The Star and Shadow Cinema Reborn
The volunteer-run Star and Shadow Cinema has just reopened on Warwick Street, a few streets away from its original home on Stepney Bank.
Tag: film
Tyneside Cinema Faces a New Competitor
Everyman Cinemas is set to open a new arthouse cinema on Grey Street to rival Tyneside Cinema. But with declining interest in specialised films is this decision viable?
I, Daniel Blake’s Geordie in Crisis
Ken Loach’s latest film is set in Newcastle and stars Dave Johns as a traditional Geordie facing up to the challenge of living and getting by in 21st century England.
Four Visions of T. Dan Smith
T. Dan Smith remains as one of Tyneside’s most controversial political figures. Hero or villain? Visionary or crook? Smith’s legacy distilled into four narratives.
British Cinema’s North-South Divide: In Conversation with Tom Jackson
Northern Realism versus ‘Southern Splendour’ – two common ways of imagining the geography and the stories of the United Kingdom.
Documentary Ethics and Aesthetics: In Conversation with Tom Jackson
How three new films – The Act of Killing, Waltz with Bashir and Leviathan – play with documentary history.
Summer Film Viewing
Followers of this site will already know of my love for Jafar Panahi and the Iranian cinema in general, so it is fairly straightforward that I would find Closed Curtain (Panahi, 2013) appealing in all of its postmodern, metatextual exuberance. It is a film which may seem unintelligible to audiences unaware of the director’s plight… Continue reading Summer Film Viewing
The Tribe (Miroslav Slaboshpitsky, 2015)
It could be said that like the elongated motorway sequence in Solaris (1972), supposedly included to alienate audiences unworthy of an Andrei Tarkovsky film, Miroslav Slaboshpitsky offers a similar manoeuvre by warning us both in the trailer and at the film’s inception that The Tribe will include no subtitles, voice-over or any other explanation of… Continue reading The Tribe (Miroslav Slaboshpitsky, 2015)
Only Lovers Left Alive: Jim Jarmusch and the Vampire Genre
Although the vampire genre has always proved popular within both cinema and literature, the 21st century has witnessed a staggering rise in the amount of films centred on vampires. From the profoundly beloved Twilight Saga (2008-2012) to the obscure Thirst (Park Chan-wook, 2009) and the upcoming Dracula Untold (Gary Shore, 2014), it would be difficult… Continue reading Only Lovers Left Alive: Jim Jarmusch and the Vampire Genre
Slow Cinema and Norte, the End of History
To most audiences, to describe a film as ‘slow’ is to give it a negative value judgement. In answer to the question ‘why didn’t you like the film?’ one often hears the response ‘oh because it was so slow’, especially in relation to non-mainstream and art cinema. The word ‘slow’ regularly works as a… Continue reading Slow Cinema and Norte, the End of History
