Crimson Peak (2015) Screening and Discussion at the Gulbenkian Cinema 7th December

Exciting News!

Gothic romance Crimson Peak (2015) will be showing at the Gulbenkian Cinema on the Canterbury campus from Saturday 5th-Monday 7th of December. The last date includes a post-screening discussion with the Melodrama Research Group’s  Dr Tamar Jeffers McDonald.

You can find more information and book tickets here: http://www.thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/cinema/2015/December/2015-12-crimson-peak.html

Crimson Peak staircase

The Gulbenkian’s blurb:

Dir: Guillermo del Toro | USA | 2015 | Run time TBC
Cast | Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunman

From Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) comes the hotly awaited Crimson Peak, a gothic thriller with a top flight cast including Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston and Charlie Hunman. Hailed by horror writer Stephen King after an early screening as “gorgeous and just f***ing terrifying”, it’s set in Cumbria in the 19th century, in a crumbling mansion where young author Edith Cushing (Wasikowska) falls in love with Sir Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston) but discovers, after marrying him, that her new husband is not who he seems. A ghost story and a gothic romance, del Toro is riffing on other haunted house films here in this very scary, brilliantly atmospheric horror.

FilmTalk: Post-screening discussion with Dr Tamar Jeffers McDonald, University of Kent following Monday’s screening in the Gulbenkian Café.

Tickets: Full £8.30 / Concessions £7.30 / GulbCard Members £6.30 / Students £5.30 / GulbCard Students £4.30

Venue: Cinema

Blonde Venus Screening at the Gulbenkian Cinema 23rd of September 7pm

Posted by Sarah

Blonde Venus

As mentioned in the last post, Lies and Ann-Marie have organised a fantastic Divine Divas season at the Gulbenkian Cinema. The Gulbenkian Cinema’s information on the film:

Josef von Sternberg | USA | 1932 | 93mins | Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant, Herbert Marshall

Josef von Sternberg’s Pre-Code drama stars his favourite collaborator Marlene Dietrich, and is the only one of his films that depicts her within the everyday.

In Depression-era New York, chemist Ned Farady (Herbert Marshall) contracts a rare disease, and his wife, Helen (Dietrich), must resume her career as glamorous cabaret performer ‘the Blonde Venus’ to finance his treatment abroad.

But during Ned’s absence and convalescence she falls for wealthy man-about-town Nick Townsend (Grant) and, drawn into an affair, her descent into the corruption and seediness of clubland takes her further and further from the man she re-entered it for.

Tickets: Full £8 / Concessions £7/ GulbCard Members £6 / Students £5 / GulbCard Students £4
Venue: Cinema

To book your tickets please go to:

http://www.thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/cinema/2014/September/2014-09-blonde-venus.html

Divine Divas Season at the Gulbenkian Cinema

Posted by Sarah

Gulbenkian Cinema

Melodrama Research Group members Lies and Ann-Marie have been busy organising an exciting season of films to be screened at the Gulbenkian Cinema on the University of Kent Canterbury campus. All of the films feature one of Hollywood’s ‘Divine Divas’. The season launches on Tuesday the 23rd of September at 7pm with Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus (1932). Do catch this classic film if you can. More details will be posted to the blog shortly!

 And do visit the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Divinedivasatthegulb?fref=photo

Coraline showing at the Gulbenkian Cinema on the 22nd of March

Posted by Sarah

The sixth film in the Gulbenkian  Cinema’s Gothic Season –  Henry Selick’s Coraline (2009) – screens on Saturday the 22nd of March at 3pm. The 3D film will be introduced by the Melodrama Research Group’s Frances Kamm.

Coraline

 The Gulbenkian Cinema’s description of the film:

Henry Selick | US | 2009 | 100mins | Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman (voice cast)

Henry Selick’s (James and the Giant Peach) beautiful, spiky stop-motion animation,  halfway between horror and fantasy, has become a bona fide classic. Coraline is  the young girl who, moving from their beloved Michigan home to the Pink Palace  apartment building in Oregon, finds herself lonely – despite her new, eccentric  neighbours – as her parents fuss over their new home. Exploring the building,  Coraline finds a small door which at night, becomes a corridor into a  fantastical parallel universe, in which versions of her parents and her  neighbours – with, disquietingly, buttons for eyes – live.

Basking in their attention and the  excitement of this magical place, Coraline overlooks its more troubling  elements; until one night, she can’t get back home…

“Combines  stunning visuals – there are scenes of incredible beauty – with good  old-fashioned storytelling that is funny, inventive and at times scary.  Destined to be a classic.” Cosmo Landesman, The Times

“A  gorgeously hand-crafted and pleasurably detailed piece of work. It’s also  genuinely strange, creepy and arresting.” Tim Robey, The Daily  Telegraph

 For more information and to book your ticket please go to: http://www.thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/cinema/2014/March/2014-03-coraline-3d.html

The Orphanage showing at The Gulbenkian Cinema on the 4th of March

Posted by Sarah

The fifth film in the Gulbenkian  Cinema’s Gothic Season – J.A. Bayona’s The Orphanage (2007) – screens on Tuesday 4th of March  at 9.30pm. It will be preceded by a panel discussion which will include contributions from the Melodrama Research Group’s Dr Tamar Jeffers McDonald, as well as Dr Cecilia Sayad and Professor Nuria Triana-Toribio.

The OrphanageThe Gulbenkian Cinema’s description of the film:

J. A. Bayona | Spain | 2007 | 106mins | Belén  Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Príncep

This terrific Spanish horror film, the debut of J. A.  Bayona and produced by Guillermo del Toro, director of Pan’s Labyrinth, received great acclaim on its release in 2007.

After thirty years, Laura returns to orphanage where she  grew up, accompanied by her husband Carlos and their 7-year-old son Simón, with  a dream of restoring and reopening the long-abandoned mansion as a home for  disabled children. The place awakens Simón’s imagination, and he soon begins  playing not-so-innocent games.

As events take a sinister turn, Laura slowly becomes  convinced that something long-hidden and terrible is lurking in the old house,  something waiting to emerge and inflict appalling damage on her family, in this  cleverly made, utterly terrifying film.

“A shiver of fear  runs right through Juan Antonio Bayona’s pungent and scary film” Peter Bradshaw, The  Guardian, 4 stars

“A good old-fashioned  horror in the best possible way, this is a beautifully told, terrifying ghost  story that lingers with you long after the shivers have stopped” Olly Richards, Empire  Magazine

Spanish  w/Eng ST

For more information and to book your ticket please go to: http://www.thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/cinema/2014/March/2014-03-the-orphanage.html

Gaslight (1940) Showing at the Gulbenkian Cinema on 9th of Feb

Posted by Sarah

The third film in the Gulbenkian Cinema’s Gothic Season – Thorold Dickinson’s Gaslight (1940) – will screen on Sunday the 9th of Feb at 3pm.

Gaslight UK

The Gulbenkian Cinema’s description of the film:

Thorold Dickinson | UK | 1940 | 82mins | Anton Walbrook, Diana Wynyard, Frank  Pettingell, Robert Newton

A powerful Gothic melodrama of domestic sadism and  psychological suspense, now presented in a sparkling digital restoration. Not  to be confused with George Cukor’s film of the same name – the second  adaptation of novelist/dramatist Patrick Hamilton’s play, and more well-known  until now, as MGM famously tried to suppress the competition – this suspenseful,  stylish classic from Thorold Dickinson (The  Queen of Spades) is an absolute treat.

Diana Wynyard  and Anton Walbrook are Bella and Paul, the young couple settling into a new  house when Bella begins to lose things and becomes fearful when the gaslights  go dim in the middle of the night and she hears footsteps above her head. Fer  husband begins to question her judgement, and Bella herself begins to feel that  her sanity is slipping away. But there is a deception in play – and the key is  in the history of the house itself.

“Walbrook [gives] a brilliant, seething performance” David Thomson, The Guardian

“Sadism propels Thorold Dickinson’s exquisite Victorian  thriller of 1940” Graham Fuller, Artsdesk.com

For more information and to book your ticket please go to:

http://www.thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/cinema/2014/February/2014-02-gaslight.html

Posts on the Melodrama Research Group’s discussion on this film and the Hollywood remake:

http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/melodramaresearchgroup/2013/03/14/melodrama-screening-20th-march-jarman-7-5-7-pm/

http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/melodramaresearchgroup/2013/03/26/melodrama-screening-and-discussion-3rd-april-jarman-7-5-7pm/

http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/melodramaresearchgroup/2013/04/05/summary-of-discussion-on-gaslight/

http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/melodramaresearchgroup/2013/04/05/gaslight-links/

Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder (1954) Showing at Gulbenkian Cinema on 1st of Feb

Posted by Sarah

The second film in the Gulbenkian Cinema’s Gothic Season – Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder (1954) – will screen on Saturday the 1st of Feb at 2.30 pm.

Dial M

The Gulbenkian Cinema description of the film:

Alfred Hitchcock | US  | 1954 | 105mins | Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings

Originally shot in 3D and newly remastered and restored,  Alfred Hitchcock’s screen version of Frederick Knott’s stage hit Dial M for Murder is a tasty blend of  elegance and suspense casting Grace Kelly, Ray Milland and Robert Cummings as  the points of a romantic triangle.

Kelly won the New York Film Critics and National Board of  Review Best Actress Awards for this and two other acclaimed 1954 performances.  She loves Cummings; her husband Milland plots her murder. But when he dials a  Mayfair exchange to set the plot in motion, his right number gets the wrong  answer – and gleaming scissors become a deadly weapon. Dial “M” for  the Master of Suspense at his most stylish.

“Alfred  Hitchcock’s 1954 thriller is a precision-engineered delight” – The Telegraph

For more information and to book your ticket please go to:

http://www.thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/cinema/2014/February/2014-02-dial-m-for-murder.html

Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) showing at the Gulbenkian on the 26th of Jan

Posted by Sarah

As mentioned earlier on the blog, the Gulbenkian Cinema, located on the University of Kent campus, is screening a series of Gothic films between January and March.

The first is Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) on the 26th of January at 2.30 pm.

Rebecca poster

The Gulbenkian Cinema description of the film:

Alfred Hitchcock | US | 1940 | 130mins | Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith  Anderson

Alfred Hitchcock’s superlative psychological thriller  adapts Daphne du Maurier’s haunting tale of a naive young woman (Joan Fontaine)  who meets handsome, aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) on  holiday in Monte Carlo and is swept off her feet by his whirlwind courtship.

Following their wedding, they move to his Cornish estate Manderley, where the  brooding Maxim once lived with his first wife, Rebecca, and where sinister  housekeeper Mrs Danvers (Judith Anderson) who is fiercely devoted to the memory  of her dead mistress, undermines Maxim’s new wife at every turn.

A beautifully  nuanced study in guilt and anxiety about sex, money and class, Rebecca continues to hold audiences  spellbound with its beguiling blend of lush romanticism and bleakly oppressive  suspense.

“A gorgeous treat from one of cinema’s masters. Not to be  missed.” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, 5  stars

“Tense, engrossing and deliciously deceitful.” David Parkinson, Empire Magazine

For more information and to book your ticket please go to:

http://www.thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/cinema/2014/January/2014-01-rebecca.html

Gone With the Wind (1939) screening at the Gulbenkian Cinema on Sunday 12th of January

Posted by Sarah

The Gulbenkian Cinema, located on the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus, is screening the classic Hollywood melodrama Gone With the Wind (1939) on Sunday the 12th of January from 1.30 pm – 5.30 pm.

gone with the wind

The following is from the Gulbenkian Cinema’s website http://www.thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/cinema/2014/January/2014-01-gone-with-the-wind.html where you can also book your ticket.

Victor Fleming | USA | 1939/2013 | 233mins | Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Thomas Mitchell

Often considered the greatest films of all time – the pinnacle of polished Hollywood storytelling – this truly epic screen adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s seminal work of American literature bristles with energy and passion and demands to be seen on the big screen following a 4K digital restoration.

It is 1861 on a palatial Southern estate, where Scarlett O’Hara (Leigh) hears that her casual beau Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) plans to marry Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland). Despite warnings from her father (Thomas Mitchell) and her faithful servant Mammy (Hattie McDaniel), Scarlett intends to throw herself at Ashley at an upcoming social event. Alone with Ashley, she goes into a fit of histrionics, all of which is witnessed by roguish Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), the black sheep of a wealthy Charleston family, who is instantly fascinated by the feisty, thoroughly self-centred Scarlett…

“It’s impossible not to be carried away by the rich arterial force of this storytelling.” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Tickets: Full £7.50 / Concessions £6.50/ GulbCard Members £5.50 / Students £4.50 / GulbCard Students £4

This will be a great opportunity to see a beautifully restored version of the film on the big screen.

 

Gothic Season of Films at the Gulbenkian Cinema Jan-March 2014

Posted by Sarah

Rebecca

Exciting news! From January to March 2014 the Gulbenkian will be screening a season of Gothic films. Dates and films include:

26th of Jan  Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)

1st of Feb Dial M For Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)

9th of Feb Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

24th of Feb Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)

4th of March The Orphanage (J.A. Bayona, 2007) (and panel discussion)

22nd of March Coraline (Henry Selick, 2009)

Introductions to some of the films will be provided by members of the group with Tamar Jeffers McDonald also taking part in a panel discussion on  the 4th of March.

More details will be posted here nearer the time.