Film Hub Fortnightly – March 2022 (Part 1)
Along with the first signs of Spring, the March slate for independent Northern Ireland cinema exhibition has arrived with lots of exciting new and old titles.
Film Hub’s Collective tour of Wildfire (2020) continues with a screening at the Roe Valley Arts & Cultural Centre in Limavady on the 3rd of March. The Fermanagh Film Club in Enniskillen’s Ardhowen Theatre continue their Spring season with a screening of Azor (2021), a tense Argentinian spy drama, on the 1st.
The Newcastle Community Cinema will be showing French feminist body horror Titane (2021) on the 4th, two free performances of a children’s play A Walk is Not Just a Walk on the 5th, Irish-language thriller Doineann (2021) on the 6th, Azor on the 8th and blockbuster reboot Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2022) on the 12th.
There’s a couple of special, free events coming in the first week of March. The Northern Ireland Institute of Human Relations’s Psychoanalytic Film Club will be hosting a Zoom discussion of the Pedro Almodóvar classic All About My Mother (2000) on the 4th of March.
On the 7th in The Black Box, there will be an International Women’s Day preview screening of Let Us Be Seen (2022), a film about grassroots feminist activism and art in Northern Ireland, directed by Elspeth Vischer.
At Movie House Cinemas’ locations, there are showings of Belfast, Dog, Cyrano, The Duke, The Godfather and knockabout docu-comedy Jackass Forever (2022). You will be able to see The Batman from the 4th and much more later in the month.
The Jet Centre Movie House in Coleraine will be piloting new weekly accessibility screenings for audiences who are deaf or hard of hearing by offering subtitles on all films at all performances on Mondays for a trial period. ‘Subtitled Mondays’ will run weekly through to April 4th.
There’s a wide range of brand-new and repertory titles coming to the Queen’s Film Theatre. You can see Belfast (2021), NI-set psychological thriller Here Before (2021), Le Mif (2021), a drama set in a teenage girls’ residential care home in Geneva, and The Duke (2021), a comedy starring Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren, until the 3rd.
On the 3rd there will be a special, 50th anniversary screening of The Godfather (1972), newly restored in 4K, followed by a screening of The Godfather Part II (1974) on the 6th and The Godfather, Coda: The Death Of Michael Corleone (1990), a new director’s cut of The Godfather Part III, on The 13th.
Between the 4th and the 10th, there will be runs of Ali & Ava (2021), a love story directed by Clio Barnard, and the Oscar-nominated Flee (2021), a Danish docudrama which uses animation to depict the travels of an openly gay Afghani refugee.
The Japan Foundation continue their fantastic programme with Aristocrats (2021), a tale of inter-class friendship, on the 5th and The House Of The Lost On The Cape (2021), an anime about a makeshift family thrown together by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, on the 6th. Ora, Ora Be Goin' Alone (2020), a drama about a woman who counters grief with music, will show on the 12th and The Sound of Grass (2021), a drama about a young man who recovers his mental health through jogging, on the 13th.
On the 8th, there will be a showing of Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (2019), followed by a panel discussion on the film with Dr Jamie Hagen, Emma Campbell and Emma Gallen. The documentary Rebel Dread (2020), on the legendary musician and DJ Don Letts, will screen on the 12th, followed by a Q&A with Letts. While on the 15th, there will be a special Real-to-Reel 35mm film screening of Michael Haneke’s Hidden (2005), followed by a discussion, led by Professor John Nagle and Dr Kevin Hearty, on the film’s themes.
Running from the 11th till the 17th, Young Plato (2021) is a documentary centred on a boys’ school and everyday life in post-conflict Ardoyne—with the screening on the 11th followed by a Q&A with directors Neasa Ní Chianáin and Declan McGrath and many of the film’s stars and contributors—while Red Rocket (2021) is the new film from Tangerine director Sean Baker, and a tragicomedy starring an ex-porn star (Simon Rex) who returns to Texas to revisit old haunts and regrets.
Cinemagic’s On The Pulse festival returns this March with a programme of events kicking off in the Ulster Museum. On the 6th there will be three screenings featuring shorts themed around Disney characters and the natural world.
On the 12th there will be showcases of shorts from Pixar, adapted from children’s books and by filmmakers from around the world, while on the 13th, you can see classic Aardman shorts, international shorts with social themes and the Aardman produced, BBC film Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas (2021), followed by a Q&A with director Steve Cox and producer Richard Beek.
At the Strand Arts Centre, you can currently see Belfast, the Channing Tatum comedy Dog (2022) and the Peter Dinklage starring musical Cyrano (2021). They will also be showings of Ali & Ava from the 4th and Young Plato from the 11th. On the 3rd, there will be a screening of the Final Cut of Blade Runner (1982), from the 4th, a run of the new version of The Batman (2022), starring Robert Pattinson in the title role and on the 10th, Malojian – Humm Live At The Strand, a concert film recorded at the venue during lockdown.