Tag Archives: Screening and Discussion

Melodrama Screening and Discussion, 15th of May, 5-7 pm, Jarman 7

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All are very welcome to join us for the first melodrama screening and discussion session of the summer term. This will take place on Monday the 15th of May, 5-7pm, in Jarman 7.

 

We will be showing the first episode of the BBC TV series The Crimson Field (2014). The 6-part drama series follows female nurses and the military patients they treat in a French field hospital during World War I.

It was penned by Sarah Phelps, whose later adaptations of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and The Witness for the Prosecution have formed the basis of some of our previous discussions.

The screening also ties in with a recent, and ongoing, research project on the representation of women in the British wartime publication The War Illustrated. ‘Women’s War Work is Never Done’ is led by our own Tamar Jeffers McDonald, and you can find out more information on our sister blog NoRMMA’s website:  http://www.normmanetwork.com/?p=604

Do join us, if you can, to view the first episode of this series, and to discuss the Melodrama Group’s forthcoming plans.

 

Melodrama Screening and Discussion, 3rd of April, 5-7pm, Jarman 6

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All are very welcome to join us for the last of this term’s screening and discussion sessions. We will be showing The Mirror Crack’d (1980, Guy Hamilton, 105 mins).

This big-budget adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1962 novel The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side stars Angela Lansbury as dogged detective Miss Marple. Hollywood’s ultimate star Elizabeth Taylor plays Hollywood diva Marina Gregg and Rock Hudson is her director husband Jason Rudd. While staying at an old mansion during filming in the UK, Marina finds herself threatened by anonymous letters, attempted poisonings and her own past…

Do join us, if you can, for some classic Christie.

Also, you can catch up with the recent ITV version, starring Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple, until the 2nd of April here: http://www.itv.com/hub/miss-marple/1a5576a0009

 

Screening and Discussion, 20th of March, 5-7pm, Jarman 6

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All are very welcome to attend the next film screening in our Gothic season. We will be showing Alien (1979, Ridley Scott, 117 minutes).

Scott’s film was the first in the highly successful Alien franchise. It introduces the audience to the tough and resourceful heroine, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), and, more scarily, to the concept of face huggers.  Weaver appeared in all 3 sequels (1986, 1992 and 1997), continuing to take on not just terrifying alien life forms, but the sinister ‘corporation’. The fact the series has also prompted 2 prequels (2012 and forthcoming in 2017) further comments on its relevance to current society.

 

 

 

Screening and Discussion, 6th of March, 4-7pm, Eliot Peter Bird Room

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All are very welcome to join us for the next in our season of Gothic films. We will watch and discuss a film.

Please note that we have a change of start time and venue: 4pm in Eliot’s Peter Bird Room.

You can find information about, and directions to, the room here:

https://www.kent.ac.uk/timetabling/rooms/room.html?room=E.BIRD

 

 

Screening and Discussion, 20th of February, 5-7pm, Jarman 6

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All are very welcome to join us to watch and discuss The Devil’s Vice (Peter Watkins-Hughes, 2014, 60 mins).

 

This 1 hour Welsh thriller, written and directed by Peter Watkins-Hughes, is set in rural Monmouthshire. A pregnant young woman (Sara Lloyd Gregory) and her husband (Gareth Jewell) endure terrifying occurrences at their home, as she becomes convinced an evil entity is determined to cause her serious harm.

Do join us if you can.

Melodrama Meeting 23rd of January, 5-7pm, Jarman 6

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All are very welcome to join us for the first Melodrama meeting of 2017.

We are going to discuss the BBC’s recent 2-part adaptation of Agatha Christie’s short story The Witness for the Prosecution. As the production is over 2 hours in length, we ask that you watch it beforehand.

You can find the episodes on iplayer, available until the 25th of January, here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b086z959?suggid=b086z959

witness-for-the-pros

Adapted by Sarah Phelps (who was also responsible for 2015’s Agatha Christie 3 parter And Then There Were None), the production centres on the trial of a young man accused of murdering an older, wealthy, widow for her money. It  opens out the story in very different ways to Billy Wilder’s 1957 film starring Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power and Marlene Dietrich. Phelps updates the story for our modern times with a sexy older woman (Kim Catrall) catching young Leonard Vole’s (Billy Howle’s) eye. The adaptation is also firmly placed in its post World War I context with many of the characters still dealing with the aftermath of the conflict.

Do join us if you can for discussion on the adaptation and plans for the coming term.

Melodrama Screening and Discussion, Monday 12th of December, 5-7pm, Jarman 7

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All are very welcome to join us for the last meeting of term. On Monday the 12th of December, at 5-7pm, in Jarman 7 we will be screening the UK anthology film Dead of Night (1945, Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Robert Hamer and Basil Dearden, 102 mins).

dead_of_night_poster_03‘How narrow is the margin between dreams and reality, the natural and the supernatural, fact or fiction, is graphically and dramatically shown in this Ealing Studios production based on original stories by H.G. Wells’. This intriguing opening to a Review of the film in Fan Magazine Screenland (August 1946, p. 12) poses these, as well as other philosophical quandaries, in its 5 linked gothic horror narratives. The anthology comprises ‘Hearse Driver’, ‘Christmas Party’, ‘Haunted Mirror’, ‘Golfing Story’ and, the arguably best known, ‘Ventriloquist’s Dummy’ sequence in which a sensitive ventriloquist (Michael Redgrave) comes to fear that his sinister dummy is actually alive.

Do join us for ‘engrossing film fare which really makes you think’ (Review in Screenland, August 1946, p. 12).

You can find the full review on the Media History Digital Library’s fantastic website: http://archive.org/stream/screenland501unse#page/n911/mode/2up

More information on Fan Magazines can be found on the University of Kent’s NoRMMA blog: http://www.normmanetwork.com/

Melodrama Screening and Discussion, 3rd of October, 5-7pm, Jarman 7

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All are very welcome to join us for the first of this term’s Screening and Discussion sessions, which will take place on Monday the 3rd of October, 5-7pm, in Jarman 7.

We will be showing the silent French short Barbe Bleue (1901, George Melies, 9 mins) and the Hollywood production Bluebeard (1944, Edgar G. Ulmer, 72 mins).

bluebeard-ad

Continuing our focus on the Gothic, we turn to the fundamental Bluebeard myth. Melies’ short tells the traditional tale, while in the later film John Carradine plays  Gaston Morrell, a  Parisian portrait artist and puppeteer, whose models are mysteriously murdered by the violent ‘Bluebeard’.

At the time,Trade magazine Motion Picture Herald’s review categorised Ulmer’s film as a ‘Class Melodrama’. It also opined that its return to the Bluebeard narrative (albeit an updated version) was a response to the ‘tawdry fripperies frothed up…under the guide of melodrama’ (by W.R.W, 14 October 1944, p. 2138). It therefore closely ties Melodrama, and not just the Gothic, to the Bluebeard folktale, placing this, favourably, within the context of contemporary Hollywood productions.

Do join us if you can for these two films, as well as discussion about the upcoming term’s events.

 

Screening Timetable for Autumn Term 2016

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We now have dates for our Melodrama Screening and Discussion Sessions next Term. Meetings will take place on even Mondays, from 5-7pm, in Jarman 7.

screening

All are welcome to join us on: the 3rd, 17th and 31st of October, the 14th and 28th of November and the 12th of December 2016.

Following the success of the Gothic Feminism conference we will be screening films and reading novels relating to the Gothic.  We start with Bluebeard (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1944, 72 mins) in the first session, also taking this opportunity to discuss the remainder of the term as well as other plans.