Welcome to our Spring 2025 Season for Film Club
Thank you for your continued support.
Simon
FILM CLUB
Long Melford Village Memorial Hall
Long Melford, Sudbury CO10 9JQ, UK
Film Club takes place on the fourth Wednesday of every month at the Long Melford Village Memorial Hall. There is a large free car park.
However this December's Lecture will be on 18th December because of Christmas.
All welcome join on the door.
January 22nd 10.30am
Alain Delon
Alain Delon French actor born November 8, 1935 · Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, France.
Delon was a sensation early in his career; he came to embody the young, energetic, often morally corrupted man. With his breathtaking good looks he was also destined to play tender lovers and romantic heroes, and he was a French embodiment of the type created in America by James Dean. His first outstanding success came with the role of the parasite Tom Ripley in 'Rene Clement''s sun-drenched thriller Plein Soleil (1960). Delon presented a psychological portrait of a murderous young cynic who attempts to take on the identity of his victim. A totally different role was offered to him by Visconti in Rocco and His Brothers (1960). In this film Delon plays the devoted Rocco, who accepts the greatest sacrifices to save his shiftless brother Simon.
After several other films in Italy, Delon returned to the criminal genre with Jean Gabin in The Big Snatch (1963). This work, a classic example of the genre, was distinguished not only by a soundly worked-out screenplay, but also by the careful production and the excellent performances of both Delon and Gabin. It was only in the late 1960s that the sleek and lethal Delon came to epitomize the calm, psychopathic hoodlum, staring into the camera like a cat assessing a mouse. His tough, ruthless side was first used to real effect by Jean-Pierre Melville in Le Samouraï (1967). In 1970 he had a huge success in the bloodstained Borsalino (1970)--which he also produced--playing a small-time gangster in the 1930s who, with Jean-Paul Belmondo, becomes king of the Marseilles underworld. Delon later won critical acclaim for his roles, against type, in Joseph Losey's Mr. Klein (1976) in which he played (brilliantly) the icily sinister title role, and the art-movie Swann in Love (1984).
He died last year August 18th 2024 in Douchy, Loiret, France
Grahame Greene’s influence on Cinema has and continues to be of great impact. As a novelist, film Critic, and screenplay writer we will consider his importance in the film industry.
Graham Greene was very much a creature of cinema, from his stint as a film critic in the 1930s (during which he was successfully prosecuted for libel after implying that Shirley Temple’s audience primarily consisted of paedophiles) to his pseudonymous cameo as an insurance agent in François Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973) – though Truffaut reportedly had no idea who this bit part actor really was.
And that’s before we even get started on the 82 films that were adapted from his work.
It has become something of a cliché to say that Greene’s writing was intensely cinematic: according to Evelyn Waugh, “the affinity of the film is everywhere apparent. It is the camera’s eye which moves about the room recording significant detail.”
Greene was a tough critic of attempts to dramatise his books, but many of these adaptations were highly successful consider: The Third Man 1949 and the Fugitive 1947.
March 26th 10.30am
South Korean Cinema
The golden age of South Korean cinema in the mid-20th century produced what are considered two of the best South Korean films of all time, The Housemaid (1960) and Obaltan (1961), while the industry's revival with the Korean New Wave from the late 1990s to the present produced both of the country's highest-grossing films, The Admiral: Roaring Currents (2014) and Extreme Job (2019), as well as prize winners on the festival circuit including Golden Lion recipient Pietà (2012) and Palme d'Or recipient and Academy Award winner Parasite (2019) and international cult classics including Oldboy (2003), Snowpiercer (2013), and Train to Busan (2016).
With the increasing global success and globalization of the Korean film industry, the past two decades have seen Korean actors like Lee Byung-hun and Bae Doona star in American films, Korean auteurs such as Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho direct English-language works, Korean American actors crossover to star in Korean films as with Steven Yeun and Ma Dong-seok, and Korean films be remade in the United States, China, and other markets. The Busan International Film Festival has also grown to become Asia's largest and most important film festival.
April 23rd 10.30am
Jazz and Rock Film Documentaries
Cinema and its fascination with jazz and rock musicians makes a lively point for discussion. I am hoping the audience will keep an open mind whether they are jazz or rock fans. These films; some autobiographical ;some records of famous performances, bring our Spring Season to a lively end .
You can expect some marvellous films to include:
Jazz on a Summer’s Day (Bert Stern, Aram Avakian, 1959)
Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Gerry Mulligan, Dinah Washington, Thelonious Monk, Anita O’Day, Chuck Berry – all these and more are captured in this film of the 1958 Newport jazz festival, hailed in its publicity as “a picture that’s high on happiness… long on longing!” Focusing not just upon the acts but also the mood of the audience and the atmosphere of the time, photographer Bert Stern and co-director and editor Aram Avakian essentially set the template for a swathe of celebrated rock docs that would follow their seminal work. This is ground zero.
Bertrand Tavernier, 1986 ’Round Midnight A tribute to the jazz greats who made Paris their home.
Bird (1988) Clint Eastwood’s passion for jazz pioneer Charlie ‘YardBird’ Parker culminated in this 1988 biography.
Gimme Shelter 1969 the Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin’s account of the Rolling Stones’ 1969 US tour that ended with the catastrophic Altamont concert is one of cinema’s most chilling experiences.
The Beatles: Get Back is a documentary television series directed and produced by Peter Jackson. It covers the making of the Beatles' 1970 album Let It Be (which had the working title of Get Back) and draws largely from unused footage and audio material originally captured for and recycled original footage from the 1970 documentary of the album by Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
1967’s Monterey international pop festival is as much about the crowd and the culture as it is about Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar on fire on stage. DA Pennebaker, who revolutionised rock docs with 1967’s Dont Look Back, utilises roving cameras to put the audience at the centre of the action.