leytonstone pop-up cinema

Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema is proud to present the following screening:

Water (12)
Dir: Deepa Mehta. (2005) Canada, India; 117 min. In Hindi, with English subtitles.

Oscar Academy Award Nominee 2007

“Writer/Director Deepa Mehta’s Water is a touching love story set in India in 1938. It begins with Chuyia, an 8-year-old child bride being told that her husband has died. She is now a widow. In traditional Indian society widows were not allowed to work or to remarry. (Very few Indian widows remarry to this day.) With no son to take care of her, Chuyia is sent to a widows’ ashram to live out a monastic life of constant prayer for her sins which, under Hindu tradition, contributed to the death of her husband. At the ashram, she meets a beautiful young widow, Kalyani. But all is not what it seems. Kalyani (like many young widows) has been forced into prostitution to help pay the bills of the ashram … and then Kalyani meets Narayan, a handsome young follower of Gandhi, who taught that widows should be allowed to remarry.

Subjects that can be introduced with Water include: India in the 20th century; the plight of widows in underdeveloped countries, particularly in India and Africa; Mahatma Gandhi and his role in Indian and world history; how patriarchal traditions hijack and pervert religions; and what happens when one group of people in a culture are powerless. The movie is rich in symbolism and other literary devices.” (*)

Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema is proud to present the following screening:

My Afternoons with Margueritte (15)
Dir: Jean Becker. (2010) France; 82 min. In French, with English subtitles.

An adaptation from the successful Marie-Sabine Roger’s novel La tête en friche.

“Serving up an authentic slice of provincial French life, MY AFTERNOONS WITH MARGUERITTE is a touching and enriching film that is refreshing in its focus on protagonists older than what we have become accustomed to seeing on the big screen. In this universal and unaffected tale, director Jean Becker’s (CONVERSATIONS WITH MY GARDENER) odd couple will capture audiences’ hearts from the word allez.” (*)

“Whether playing a hunchbacked peasant in JEAN DE FLORETTE, a swashbuckling bard in CYRANO DE BERGERAC or a French immigrant in GREEN CARD, Depardieu has brought sincerity, warmth and a refreshing energy to cinema screens around the world. If his portrayal of tenderhearted lug Germain doesn’t represent much of a departure for him, it is nevertheless a performance that is sure to be recalled as a
defining moment in the autumn of his career.” (*)

(*) Source: http://www.myafternoons.co.uk

Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema is proud to present the following screening:

Memories of Underdevelopment (15)
Dir: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. (1968) Cuba; 97 min. In Spanish, w/English subtitles.

Memories of Underdevelopment is a seminal Latin American film from Cuba. Directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea, the story is based on a novel by Edmundo Desnoes.

“Sergio, a wealthy bourgeois aspiring writer, decides to stay in Cuba even though his wife and friends flee to Miami. Sergio looks back over the changes in Cuba, from the Cuban Revolution Cuban Revolution to the missile crisis, the effect of living in an underdeveloped country, and his relations with his girlfriends Elena and Hanna.

Memories of Underdevelopment is a complex character study of alienation during the turmoil of social changes. The film is told in a highly subjective point of view through a fragmented narrative that resembles the way memories function.” (imdb.com)

Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema is proud to present the following screening:

Bienvenue Chez les Ch’tis
Dir: Dany Boon. (2008) France; 106 min.

The French comedy that has broken every box-office record in France, won numerous awards and has caught the eye of Hollywood and other countries with a number of remakes on the pipeline.

“Although living a comfortable life in Salon-de-Provence, a charming town in the South of France, Julie has been feeling depressed for a while. To please her, Philippe Abrams, a post office administrator, her husband, tries to obtain a transfer to a seaside town, on the French Riviera, at any cost. The trouble is that he is caught red-handed while trying to scam an inspector. Philippe is immediately banished to the distant unheard of town of Bergues, in the Far North of France. Leaving his child and wife behind, the crucified man leaves for his frightening destination, a dreadfully cold place inhabited by hard-drinking, unemployed rednecks, speaking an incomprehensible dialect called Ch’ti. Philippe soon realizes that all these ideas were nothing but prejudices and that Bergues is not synonymous with hell…” (imdb.com)

“The plot is based on that most thundering of clichés, the epiphany of a sophisticate who travels fearfully to a primitive region only to be won over by its laconic denizens’ rough-hewn but heart-warming life-force. This may sound like the basis for one of those vomit-inducing exercises in Gallic cinematic sentimentality that we Brits seem to swallow so happily, perhaps a sort of ‘Chocolat’ in reverse. Well, it isn’t.

The banality of the underlying concept is just one joke in a confection that, though genuinely affecting, is in essence fiendishly funny. Not, however, simply so. That “Ch’tis” business signals one of the most elaborate jeus d’esprit in the entire history of cinema.

The film has sold more than 20m tickets (that’s close to a third of France’s population of nearly 64m) and is now the most popular movie of all time at the domestic box office. Will Smith has bought the rights for a US remake, while an Italian version is already in the works.” (The Guardian.)

More details on the film here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/123575/bienvenue-chez-les-ch-tis

Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema is proud to present the following screening:

Biutiful (15)
Dir: Alejandro González Iñárritu. (2010) Mexico, Spain; 141 min.

Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominated film at this year’s Oscars and Golden Globe winner, this is a true masterpiece from the director that also brought you ‘Amores Perros’, ‘Babel’ and ’21 Grams’, and with a stelar performance from Javier Bardem in a role that also earned him a Best Actor Oscar Award nomination and the Cannes Palme D’Or award on the same category.

“Uxbal, single father of two children, finds his life in chaos as he is forced to deal with his life in order to escape the heat of crime in underground Barcelona, to break with the love for the divorced, manic depressive, abusive mother of his children and to regain spiritual insight in his life as he is diagnosed with terminal cancer.” (Imdb.com)

Screening on 7th December 2011, Wednesday
Starting time 7:45pm at Leytonstone Library
Church Lane, E11 1HG, London. See map
Entrance £5 (£4 all concessions)
* Check disabled access options availabe here.

You can watch a clip of the film here.

Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema is proud to present the following screening:

I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Ok (15)
Dir: Chan-wook Park. (2006) South Korea; 105 min.

Another great film from the Korean master Chan-wook Park, director of cult classics like “Old Boy” and “Lady Vengeance“.

“A girl who thinks she is a combat cyborg checks into a mental hospital, where she encounters other psychotics. Eventually, she falls for a man who thinks he can steal people’s souls.” - imdb.com

“This film is an alternative romantic comedy about the love between two psychiatric patients in a mental hospital. [...] It does not strive to have perfect characters with the perfect life. It is down to earth and realistic. Viewing the world through a psychotic lens is definitely interesting.“ – by ‘Gordon-11′ (imdb.com)

Screening on 2nd November 2011, Wednesday
Starting time 7:45pm at Leytonstone Library
Church Lane, E11 1HG, London. See map
Entrance £5 (£4 all concessions)
* Check disabled access options availabe here.

You can watch a clip of the film here.

Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema is proud to present the following screening:

We Are East
Dir: Various Artists; 100 min.

Dekko Productions presents ‘We Are East’. A screening of independent short films and video, showcasing quirky documentaries, great drama and some tantalisingly experimental films with an East London flavour.

Programme includes:

• Lisa Muten, ‘EAST‘
• John Smith, ‘BLIGHT‘
• Monro and Menon, ‘NO WAY THROUGH‘
• Bamforth & Nadeem – Dekko Productions, ‘A13:ROAD MOVIE‘
• Gareth Polmeer, ‘MID-TERRACE‘
• James Norton, ‘BORDERLANDS‘
• Lucia Ashmore, ‘ERIC’S SECRETS‘
• Rayna Nadeem, ‘DEADLIFE‘

Running time: 1:40h approx.

Screening on 5th October 2011, Wednesday
Starting time 7.45pm at Leytonstone Library
Entrance £5 (£4 concessions)
* Check disabled access options availabe here.