should have no trouble finding us for his Q&A after Tawai – A Voice from the Forest.

We are looking forward to welcoming Saturday evening’s guests, Anwen Hurt who will introduce That Good Night in what promises to be a bittersweet session at the Theatre and Patrick Glen who will undoubtedly bring a touch of movie nostalgia to the Festival, with Scared Stiff in the 1960s.

Then on Sunday, we have Neil Sinyard with us, talking about the great Hollywood Director, George Stevens. The screenings of Woman of the Year and Shane will be a superb counterpoint to the more contemporary offerings over the weekend.

What on earth are we going to do on Monday?

It is Time to Dance

There will be dance on stage and dance on screen at Keswick in the next couple of weeks.

On the Tuesday (20th Feb) before the Keswick Film Festival, Phoenix Dance Theatre's Windrush: Calyx and Shadows is staged at the Theatre by the Lake.

The work lets us glimpse what the first generation of Caribbean immigrants experienced when they came to England 70 years ago. These new arrivals, known as the Windrush generation, named after the ship the SS Empire Windrush which brought 492 people from the Caribbean to the UK in 1948, marked the start of the post war immigration boom which was to radically change British society.

Then as part of the Festival itself, we have Our Last Tango, screening at Rheged on Saturday 24th at 11.15am.

Our Last Tango tells the life and love story of Argentina's most famous tango dancers Maria Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes, who met as teenagers and danced together for nearly fifty years until a painful separation tore them apart. Relaying their story to a group of young tango dancers and choreographers from Buenos Aires, their story of love, hatred and passion is transformed into unforgettable tango choreographies.

After the screening, dancers from the Cockermouth U3A Latin American Formation Team will perform a short routine at Rheged before opening the floor to everyone inspired by what they have seen to get up and dance.

Bruce Parry comes to Keswick to introduce Tawai

Bruce Parry is coming to Keswick to introduce Tawai – A Voice from the Forest and to host a Q&A afterwards.

Tawai is Bruce's first feature film and draws on his experiences from earlier expeditions that formed the basis of his award-winning television series. He is perhaps best known for Tribe, which ran for three seasons showing him spending time living with indigenous peoples in locations such as Gabon, India, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Mongolia and Venezuela. However, he first came to prominence with children's programmes such as Serious Desert and Serious Jungle. His own jungle experience came, of course, with Amazon.

The film's title, Tawai, is the word the nomadic hunter gatherers of Borneo use to describe their inner feeling of connection to nature. The Guardian described the film as "an empathetic, sumptuously filmed homage to indigenous groups, particularly the Penan, a Bornean community that is held up by anthropologists as a model of a peaceful and egalitarian society."

Bruce is now a champion of the rights of indigenous peoples across the globe and feels that we in the west can and should learn from them. It will be a fascinating early evening session on Saturday 24th February.

The Man who made Shane and Giant

Those of you browsing the Festival website might have wondered about the choice of Woman of the Year and Shane. The common factor is of course, Director George Stevens, one of Hollywood’s greats who also made Giant, A Place in the Sun and The Diary of Anne Frank. 

Neil Sinyard, an old friend of KFF – he was a guest at our very first event in 2000 - will be presenting a talk on the great man on Sunday 25th February. The talk, which will be illustrated with film extracts, will explore some recurrent preoccupations and characteristics of Stevens’ work: the yearnings of the social outsider; his hatred of class prejudice and racial intolerance; a commanding visual style where his signature slow dissolve is used to unite and inspire thoughts and ideas as well as signal transitions of time and place.

Colonel George C Stevens was part of the force that liberated Dachau at the end of World War ll and Neil will explore how his wartime service had a transformational impact on his film-making style. 

For those of us with an interest in the history of cinema, Neil’s talk will undoubtedly prove fascinating.

More Guests Coming To Keswick

The Festival Programme is now complete and there are a few new highlights to tell you about.

Our family film this year is A Monster Calls, chosen by pupils from Keswick School. We are thrilled that Lewis MacDougall, who stars in the film alongside Liam Neeson, Felicity Jones and Sigourney Weaver, is coming to Keswick to introduce the film and host a Q&A afterwards.

We have told you about That Good Night, John Hurt’s last lead movie role. What is new is that Anwen Hurt will be travelling north to join us and to introduce the film on Saturday night.

Another guest coming to Keswick is Lisi Tribble. Lisi was married to Ken Russell and she was able to find a copy of Clouds of Glory, Ken's film about Wordsworth and Coleridge, originally commissioned by Melvyn Bragg for Granada TV. This will be a rare opportunity, so it's not one to miss. The search for Clouds of Glory was prompted by David Banning's talk, Cumbria on Film, based on his book An A-Z of Cumbria and the Lake District on Film. Friday evening in the Studio is going to be fascinating so book early!

Finally, at least for now, our friends at Rheged are putting on an additional screening of Human Flow on Sunday at 2.00pm. It is hoped that both screenings will be followed by a discussion about the issues raised in Ai Weiwei's remarkable film.

Guests at the Festival

Our Guests add so much to the experience and we are thrilled to be able to say that Simon Hunter, Neil Sinyard, David Banning and Patrick Glen will be at the Festival. Others may yet follow their example!

Simon Hunter

Simon Hunter made his first film, Spaceman, at seven years old, starring his parents and his dog. After 50 more films whilst growing up in Dumfriesshire, he embarked on a more traditional film school education and his career to date has been littered with awards.

In 2016 Simon completed his third feature film, his passion project, Edie which tells the tale of an old lady (Sheila Hancock) who heads to Scotland to climb a mountain. The movie which opens KFF on Thursday 22nd, was an official selection in the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June 2016. 

Neil Sinyard

We are pleased to welcome Neil back to Keswick. Neil, Emeritus Professor of Film Studies at the University of Hull, was a guest at the very first KFF in 2000, where he spoke about Shakespeare in Film.

This time around he is telling the story of George Stevens, one of the legendary Directors from Hollywood’s golden age. Starting out on Laurel and Hardy Movies he went on to make films such as Giant, A Place in the Sun and The Diary of Anne Frank. To complement his talk we are screening Woman of the Year (the first pairing of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn) and arguably the best western ever, Shane.

David Banning

David is the author of ‘An A-Z of Cumbria & the Lake District on Film’ published by Hayloft in late 2016, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Lakeland Book of the Year. After studying History of Art and later, Lake District Landscape Studies, his passions combined when researching the films and pieces of social history that were spliced together throughout the A-Z.

In looking for a companion piece for David’s talk we have, thanks to Lisi Tribble, been able to find a rare copy of Clouds of Glory, Ken Russell’s film on the lives of Coleridge and Wordsworth.

Dr Patrick Glen

Patrick Glen is a Postdoctoral Research Associate working at UCL History on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project 'Remembering 1960s British Cinema-going'. Extensive interviews with cinema-goers from the period reveal much about the importance of film on social attitudes and behaviours at a time when smoking in the Odeon was the norm.

He is the ideal person to set the scene for our screening of Night of the Living Dead with his talk on Saturday night, Scared Stiff in the 60s.

Documentaries at Keswick Film Festival

 

This year will be a bumper year for documentaries at KFF.

We have already announced Ai Weiwei’s remarkable Human Flow, the visual spectacle of Our Last Tango and Matt Glasby’s suggestion of The Work, however there are some other tremendous documentary screenings to look out for.

Our link with Keswick Peace and Human Rights Group continues and their selections for KFF will certainly give pause for thought. Demain provides a comprehensive look at ways in which activists, organizers and everyday citizens are trying to make the world a better, greener, more sustainable place and Open Bethlehem spans seven momentous years in the life of Bethlehem, revealing a city of astonishing beauty and political strife under occupation.

In Tawai – A Voice from the Forest, explorer Bruce Parry (The Tribe) travels the world living with indigenous peoples, delving deeper than ever on a journey into the heart of our collective human conscience.

Possibly our most challenging documentary of all is Trophy, a startling exploration of the evolving relationship between big-game hunting and wildlife conservation that will leave you debating what is right, what is wrong and what is necessary in order to save the great species of the world from extinction.

Be prepared to have your preconceptions challenged.

A Tribute to John Hurt

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Dylan Thomas' words provide the title and the theme to John Hurt's penultimate film and his last lead role. In That Good Night he plays a terminally ill writer struggling to come to terms with his own mortality (and with no intentions of going gentle into that good night), to rebuild the wreckage of his family and to die with some semblance of dignity.

Superbly supported by Charles Dance and Sofia Helin (The Bridge) That Good Night will be screened as a tribute to our much-missed and much-loved Patron.

"Hurt and Dance are great, between them they have some fabulous dialogue - conversations which are incredibly timely given the continued euthanasia debates in Australia and globally. Hurt has some wonderful soliloquies, not surprising given this is adapted from a stage play, and Dance is his perfect counterpart."  - Film Blerg

More Films From Around The World

Where do you belong? Where do your loyalties lie? Our films from the KFF 2018 programme explore those themes from places as far apart as the USA, Iceland, Scandinavia and Sicily and closer to home, northern France.

The Rider, an authentic and heart-rending film, is the story of Brady, a rodeo rider who just emerged from a coma and told he should not ride again. Horses are his life however and where does he go now? Decisions need to be made as to where Brady belongs.

Coming of age drama Heartstone asks the same sort of questions. A remote fishing village in Iceland. Teenage boys Thor and Christian experience a turbulent summer as one tries to win the heart of a girl while the other discovers new feelings toward his best friend.

In Sami Blood a 14-year-old girl belonging to the Sami people, a Scandinavian ethnic minority, is subjected to racism and eugenic scrutiny in the 1930s when she is removed from her family and sent to a state-run school that aims to re-educate her into Swedish culture. To which culture does she or should she belong?

Family pressures weigh heavily on Jeanne in A Woman’s Life, a tale of tormented love embedded in the restrictive social and moral codes of marriage and family in 19th century Normandy.

Then we have Sicilian Ghost Story, based on the true story of the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy, held by the Mafia for 779 days in the hopes of silencing his informant father, the film focuses on Luna, a classmate with a crush, who refuses to sweep his disappearance under the rug and challenges the code of silence that prevails amongst the adults.

Strictly amazing films

We are pleased to announce that we will be screening Our Last Tango at Rheged on Saturday 24th February. Not just for Strictly aficionados, Our Last Tango tells the life and love story of Argentina's most famous tango dancers Maria Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes, who met as teenagers and danced together for nearly fifty years. Their story is told to a group of young tango dancers and choreographers from Buenos Aires, who transform their story of love, hatred and passion  into unforgettable tango-choreographies.

Visually stunning, this is the perfect film for Rheged!

More Festival Films

We have added some remarkable stories to the programme for KFF in February, both fictional and from real life:

Edie, starring Sheila Hancock and Kevin Guthrie (Dunkirk) is the story of an older lady’s desire to climb a mountain after a lifetime of bitterness and resentment. "Sheila Hancock delivers the performance of a lifetime, she's an absolute legend, who at 84 offers a strong reminder that age is but a number. Her delivery of humour, emotion and duress is impeccable." - Mike McGrail

A Fantastic Woman is Chile’s entry for the Foreign Language Oscar and winner of a Silver Bear at Berlin. A Fantastic Woman is a powerful and uplifting film that follows the story of Marina, a trans gender woman, who is treated with suspicion and prejudice after the death of her lover. "Daniela Vega carries the weight of the narrative on her shoulders, delivering a captivating and raw performance" - CineVue

Human Flow – Director Ai Weiwei has brought his artist’s eye to this immensely moving account of the global refugee crisis. The scale of Ai Weiwei’s film and the breadth of the problems he recounts makes this a natural choice for Rheged’s IMAX screen. "A stunning, provocative meditation on the state of a world" - Laura DeMarco

First Films for 2018 Festival

As the leaves turn and the nights draw in, it is of course, time to be thinking about Keswick Film Festival. The first films are booked and the festival passes are on sale at the Theatre by the Lake.

Already confirmed, we have award winners galore, striking documentaries and many films that you will only ever get to see in Cumbria by coming to the Festival! To whet your appetite, here is a sneak peek at a couple of the films we will be screening:

The Square – After the Handmaid’s Tale and Top of the Lake Elisabeth Moss is an actor at the very top of her game. Supported by Dominic West (The Wire) The Square is outlandishly funny and a biting social satire. Winner of the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 2017.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri – Coen Brothers’ favourite, Frances McDormand, stars alongside Woody Harrelson in Martin McDonagh’s follow up to In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths. Winner of the People’s Choice Award at Toronto International Film Festival 2017

Many of you will remember Matt Glasby who came up to the Festival last year as one of our guest critics. On his recommendation we have The Work, described by Matthew Turner as "Fascinating and deeply moving, this fly-on- the-wall doc about Folsom Prison's unconventional group therapy program packs a powerful punch".