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Sunday 11th December 2016
The Great Beauty
An Oscar winner from one of Italy’s finest working Directors, The Great Beauty is a film about a novelist and journalist who on his sixty-fifth birthday starts to take stock of his life. It’s not our most Christmassy film but we love it and, if you come to the Lido Café at 19:30 on 11th December, we are sure you will too.
Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2014, Paolo Sorrentino’s visually stunning The Great Beauty is a film about nothing. Or rather the Director took inspiration from Flaubert’s famous statement that he intended to write a novel about nothing, the nothing that is “rumors and gossip, the thousand ways we have of wasting time, the things that irritate us or delight us but that are so short-lived that they make us doubt the meaning of life”.
The film’s protagonist Jep Gambardella has charmed and seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades. Since the legendary success of his one and only novel, he has been a permanent fixture in the city’s literary and social circles, but when his sixty-fifth birthday coincides with a shock from the past, he finds himself unexpectedly taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the extravagant nightclubs, parties, and cafés to find Rome in all its glory.
It may not be a Christmas film (we said there’d be a few of those!) but it is a good end of year film. It’s a chance to see a damn fine film in one of our favourite Herne Hill Free Film Festival Venues, and a chance to enjoy Rome on a cold night in London. We enjoyed it and we think you will too.
Hundreds of Beavers
8:30PM
Getting It back: The Story of Cymande + Q&A
8:00PM
Shaun of the Dead
8:45PM
Short Film Night + Filmmakers’ Intros
8:00PM
We Live in Time
8:00PM
The Outrun
8:00PM
People’s Film Choice: Stand by me or Galaxy Quest or Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind
8:45PM
The Wild Robot
4:00PM
My Kind Of Black: A Night of Short Films by Young Black Londoners + Q&A
8:00PM
Love Lies Bleeding
8:00PM
Cycling Shorts
8:00PM
Phantom of the Open
8:45PM
Hundreds of Beavers
Brockwell Hall
Paying homage to Hollywood’s silent era and the golden age of animation, this slapstick epic sees a down-on-his-luck applejack distiller forced to become North America’s…
Getting It back: The Story of Cymande + Q&A
Off the Cuff Bar – Herne Hill
Listening to 6 Music one day, it was surprising to learn that a band named Cymande, formed just down the road in Brixton in the…
Shaun of the Dead
Brockwell Lido – Herne Hill
Shaun of the Dead has, over the last 21 years, become a classic zombie comedy, with pints, Queen, blink-and-you’ll-miss-em cameos, memorable lines and a weaponised…
Short Film Night + Filmmakers’ Intros
Prince Regent Pub
We think this will be our 11th Short Film Night at the Herne Hill Free Film Festival (sorry for not being entirely sure, it’s…
We Live in Time
Herne Hill Baptist Church
We Live in Time, starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, explores how the fleeting moments of our lives weave together to shape our identities and…
The Outrun
Coldharbour Blue
The Outrun is a compelling drama that follows Rona, portrayed by Saoirse Ronan, as she returns to Scotland’s Orkney Islands after battling alcoholism in…
People’s Film Choice: Stand by me or Galaxy Quest or Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind
Herne Hill Velodrome
With so many great films to choose from, we just couldn’t decide, and so it’s over to you! Please help us select this year’s outdoor…
The Wild Robot
Herne Hill Station Hall
The Wild Robot is a film for all the family that is as thoughtful as it is entertaining. The story follows Roz, an intelligent…
My Kind Of Black: A Night of Short Films by Young Black Londoners + Q&A
198 Contemporary Arts and Learning
Join us at one of our new screening venues, 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning gallery for an evening of short films showcasing the voices…
Love Lies Bleeding
Bird House Brewery
Love Lies Bleeding is a neon-soaked, adrenaline-fueled thriller that dives headfirst into passion, crime, and obsession. When reclusive gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) falls…
Cycling Shorts
Herne Hill Velodrome
Now in its third year, the ever popular Cycling Shorts returns to the historic Herne Hill Velodrome. (That’s short films about cycling of course!) Expect…
Phantom of the Open
Edward Alleyn Club
Our local hero Mark Rylance stars in this amiably daft film The Phantom of the Open about real-life golfing eccentric Maurice Flitcroft, who gatecrashed…
