Welcome to our Summer 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.
May 28th 10.30am
Gene Hackman
Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, He is of Pennsylvania Dutch (German), English, and Scottish ancestry, partly by way of Canada, where his mother was born. After several moves, his family settled in Danville, Illinois. Gene grew up in a broken home, which he left at the age of sixteen for a hitch with the US Marines.
Moving to New York after being discharged, he worked in a number of menial jobs before studying journalism and television production on the G.I. Bill at the University of Illinois. Hackman would be over 30 years old when he finally decided to take his chance at acting by enrolling at the Pasadena Playhouse. Legend says that Hackman and friend Dustin Hoffman were voted "least likely to succeed."
Hackman next moved back to New York, where he worked in summer stock and off-Broadway. In 1964 he was cast as the young suitor in the Broadway play "Any Wednesday." This role would lead to him being cast in the small role of Norman in Lilith (1964), starring Warren Beatty. When Beatty was casting for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), he cast Hackman as Buck Barrow, Clyde Barrow's brother. That role earned Hackman a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, an award for which he would again be nominated in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). In 1972 he won the Oscar for his role as Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection (1971). At 40 years old Hackman was a Hollywood star whose work would rise to new heights with Night Moves (1975) and Bite the Bullet (1975), or fall to new depths with The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Eureka (1983). Hackman is a versatile actor who can play comedy (the blind man in Young Frankenstein (1974)) or villainy (the evil Lex Luthor in Superman (1978)). He is the doctor who puts his work above people in Extreme Measures (1996) and the captain on the edge of nuclear destruction in Crimson Tide (1995). After initially turning down the role of Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992), Hackman finally accepted it, as its different slant on the western interested him. For his performance he won the Oscar and Golden Globe and decided that he wasn't tired of westerns after all. He has since appeared in Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Wyatt Earp (1994), and The Quick and the Dead (1995).
June 25th 10.30am
Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman is the first person born in the 1980s to have won the Academy Award for Best Actress (for Black Swan (2010)).
Natalie was born Natalie Hershlag on June 9, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel. She is the only child of Avner Hershlag, an Israeli-born doctor, and Shelley Stevens, an American-born artist (from Cincinnati, Ohio), who also acts as Natalie's agent. Her parents are both of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Natalie's family left Israel for Washington, D.C., when she was still very young. After a few more moves, her family finally settled in New York, where she still lives to this day. She graduated with honors, and her academic achievements allowed her to attend Harvard University. She was discovered by an agent in a pizza parlor at the age of 11. She was pushed towards a career in modeling but she decided that she would rather pursue a career in acting. She was featured in many live performances, but she made her powerful film debut in the movie Leon (1994) (aka "Léon"). Following this role Natalie won roles in such films as Heat (1995), Beautiful Girls (1996), and Mars Attacks! (1996).
It was not until 1999 that Natalie received worldwide fame as Queen Amidala in the highly anticipated US$431 million-grossing prequel Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999). She then she starred in two critically acclaimed comedy dramas, Anywhere But Here (1999) and Where the Heart Is (2000), followed by Closer (2004), for which she received an Oscar nomination. She reprised her role as Padme Amidala in the last two episodes of the Star Wars prequel trilogy: Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005). She received an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Black Swan (2010).
She received a second nomination for Best Actress, for playing Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in Jackie (2016).
July 23rd 10.30am
Dynasties whether family or political have been a rich source of material in the history of Cinema.
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We can consider the blood lines concerning the inheritance of family fortunes and empires. Maybe some Westerns come to mind? Family feuds of passing power from the older generation to the younger generation are a common trope in the Western, the Gangster film, and films dealing directly with politics. I think this subject gives us a wide range in the choice of films we can look at.
I expect dysfunctional families and corrupt political regimes will be forefront in this lecture.
August 27th 10.30am
Divergence of French Cinema from Hollywood 1914-1945
I have for a long time been a great fan of French Cinema, and over the years I have tried to cover many different aspects of the Gallic film. You will remember looking at the nouvelle vague, poetic realism. And the” Look “ among other genres. To add to this love of French Cinema ; I want to take you back to a time when French Film dominated World Cinema. Up until the end of the First World War French film was the most sophisticated and creative cinema in the World. What fascinates me about this period and the inter war era which followed , is how French Cinema diverged from the nascent American Cinema. French Cinema took a greater interest in films about normal everyday people clearly set in a lovingly created evocation of French culture. The American Cinema in contrast began its fascination with spectacle and extreme. This divergence of cultural style has continued into the present but I want to look at its birth.
At one point in the history of French Cinema there was a concentrated effort to copy the Hollywood mechanism and bizarrely this occurred through German interference during the occupation of the World War Two. This came about with the absence of Hollywood films on the Continent. So I hope looking at this period from 1914 to 1945 will be of interest.