Sun 7 Jun • Double bill

THE 400 BLOWS (PG) 1.45

(France 1959) dir. François Truffaut 100m. Subtitles. Digital.
Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claire Maurier, Albert Remy, Guy Decomble, Patrick Auffay, Georges Flamant.

LES QUATRES CENTS COUPS is a partly autobiographical portrait that explores the life of a misunderstood young adolescent who turns to a life of petty crime. Now hailed as a masterpiece, and a landmark in modern cinema it launched both the French New Wave and established Truffaut as a major filmmaker.

+ THE CLASS (15) 3.45

(France 2008) dir. Laurent Cantet 130m. Subtitles. Digital.
Francois Begaudeau, Nassim Amrabt, Laura Baquela, Cherif Bounaidja Rachedi, Juliette Demaille, Dalla Doucoure.

This Palme d'Or-winning drama is set in one of Paris's poorest neighbourhoods, and follows a year in one high school classroom, with characters played by real students and teachers – including writer François Bégaudeau, on whose original novel the film is based. A long way from the typical classroom drama, uplifting clichés are avoided to reveal something much more poignant.

£8/£6 Concs

Sun 14 Jun • Werner Herzog double bill

THE WILD BLUE YONDER (PG) 2.00

(Germany/US 2005) dir. Werner Herzog. 77m. Digital.
Brad Dourif, Donald Williams, Ellen Baker, Franklin Chang-Diaz.

Science Fiction Werner Herzog style! A group of astronauts cannot return to earth because our planet has become mysteriously uninhabitable. The crew of the spacecraft has to find a more hospitable place to land and sends out a probe, Galileo, to investigate. But the beauty and the brilliance is in the use of NASA footage of space-station astronauts and antarctic scuba divers in their weird weightless environments, both accentuated by a sublime soundtrack. A scientific context is offered by interviews with researchers. Very original. Very Herzog!

+ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (U) 3.50

(US 2007) dir. Werner Herzog 101m. Digital.

Set in Antarctica this is not 'another film about penguins', but instead the wild and wonderful assortment of the region's human inhabitants – the small community of researchers and adventurers who have chosen this isolated world as their home. From an ex-banker turned forklift truck driver to depressed biologists, their absorbing narratives is coupled with one mesmerising visual spectacle after another.

£8/£6 Concs

Sun 21 Jun • Animation double bill

LA ANTENA (PG) 1.45

(Argentina 2007) dir. Esteban Sapir 97m. Subtitles. Digital.
Voices of Valeria Bertuccelli, Alejandro Urdapilleta, Julieta Cardinali, Rafael Ferro, Florencia Raggi.

Visually stunning cutting edge animation, shot in black and white, that invokes the mysterious and surreal worlds of Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. A surrealistic, snow covered city is ruled by the sinister Mr TV, the owner of the city's only television channel. Needless to say, Mr TV is carrying out a secret plan to subject all of the city's inhabitants to his will for evermore...

+ CORALINE (PG) 3.45

(US 2009) dir. Henry Selick 100m. Digital.
Voices of Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French.

Even in its two-dimensional version CORALINE is an instant animation classic from Henry Selick, the director of Tim Burton's THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Adapted from Neil Gaiman's eerie teenage (with ample adult overtones) novel, it's a classic fable of good versus evil, featuring a reluctant heroine triumphantly prevailing against the dark, sinister overlord of an alternate universe. Imaginative, original and gripping.

£8/£6 Concs/£5 Under 15’s

Sun 28 Jun • Rural France double bill

MODERN LIFE (PG) 2.30

(France 2008) dir. Raymond Depardon 87m. Subtitles. Digital.

Made with obvious affection over the course of ten years, this is the final instalment of Depardon's portrait of the French rural diary farmers in a remote highland area. Their lives, values and family stories demonstrate their bond with the land and a way of life that seems on the verge of collapse, due to nothing more than the natural passage of time.

+ THE GROCER'S SON (12A) 4.20

(France 2007) dir. Eric Guirado 99m. Subtitles.
Nicolas Cazale, Clotilde Hesme, Stephan Guerin-Tillie, Sforza Jeanna Goupil, Daniel Duval, Paul Crauchet, Liliane Rovere.

Ten years after leaving his small village for the big city, Antoine returns to take over his father's grocery rounds across the countryside while he is hospital recovering from a heart attack. What could be a predictable coming-of-age drama develops into something much more poignant, helped by Guirado's well-paced direction and Cazale's moving portrayal of Antoine.

£8/£6 Concs

Sun 5 Jul • Double bill

TAXI DRIVER (18) 12.45

(US 1976) dir. Martin Scorsese 114m.
Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel.

In one of his most memorable roles Robert De Niro is Travis Bickle, a mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran disillusioned by the social and moral decay of New York City. It's a portrait of Hell on Earth, a masterpiece by Scorsese and writer Paul Schraeder and an iconic piece of 1970's cinema.

+ TONY MANERO (18) 3.00

(Chile/ Brazil 2008) dir. Pablo Larrain 97m. Subtitles.
Alfredo Castro, Amparo Noguera, Paola Lattus, Héctor Morales, Elsa Pob.

1978: Petty criminal Raul's misguided fantasy of becoming John Travolta's disco dancing character from "Saturday Night Fever" is driven to dangerous extremes when his life starts to fall apart around. Definitely gruesome but darkly funny, this is also a compelling study of lost identity and political repression in Pinochet's Chile.

£8/£6 Concs

Sun 12 Jul • Matinee

BARRY LYNDON (PG)

(UK 1975) dir. Stanley Kubrick 187m.
Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Kruger, Leon Vitali, Andre Morell.

Kubrick's masterly adaptation of Thackeray's 19th century novel. O'Neal's outstanding performance captures the superficiality of the title character as he evolves from likeable Irish lad Redmond Barry to cynical manipulator of people and situations Barry Lyndon who lies, dupes, duels and seduces his way up the social ladder. But his lustful but loveless marriage to a wealthy countess is a prelude to disaster. With a gallery of memorable performances and sumptuous photography by John Alcott, BARRY LYNDON is quite simply a masterpiece.

The film will be shown with an interval of approximately 15–20 mins.

£8/£6 Concs

Sun 19 Jul • Double bill

HELEN (PG) 2.45

(2008 UK/Ireland) dir. Joe Lawlor & Christine Molloy 79m.
Annie Townsend, Sandie Malia, Dennis Jobling, Sonia Saville.

Conventional thriller meets a meditation on identity and fate and the result is distinctive, intriguing, dreamy, mysterious and often beautiful. When lonely schoolgirl Joy vanishes from a local park, 18-year-old Helen is recruited by police as Joy's stand-in for a televised reconstruction. But this gives rise to a strange and dangerous obsession for Helen, as she creates a new identity for herself.

+ SLEEP FURIOUSLY (U) 4.30

(UK 2008) dir. Gideon Koppel 94m. Digital.

An elegy for a disappearing world and a celebration of cake baking, choral singing, haymaking and everyday life in the tiny Welsh farming community where the film-maker Gideon Koppel's parents settled as refugees from Nazi Germany, and where he grew up. SLEEP FURIOUSLY is a beautifully-composed and timely account of a changing landscape and a meditation on nostalgia, belonging and time itself.

£8/£6 Concs/£ Under 15’s

Sun 26 Jul • Jean-Luc Godard double bill

MADE IN U.S.A. (12A) 2.15

(France 1966) dir. Jean-Luc Godard 82m. Subtitles. Digital.
Anna Karina, László Szabó, Jean-Pierre Léaud.

This thriller, Godard style, has journalist Paula, who has been covering the war in Morocco, return home to the fictional location of Atlantic-Cité to discover her fiancé has been killed. Following a series of leads, and under surveillance from mysterious figures, she attempts to find his murderer. A Godard gem that blends political intrigue and self-referential humour.

+ PIERROT LE FOU (15) 4.00

(France/Italy 1965) dir. Jean-Luc Godard 110m. Subtitles. Digital.
Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, Dirk Sanders, Raymond Devos, Graziella Galvani, Roger Dutoit.

Godard at his greatest as road movie meets crime fantasy with a pinch of cultural satire. Looking for an escape from boring society life and his rich wife, Pierrot absconds to the Mediterranean with Marianne. But after a dead man is discovered in her flat, they find themselves living a life on the run. Director Sam Fuller drops in to define film as "a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word: Emotions."

£8/£6 Concs

Sun 2 Aug • Andrzej Wajda double bill

ASHES AND DIAMONDS (PG) 1.30

(Poland 1958) dir. Andrzej Wajda 103m. Subtitles. Digital.
Zbigniew Cybulski, Ewa Krzyzewska, Adam Pawlikowski, Waclaw Zastrzezynski, Bogumil Kobiela, Jan Cieciersk.

Andrzej Wajda’s 1958 film established him as a powerful international filmmaker. Set in a Polish provincial town on the last day of the Second World War, it is the story of a young Resistance fighter who has orders to assassinate a Communist official. But a mistake stalls his progress and leads him to Krystyna, a beautiful barmaid who gives him a glimpse of what his life could be. A masterful interweaving of the fate of a nation with that of one man, with a brilliant performance by Zbigniew Cybulski, the Polish James Dean.

+ KATYN (15) 3.40

(Poland 2007) dir. Andrzej Wajda 122m. Subtitles. Digital.
Maja Ostaszewska, Artur Zmijewski, Andrzej Chyra, Danuta Stenka, Jan Englert , Magdalena Cielecka.

Wajda's latest film is centred around of one of the last crimes of World War II to be acknowledged – the slaughter of tens of thousands of Polish soldiers and citizens by Stalin's secret police in the spring of 1940. The director's own father was killed in this massacre in the Katyn forest. The film's criss-crossing storylines reveal the full spectrum of experiences of those who lived and died. Wajda has clearly not lost his masterful sense of the dramatic and his ability to subtly illustrate character and create atmosphere with minimal dialogue and memorable visual brushstrokes.

£8/£6 Concs