Best Film Screenings in the North (20 Jan-27 Jan)

Preview by The Skinny | 20 Jan 2017

The best film events happening in the North this week, including screenings of Francis Ford Coppola's 1982 musical One from the Heart and Guillermo del Toro's stunning ghost story The Devil's Backbone

One from the Heart (1982)

Dir. Francis Ford Coppola

After the brutality of Apocalypse Now Francis Ford Coppola channeled his romantic side with this gritty and sexy study of love that’s one of the great visual ecstasies of the 80s – and one of cinema’s great financial follies. Using head-spinning and fourth-wall-smashing theatrical techniques, Coppola tells the story of a bored couple falling out of love and into the arms of others, and then back in love again with their original partner.

The style is out of this world. Coppola’s camera spins and twirls, the elaborate Las Vegas set looks more expensive than the real thing and on the soundtrack we have the smoky duet of Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle acting as cigarette-stained and whisky-soaked choruses: “Looks like you spent the night in a trench, and tell me / How long you been combing your hair with a wrench?” Like the other post-New Hollywood follies of Heaven’s Gate and Ishtar, the film’s spiralling cost and disastrous box-office crippled its director’s career. And like those films, it’s now clear that One from the Heart is a masterpiece.

It’s also a perfect salty accompaniment to the similarly themed and styled La La Land’s effervescent sweetness, and we’re delighted to say we’ll be doing an introduction to the film before the Tuesday 24 Jan screening.

Sun 22 Jan, Tue 24 Jan, Wed 25 Jan, HOME, Manchester

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975)

Dir. Margarethe von Trotta & Volker Schlöndorff

Margarethe von Trotta was at the heart of New German Cinema, although you wouldn’t know it thanks to the fact most critics and programmers seem to remember this blistering period of German cinema as being an all boys club. But there’s no doubt that filmmakers like Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog and Trotta’s partner Volker Schlöndorff have overshadowed this indefatigable feminist filmmaking force for far too long, and Liverpool Small Cinema are helping to change that with a screening of her debut, co-directed by Schlöndorff, as part of their brilliant 58% initiative, the indie theatre’s dedication that its programme will feature at least 58% film by female, trans & non-binary filmmakers. The film's gripping story concerns a young woman who spends a night with a wanted terrorist and then finds herself a victim of the police and a brutal press smear campaign.

Thu 26 Jan, Liverpool Small Cinema

Chinese Film Forum UK presents: Chinese New Year 2017

The Chinese Film Forum and HOME have teamed up with the Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) to put together a sharp little programme of shorts to mark the Chinese New Year. Pulling from HKIFF’s Beautiful section – a strand populated by shorts HKIFF have specially commissioned – the lineup includes films from masters of Asian cinema like Tsai Ming-Liang (Walker), Jia Zhangke (The Hedonists), Ann Hui (My Way) and Lü Yue (1 Dimension).

Wed 25 Jan, HOME, Manchester

The Devil’s Backbone (2001)

Dir. Guillermo del Toro

Like the director’s more famous Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone is another example of Del Toro delivering a rich political allegory disguised as an art-house horror. Set in an isolated orphanage for boys during the Spanish civil war, this is a subtle, smart ghost story set to fairytale rhythms in which the Mexican director displays his ability to chill us to the bone without using any cheap scares.

Thu 26 Jan, FACT, Liverpool

The World Cup: A Captain’s Tale (1982)

Dir. Tom Clegg / Wri. Neville Smith

HOME’s Neville Smith retrospective continues to delight. Several themes have emerged over the course of the art centre’s recent retrospective dedicated to the Liverpudlian writer-actor: Smith's righteous belief in social justice and values; his keen eye for familial conflict; a saucy wit; a suspicious and questioning attitude towards organised religion; and a deep love for football.

Period piece The World Cup: A Captain’s Tale looks to certainly deliver the latter. It tells the story of West Auckland FC, a part-time team made up of local miners who represented England in the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy – a competition often dubbed the ‘First World Cup’.

Sun 22 Jan, HOME, Manchester


If you've an upcoming film event you'd like us to know about, send details to jamie@theskinny.co.uk