CineCity The Brighton Film Festival 2010

CINECITY  The Brighton Film Festival, now in its 8th year.

CINECITY presents a host of premieres and previews of highly anticipated major releases giving you first sight of films hotly tipped for success in the awards season. CINECITY also showcases a number of titles brought to CINECITY from around the world that are unlikely to screen again in the city plus many special one-off events.

Film festivals can form something of an alternative distribution network offering audiences their only chance to see a range of films on the big screen. It is this element of discovery combined with the opportunity to meet, discuss and share a passion with other members of the audience and to talk to visiting film-makers that lies at the heart of the film festival experience.

The Duke of York’s Picturehouse recently celebrated its 100th birthday, the UK’s oldest purpose built cinema. CINECITY has been working with the Dukes throughout the year to present a programme of special events and a community history project collecting memories, photographs and ephemera relating to this very special century of cinema. To round off the centenary year CINECITY 2010 presents a selection of screenings and special events: Brighton & Hove’s own film pioneers from over a century ago, Smith and Williamson are celebrated with a special screening with live music; a new programme of archive treasures highlights the magical world of silent colour; and we screen new films from Gustav Deutsch and Peter Tscherkassky – who both presented films in person at CINECITY 2007 – exploring elements of early cinema.

We also welcome back two more previous CINECITY contributors to give an intriguing glimpse of their works in progress; Grant Gee (JOY DIVISION) is making the first film in English about the highly acclaimed and influential writer WG Sebald and Andrew Kötting (IVUL) returns to Brighton with the writer Iain Sinclair to present SWANDOWN, an exhibition and perambulation at The Regency Town House. The Quay Brothers were the subject of the festival’s 2008 retrospective and exhibition and we are delighted to screen their latest animation, MASKA.

To complement CAPTURING COLOUR a major exhibition at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, DREAMING IN COLOUR is a special strand celebrating film-makers’ use of colour to explore the fantastic, poetic and dreamlike. A highlight is a special live remix of Derek Jarman’s BLUE performed by composer Simon Fisher Turner.

www.cine-city.co.uk/festival-2010/

Picturing Stories – Hove Museum & Art Gallery

Picturing Stories is a family-friendly exhibition of narrative paintings from Brighton & Hove Museums’ Fine Art collection that explores relationships between words and images.  Using captivating oil paintings, this exhibition explores the variety of ways in which visual images can illustrate and inspire storytelling.  Designed to appeal to families, Picturing Stories is the ideal way to introduce children of all ages to a paintings exhibition.

Creative workshops and drop-in storytelling sessions for children form part of the exhibition.

Hove Museum & Art Gallery • www.brighton-hove-rpml.org.uk

A Dark Day in Paradise – The Royal Pavilion

An installation by Clare Twomey for Museumaker

Thousands of black ceramic butterflies have been installed in the Royal Pavilion by artist Clare Twomey. The butterflies swarm in the Banqueting Room, the Great Kitchen and the Entrance Hall, and flutter darkly throughout the ground floor of the palace.  The work is a response to the excesses of the building, with the butterflies symbolising the transience of life and the vanity of earthly things.  They are both beautiful and menacing, an invitation for visitors to reflect on the history of the building and to draw contemporary parallels.

Clare Twomey is a British ceramicist/artist who works with clay in large-scale installations, sculpture and site-specific works.  She has exhibited at Tate, Victoria & Albert Museum, Crafts Council and the Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan.

The Royal Pavilion  • www.brighton-hove-rpml.org.uk/RoyalPavilion

Admission prices
Adult (16 years and over) £9.50
Accompanying child (15 years and below) £5.40
Concession £7.50
Brighton & Hove resident £4.75 with proof of address

Inheritance at the Hop Gallery Lewes

Blithe Spirit at the Theatre Royal Brighton

Starring Alison Steadman, Robert Bathurst & Hermione Norris
By Noel Coward
Directed by Thea Sharrock

‘A classic of high English comedy…addictively entertaining’ Daily Telegraph

Blithe Spirit opened in 1941 when it played for over 2,000 performances and hugely raised wartime spirits. It has been one of the world’s favourite comedies ever since. Its razor-sharp wit and wonderful characters have continued to raise spirits both in the audience and on stage.

Novelist Charles Condomine and his second wife Ruth are literally haunted by a past relationship when an eccentric medium manages to conjure up the ghost of Charles’s neurotic first wife, Elvira, at a seance.

They have assumed the preposterous Madame Arcati is a fraud who will simply entertain their dinner guests with a little chicanery and supply Charles with material for his forthcoming novel. But when Elvira appears, visible only to Charles, and determined to sabotage his current marriage, life – and the afterlife – begin to get complicated.

Alison Steadman plays the improbable clairvoyant, one of theatre’s most hilarious comic creations. Alison Steadman is one of our best-loved and most prolific actresses who recently enjoyed a West End run in Alan Bennett‘s Enjoy. Also on stage she created the role of the monstrous Beverly in Mike Leigh‘s Abigail’s Party and starred in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, for which she won an Olivier Award. Her films include Shirley Valentine and Mike Leigh‘s Life Is Sweet and Topsy Turvy. Television work includes Fat Friends, Selling Hitler, The Singing Detective, Pride and Prejudice and Gavin & Stacey.

Thea Sharrock is an award-winning director who has previously worked with Daniel Radcliffe, Keira Knightley and Damian Lewis in the West End. Her production of Rattigan’s After the Dance is currently running at the National Theatre.

‘A beautifully structured comedy’ Times

‘Coward is pure entertainment’ Daily Mail

http://ambassadortickets.com/1996/664/Brighton/Theatre-Royal-Brighton/Blithe-Spirit

Theatre Royal, New Road, Brighton