Forest Row Film Society

When an Egyptian police brass band travels to Israel to play at an Arab arts centre, the group ends up abandoned in a remote desert town. A comedy about the bridge-making capacities of hospitality and the way music serves as a universal language.

Further Reading

1. Eye for Film
2. Chicago Sun-Times
3. cinemattraction, interview with Eran Kolirin
4. The Hollywood Interview

Is access to clean drinking water a basic human right, or a commodity that should be bought and sold like any other article of commerce? Stephanie Soechtig's debut feature is an unflinching examination of the big business of bottled water.

Screened in collaboration with Transition Forest Row

THIS FILM WAS CANCELLED AND REPLACED BY WATER

Further Reading

1. Official film site

Narrated by Johnny Depp and including much previously unseen footage, When You're Strange is a riveting account of the history of The Doors and American counter-culture, from 1965 to Jim Morrison's death in 1971.

Further Reading

1. Time Out
2. Empire
3. Official film site

If he can be married by 7 o'clock Buster stands to inherit $7 million. Unfortunately, his long-standing sweetheart refuses, which triggers desperate measures and a final, hilarious chase. With live music from Terry Davies.

All seats £3

Further Reading

1. Time Out

A short programme of films made by local film-makers, mostly about people and places near Forest Row. Kicking off with the short animation from Saturday's workshop, the programme will also include Poppy Futures by Nikki Williams/Edmund Saunders, Tor Bridges' A Hundred Years of Food and A Life of Bees, and more. Donations.

Film Premiere! Part of Local Food Week. Funded by Grassroots Grants at Sussex Community Foundation, this film produced for Transition Forest Row looks at local food production around our village and reflects on how other communities can learn from what is happening here. Screening followed by World Cafe discussion.

Screened in collaboration with Transition Forest Row

Relentlessly inventive and innovative, Baz Luhrmann's audacious adaptation captures the emotional extremes of the play in a hip, chaotic, modern setting. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Preceded by a short introductory talk by actor and academic, Kevin Quarmby at 7pm.

"Milk is a masterclass on how a political biopic can become rich, humane, encompassing cinema." Financial Times

The story of Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) and his struggles as an American activist who fought for gay rights and became California's first openly gay elected official.

Further Reading

1. Time Out
2. Chicago Sun-Times
3. Film Comment

The soil feeds us, cleans our water and regulates climate processes, yet most of us ignore this most basic of earth's resources. Dirt! offers a vision of a sustainable relationship between humans and the soil.

Screened in collaboration with Transition Forest Row

Ordet (The Word) is about faith, and may be the most breathtaking exploration of religious experience ever on film, with one of the most astonishingly dramatic endings in the history of cinema.

Further Reading

1. See the blog item about this film

A stressed mother goes to look for her husband, sending her two very young, but resourceful, girls, to live, first, with a very muddled alcoholic aunt and then with their grandmother. Shown with Lullaby (dir: Kevin Markwick, 2007, 15 min)

"Wonderful performances from the two young leads...an enchanting, challenging film" Empire

Further Reading

1. Time Out
2. Daily Telegraph
3. Not coming to a theater near you

A fascinating documentary about the disappearance of bees all around the world. Through exploring Colony Collapse Disorder, a phenomena in which honey bees abruptly abandon both their queen and brood for reasons as yet not fully known, the film examines scientific and environmental links to this major problem.

Screened in collaboration with Transition Forest Row

In present day Istanbul a young, naive and timid muezzin falls in love with his neighbour, Clara, a catholic nurse. Avoiding all the usual cliches, the film depicts the complex choices such a situation offers, often with delightful humour.

Further Reading

1. Official film site

There's a revolution underway in South America, but most of the world doesn't know it. Oliver Stone sets out to explore its social and political movements as well as the mainstream media's misperception of South America while interviewing seven of its elected presidents.

Screened in collaboration with Transition Forest Row

Further Reading

1. Time Out
2. The Guardian
3. Official film site

An isolated, pregnant girl, struggling to hide her condition, forms an unlikely but ultimately therapeutic bond with a grieving haute couture embroidress.

“A beautifully observed story.” Variety

Further Reading

1. Time Out
2. Empire
3. The Guardian

“the all-time great, curl-up-on-the-sofa-with-a-cup-of-tea movie” Total Film

James Stewart stars in this magical fable of a small American town. Reluctantly running the only independent property loan company, George Bailey (Stewart) helps much of the community in opposition to the greedy old banker. Even so, when pressures get too great he gets driven to despair, but is saved by a friendly angel who shows him what life would have been like had he never existed.

Set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, Lisa (Joan Fontaine) recounts the tale of three brief meetings with a concert pianist (Louis Jourdan).

“For all its florid melodramatic trappings, this grand, heartbreaking masterpiece resonates with sad, simple truths: just because one can appreciate beauty, that does not make one beautiful, and just because one loves does not mean one is loved.” Time Out

Further Reading

1. The Guardian
2. Time Out
3. Empire
4. Senses of Cinema
5. Senses of Cinema on the music in the film
6. Senses of Cinema on Ophuls

Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, The Class, is a fascinating study of the cultural conflicts within a class of multi-ethnic Parisian teenagers.

“A lovely, exhilarating work about the ways in which failure and frustration can open the pathways through which we make sense out of life” Salon

Further Reading

1. Guardian
2. The Independent
3. Chicago Sun-Times
4. Salon
5. Feature on Laurent Cantet in Time Out
6. Interview with Laurent Cantet on Lovefilm
7. Interview with Laurent Cantet on Greencine

Michael Haneke’s masterpiece is set just prior to the start of WWI, where the quiet life of a small German village is mysteriously plagued by a series of bizarre incidents that take a grip on the entire village. Winner of the 2009 Palme d’Or at Cannes.

“a profoundly disquieting movie, superbly acted and directed. Its sinister riddle glitters more fiercely each time I watch it..” The Guardian

Further Reading

1. Time Out
2. The Guardian
3. Sight and Sound
4. Lectures about and interview with Michael Haneke (BFI)
5. Not coming to a theater near you
6. Daily Telegraph
7. The Independent
8. Eye for Film
9. Chicago Sun-Times

The Turning Point explores the vital importance of community in the 21st century and its role in helping us to create a life-sustaining society. Focussing on some of the sustainable community solutions that have grown up around the Findhorn Foundation community in Scotland, the film examines the opportunities for a low carbon future.

In addition, we will also show the short documentary The Land on Which we Stand (Rebecca Payne, 2007, 31 mins) about the development of a permaculture project in Devon, their relationship with the other people who live nearby, and the unfolding of the planning process.

Screened in collaboration with Transition Forest Row Venue: Brambletye Hotel

Further Reading

1. Official site of The Turning Point
2. The Land on Which we Stand

Thirteen-year-old Wei is drafted in as a substitute teacher at her village school in rural China. When one boy disappears to work in the city, she determines to retrieve him come what may.

“A beautiful and genuinely spirit-lifting film about poverty and education” Chicago Tribune

Further Reading

1. Chicago Sun-Times
2. Salon
3. Eye for Film

A dazzlingly multifaceted epic of stunning surprise, Mother has it all: suspense, family melodrama, multiple homicides, comedy and poetic injustice.

“A brilliant Hitchcock mystery, made in Korea” Salon

“The movie’s off-kilter story logic, pitch-perfect editing and beady compositional panache make it one of the most stylistically pleasurable in months. ” Daily Telegraph

Further Reading

1. Time Out
2. Strictly Film School
3. Guardian
4. Not coming to a theater to you

Bamako is the capital of Mali, and this remarkable film centres on a symbolic trial taking place there implicating the World Bank and the IMF for globalisation and imperial exploitation. Made by one of the great film-makers of Sub-Saharan Africa.

“a feat of intellectual and cinematic daring that will leave your brain buzzing.” Salon

Screened in collaboration with Transition Forest Row

Further Reading

1. Time Out
2. Film Journal International
3. Salon
4. Sight and Sound
5. Observer

The Yokohama family, bereaved 15 years earlier, prepare for the annual memorial meeting. Undercurrents of hidden emotions are shown with irony and warmth in Koreeda’s delicate direction of this wonderful film. From the director of After Life.

“A beautifully measured melodrama that owes much to Ozu’s Japanese classic Tokyo Story” The Times

Further Reading

1. Time Out
2. Sight and Sound
3. Chicago Sun-Times

Filmed in the Cévennes in southern France, this documentary is a poignant and beautiful account of the demise of traditions in the French countryside. Without romanticising the past, Depardon gives us an unsentimental look at a rural life that is hard to conceive nowadays and is both reverent and sublime.

Screened in collaboration with Transition Forest Row

Further Reading

1. Time Out
2. Strictly Film School
3. Guardian

The first ever Forest Row comedy film festival will be taking place 17-20 March 2011. Including films from all over the world and from silent slapstick to the most recent releases, as well as filmmaking and animation workshops, the festival will be offer something for everyone in Forest Row and the neighbouring area. The screenings will take place in Forest Row Village Hall, with workshops in neighbouring spaces.

Read more on the festival website.

The absent father of two children suddenly returns to spend the night with his wife and then take the two boys, who don’t know him, on a fishing trip. A stunning and beautiful film.

“A model of suspenseful storytelling. Very highly recommended indeed.” Time Out

Further Reading

1. Eye for Film
2. Talking Pictures
3. Guardian

Every day, the world over, large amounts of high-level radioactive waste cre- ated by nuclear power plants is placed in interim storage, which is vulnerable to natural disasters, man-made disasters, and to societal changes. In Finland the world's first permanent repository is being hewn out of solid rock -- a huge system of underground tunnels - that must last 100,000 years as this is how long the waste remains hazardous.

Screened in collaboration with Transition Forest Row

Further Reading

1. The Guardian

Centered on the life of Séraphine de Senlis, a nineteenth century painter, now famous, who lived long in bitter poverty and then could not cope with sudden recognition. It captures with great effect a gifted woman’s experience of art, religion and mental illness, with a brilliant performance by Yoland Moreau.

Further Reading

1. Time Out
2. Empire
3. Chicago Sun-Times

In 1979 president Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House; these were then removed under the Reagan presidency. A Road Not Taken follows the story of the panels in parallel with the oil crisis, highlighting similar issues that still face us.

Screened in collaboration with Transition Forest Row

Further Reading

1. Official film site
2. Film's Facebook page

The 2010 Best Foreign Film Oscar winner is a skillful blend of love story, police procedural crime thriller and legal drama. A cracking end to the season.

“Humane and harrowing.... This one will stay with you” Empire

Further Reading

1. Empire
2. Eye for Film
3. The Independent
4. The Guardian
5. Chicago Sun-Times

The real-life story of members of the Women's Institute in a north Yorkshire town who decide to pose nearly-nude for a calendar to raise funds for charity, starring: Celia Imrie, Ciaran Hinds, Geraldine James, Helen Mirren, Julie Walters

Organised in collaboration with the Forest Row WI

Including a second screening of Growing Food Locally, the Transition Forest Row documentary about the amazing food sources in our area, this special event for Tablehurst Farm will include a number of food-related films in advance of the Tablehurst Open Day on Sunday 19th June.

Countdown to Zero traces the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present state of global affairs: nine nations possessing nuclear weapons capabilities with others racing to join them, with the world held in a delicate balance that could be shattered by an act of terrorism, failed diplomacy, or a simple accident. Written and directed by acclaimed British film-maker Lucy Walker, the film makes a compelling case for worldwide nuclear disarmament and features an array of important international statesmen, including Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev and Pervez Musharraf.

This screening, in collaboration with Transition Forest Row, is the national premiere with a live-streamed Q&A from London, by arrangement with the BFFS and Dogwoof.

Read Forest Row Film Society news release

Further Reading

1. Official film site
2. Time Out New York
3. Variety