THE EGERTON FILM SOCIETY

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Established in 2000 and showing its first film in January 2001, the Egerton Film Society is open to anyone over the age of sixteen. The current annual membership fee is £6, with concessions (£4) for pensioners and full-time students. Screenings are usually held on the last Thursday in the month (except July and August), with occasional special screenings and lectures at other times. A licensed bar is available at each performance. Our films are shown in the Egerton Millennium Hall using high-quality widescreen DVD video projection and Dolby EX 5.1 Surround Sound.

Members, their guests, and members of the public can be admitted to the film screenings, subject to the discretion of the Committee. Admission to performances is usually priced at £4.00 for all members and £5.00 for guests/non-members. Season Tickets are available. Programmes are published and circulated to all members twice each year. All members who wish to do so receive e-mail reminders about the current month’s film.

The Society is run in association with the Egerton Telecottage by a Committee which is elected at the Annual General Meeting, usually held in September.

 Membership applications enquiries telephone Richard on 01233 756592 Application forms for new Memberships also available in the shop Contact the Film Society

As usual we are seeking volunteers to help with setting up the hall, manning the bar, putting up posters (particularly if you live somewhere other than Egerton) and assisting with clerical and technical duties. Thanks to everyone who helps with this already. Do, please, come along (and volunteer, if you can), for we really do need your help and support for the Egerton Film Society to continue to flourish. We look forward to seeing you.

THE COMMITTEE

DAVID AUSTIN, GLENN FISHER, VIVIENNE FOULDS,JANET GOODE,RUTH HAGGIE,JOHN KING,RICHARD KING,

JULIA PAINTER,PAT PARR,BEVERLEY WILLIS

Thursday 30th January 2020 –7.00 for 7.30pm

“Yesterday” (2019) (POSTPONED)

Screenwriter Richard Curtis teams up with Director Danny Boyle to create this genial romantic comedy about a struggling musician (an endearing Himesh Patel) who regains consciousness after an accident during a global blackout to discover that The Beatles never existed and no-one knows their songs. This enables him to pass them off as his own and achieve instant stardom. With Lily James as his best friend, this is a surprisingly sweet and touching celebration of the music that continues to give fans joy – a modern day fairytale and off-beat love story with a cornucopia of Beatles’ songs.  “Rallies in style for a beautifully judged and surprisingly moving finale, which owes a lot to Patel and James’s chemistry.”  – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph. “A film to make you cry, laugh and leave with a song in your heart, …by the time the credits rolled all my troubles seemed so far away.”  – Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Metro. “A glowing tribute to The Beatles and their music, this is both a toe-tapping pleasure to watch and a smart, occasionally scathing look at how we get things wrong.”  – Helen O’Hara, Empire. 116 mins.

Thursday 27th February 2020 –7.00 for 7.30pm

“Downton Abbey” (2019) (POSTPONED)

In the late 1920’s, the wealthy Crawley family and their staff prepare their stately home, Downton Abbey, for a visit from the King and Queen. Based on the TV series, director Michael Engler’s film is both moving and also, surprisingly, very funny in places. If you’re a fan of the TV series you’ll love it, but you don’t have to have seen a single episode to enjoy it. There are excellent performances from the TV series ensemble cast with  Hugh Bonneville, Jim Carter, Penelope Wilton and Maggie Smith (as usual stealing all the best lines) being the standouts and Imelda Staunton as a new character. Written by the series creator Julian Fellowes (who also conceived “Gosford Park”), this is a very classy and elegantly made film which has been much requested by members. “It is at all times ridiculous – but, I have to admit, quite enjoyable.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian.    “Watching it is like settling into a reupholstered armchair which still creaks in the same old places.”– Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph.            122 mins.

Thursday 26h March –7.00 for 7.30pm

“Charade” (1963) (POSTPONED)

Gorgeous Audrey Hepburn and debonair Cary Grant sparkle in this classic, which has been called ‘the best Hitchcock film he never made’.  This splendid romantic comedy thriller is fun, suspenseful, and stylish. Regina Lampert (Hepburn), whose husband, Charles, is found  murdered, has the French police, the American government, and 3 sinister men all thinking she knows the whereabouts of the money they say Charles stole. But can she trust Cary Grant to help her? Fall in love with Paris and a wonderful cast in this deservedly well-loved Stanley Donen film, with the icing on the cake being Henry Mancini’s Oscar-nominated score.  The Radio Times Film Guide, which gives this a five star rating, writes “With a MacGuffin so clever you’ll never guess, and a dream cast of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn on ravishing Paris locations, what more could you possibly want  in the way of movie entertainment. There’s a clever plot that never lets up, a wondrously romantic score, star-making turns by Walter Matthau and James Coburn and set pieces that deserve classic status: Grant taking a shower fully clothed; Audrey and Cary falling in love on a Paris riverboat; and a one-handed villain in a rooftop cliff-hanger.”        113 mins.

Thursday 16th April –7.00 for 7.30pm

“Les Gardiennes” (2017) (POSTPONED)

This critically acclaimed and hugely compelling French rural drama from Director Xavier Beauvois – beautifully photographed by Caroline Champetier with lush widescreen pastoral images bathed in the natural light of the Haute-Vienne landscape – is set during and after the First World War. The men of a French farming community are at the front, leaving the women to tend the land and take the reins during a historical period that is traditionally, and mistakenly, thought of as being about the travails of men. Veteran French star Nathalie Baye gives perhaps her finest performance as Hortense, the matriarch who holds things together through the changing seasons, while newcomer Iris Bry, captivating as the teenage orphan Francine taken on by Hortense as a maid, does an impressive job of carrying much of the film and its emotional weight. “A rewarding and rich film, which offers a delicately considered and often troubling insight into the lives of those left behind by history.” – Pamela Hutchinson, Sight and Sound. “Beauvois’s vision of the period is totally convincing, and his depiction of hardscrabble farm life rings with a quiet vibrancy.” – Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph.     134 mins.

Thursday 30th April –7.00 for 7.30pm

“Sorry We Missed You” (2019) (POSTPONED)

Director Ken Loach – someone who isn’t afraid to pull his punches – delivers a masterful swipe at the gig economy in this story of a working-class family in crisis. A hard-up delivery driver (Chris Hitchen) and his wife (Debbie Honeywood) struggle to raise a family in the poverty- stricken North-East and end up trapped in the vicious circle of this modern-day form of labour exploitation. His work is hard, and his wife’s job as a carer is no easier. The family unit is strong but when both are pulled in different directions everything comes to breaking point.  This realistic, unrelenting and challenging film, with an anguished script from Paul Laverty, hits home in every possible way.  If you saw Loach’s “I, Daniel Blake” you’ll have a good idea of what to expect. “Bleak, compassionate, and powerful.” – Chris Hunnyset, Daily Mirror. “It’s fierce, open and angry, unironised and unadorned, about a vital contemporary issue whose implications you somehow don’t hear on the news.” –Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian. “Intimate and powerful.”- Owen Gleberman, Variety.                           102 mins.

Thursday 28th May –7.00 for 7.30pm

“Green Book” (2018) (POSTPONED)

Based on true events, director Peter Farrelly’s comedy-drama won many accolades including last year’s Best Picture Oscar. The story, set in the early 60’s, is of a working-class Italian-American bouncer (Viggo Mortensen) who is hired to drive a world-class black pianist (Mahershala Ali, who also won an Oscar for his performance), on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South.  “A handsomely made and watchable picture and there is a real warmth in Ali and Mortensen’s performances.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian.  “A supremely likeable film. Its message might seem obvious and its template overcooked, but it boasts a warm heart, with two astoundingly good lead performances to guide it home.”– John Nugent, Empire Magazine.           130 mins.

Thursday 25th June –7.00 for 7.30pm

SPECIAL EVENT

In association with the Egerton Music Festival

“All My Life’s Buried Here” (2018)

We are delighted to welcome as our special guest, independent film-maker Stewart Morgan Hajdukiewicz, who will introduce his lyrical new documentary film about George Butterworth, the composer and folk song collector, who was cut down in his prime on the Somme battlefield in 1916. The film follows Butterworth’s life and includes much exceptional music, both classical and traditional, with a treasure trove of archival audio-visual material. With his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams he collected the folk songs of rural England, and the film includes many of Butterworth’s best known orchestral works. These include ‘The Banks of Green Willow’ and the ‘Rhapsody: A Shropshire Lad’, with classic performances under conductor (and friend of Butterworth) Sir Adrian Boult, and give an insight into Butterworth’s composing process and contemporary reactions to his music. The film also explains what led Butterworth to destroy so much of his own work before his death, and covers the final moments before he is tragically killed on the front line.    97 mins.