No. 6 Cinema based at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard has started the new autumn season with an incredible lineup as well as being part of the Making Waves Film Festival too. Below are our picks for the next couple of weeks but be sure to check their website for the other films they will be screening plus info on ticket prices, etc. If you haven’t visited No. 6 before then we highly recommend it, a mix of thoughtful art house cinema, vintage Hollywood classics and new blockbusters all within the historic blockhouse in the dockyard.
On The Waterfront (PG) – Thursday 26th September 2013
A stone cold cinema classic from the 1950s, directed by Elia Kazan and featuring a tour-de-force performance from Marlon Brando, with his line of dialogue now part of the popular culture lexicon. It isn’t often you get the opportunity to see this on the big screen and this is well worth the effort.
Elysium (15) – Saturday 28th September 2013
As a director Neill Blomkamp is able to shine a light on the current and near future ills of society via a lens of science fiction in a way that few other directors have ever done, certainly since the heyday of such films in the 70s such as Westworld (interestingly being remade as a series for HBO by JJ Abrams and Jonathan Nolan). With his career starting in 3D animation and design his first feature film District 9 brought some of the most difficult subjects on the current nature of society to a new audience and his second film Elysium builds on this solid foundation. The film sees Matt Damon fighting to reach the perfect, ‘gated community’ of a space station in orbit around an Earth with a population that has been forgotten, with food, water and healthcare no longer easily available & technology a currency out of reach to many. The film has been out for a short while and is well worth catching away from the multiplex.
Peter Grimes on Aldeburgh Beach (PG) – Thursday 3rd October 2013
Aldeburgh is a coastal town (well pretty much a village) on the windswept Suffolk coast that has a long history with arts and culture on a national and international stage, in particular it’s more recent history intertwined with composer Benjamin Britten. Britten has a deep personal history with Aldeburgh not least Snape Maltings where his founded the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948 and but also as it is where he made home for his later life. The Britten 1945 opera Peter Grimes was based on the poem The Borough by George Crabbe, which contained the tragic story of the Aldeburgh fisherman Peter Grimes. This film of the live performance of the opera, produced to celebrate the centenary of Benjamin Britten’s birth, was filmed actually on Aldeburgh beach earlier this year and is directed for the screen by Margaret Williams.
I was lucky enough to see some of the filming of this opera on the beach as it was being performed, it is an incredible performance and inspired to bring the story to it’s home, amongst the famous viewing tower, seagulls, fishing boats and shingle.
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