Films showing at FebFilm

Friday 8th February 8:00 PM - Alhambra

Under The Mud

This shoestring feature, begun as a community project, has garnered plaudits at festivals in Ireland and north America. Devised with local teenagers at a south Liverpool Internet café, and part-funded by drug money (well, 20 grand from Glaxo Smith Kline), it’s a funny and touching day in the life of the Potts family, starring locals amid established actors like Andrew Schofield and Kate Fitzgerald. Music is by Pete Wylie of The Mighty Wah! 'A wonderful, magical, uplifting tale of one ordinary day in the life of an extraordinary working-class family - or vice versa.' (Helen Walsh, The Guardian)

Saturday 9th February 12:00 PM - Alhambra

When The Road Bends

Gypsy Caravan

'A potent combination of ethnography and concert film' (Variety), this documentary follows five Romani bands from four different countries on their tour of the USA in 2001. British-born director Dellal captures the diversity of gypsy music from Antonio El Pipa's Spanish Flamenco Ensemble to the flamboyance of Macedonian diva Esma Redzepova. But she also captures an unexpected fusion as the tour develops and the groups from very different musical traditions find common origins and mutual inspiration in their music.

Saturday 9th February 3:00 PM - Alhambra

The Singer

Gérard Depardieu is on his best form for years as Alain, the ageing singer with a strong local following and a contented marriage. Then he spies the much younger Marion (Cécile de France) and a mutual infatuation begins. She's an estate agent and the houses she shows him become metaphors for their possible futures. But are his true feelings as sentimental as his songs? 'A gentle, autumnal film, with nice performances from Depardieu and De France' (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian).

Saturday 9th February 6:00 PM - Alhambra

Seachd

The Inaccessible Pinnacle

Làn fhìrinn na sgeòil (The truth is in the story). Seachd - pronounced 'Shack' – is a feast for the eye, filmed and produced on the Isle of Skye. It's a feast for the ear too, albeit in Gaelic. Former Wall Street banker Miller shrewdly focuses on the twinkling eye and accomplished storytelling of Aonghas Padruig Caimbeul as grandfather of young Angus, a nine-year-old seeking to prove his parents were murdered. Despite terrific reviews ('excellent' said the Sunday Times), Bafta didn't Oscar-nominate it for best foreign-language film and won't say why. Watch and wonder.

Saturday 9th February 8:30 PM - Alhambra

Heima

Icelandic band Sigur Rós toured their homeland in the summer of 2006 in a series of unannounced, free concerts. The informal venues ranged from a community hall, a protest camp to outdoor sculptures. The film follows the tour, using often acoustic arrangements, with prolonged close-ups and intimate interviews rather than the stilted images of stadium rock, to get close to the band's nature and roots.
'...I was utterly captivated...their creativity and open attitude was at one with Iceland's ravishingly beautiful landscape.' (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)

Sunday 10th February 12:00 PM - Alhambra

Once

An Irish busker, "a broken-hearted Hoover fixer sucker guy" as he himself sings, falls for a Czech girl who sells flowers by day but plays piano whenever she can. This is a modern musical: 'Its tone may be sweet and gentle, but it has the grit to resist going exactly where you'd expect it to.' (LA Times) At its heart are two fine acting and singer-songwriting performances by Glen Hansard, lead singer of the Irish group the Frames, and Marketa Irglova, who was a startlingly mature 17 when the film was made.

Sunday 10th February 2:30 PM - Alhambra

The Bands Visit

Bikur Ha-Tizmoret

'A tiny gem, but completely irresistible.' (reel.com) An Egyptian police band is stranded in a small Israeli town, unable to contact their embassy. Café owner Ronit Elkabetz persuades some of her regulars to take in the conspicuously overdressed, Arabic-speaking strangers. What follows is a gentle comedy of Arab-Israeli relations as the guests become embroiled in the lives of their hosts, centring on a fine performance by Sasson Gabai as the bandleader whose stern countenance gradually crumbles. 'Director and screenwriter Eran Kolirin handles the delicate shades of politics with subtle tones.' (The Observer).

Sunday 10th February 5:00 PM - Alhambra

Control

Rock photographer Corbijn turns to movies ('shooting with a poet's eye', Rolling Stone) to fictionalise the brief life of Ian Curtis of Joy Division. Based on his widow's memoir, Cannes-award-winning Control brilliantly captures, in black and white, northern Britain in the late 70's, with a superb central performance – including singing – from newcomer Sam Riley, and fine self-effacing support from Samantha Morton. Both the lives and the music are superbly honoured. '...the best film of the year: a tender, bleakly funny and superbly acted biopic' (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian).

Sunday 10th February 8:30 PM - Alhambra

We Are Together

Winner of Awards from New York to Amsterdam at Film Festivals this pre-release film is to be our closing film. It tells the remarkable and moving story of a group of children who use music to overcome hardship and loss. It is the story of an orphanage, unlike one you've ever seen before, and of the drive of these remarkable young singers and their teachers to make it to London for a series of concerts. It is the story of kids from the Agape Orphanage South Africa, many orphaned through AIDs. "A life-affirming testament to the power of music" Wendy Ide, The Times "Cinema at it's most inspirational" David Edwards