Northwest Film Event Highlights – April 2016

Feature by Simon Bland | 31 Mar 2016

¡Viva! returns as a cross-art festival and celebrate Record Store Day with a great double bill of music-movie faves High Fidelity and Empire Records

It’s April, which in Manchester means only one thing: ¡Viva! Spanish & Latin American Festival (7-24 Apr) at HOME, and this year it’s bigger than ever. Over 18 days the venue celebrates Spanish and Latin American culture through an impressive selection of film, theatre and art events. However, it’s the former that we’re interested in here and there are loads on, including two unmissable documentaries and 18 feature films spanning four different languages. The highlights? Don’t miss the fest’s UK premieres: Mi Gran Noche (9 Apr), Amama (11 Apr), Juntos y revueltos (17 Apr), L’adopció (17 Apr); a Ricardo Darín retrospective, which includes a screening of his latest, Truman (23 Apr); and the Leonora Carrington tribute, complete with an introduced screening of 1973 horror The Mansion of Madness (15 Apr). Visit homemcr.org for full details and screening times. 

HOME also celebrates silent cinema with a live-scored airing of Anthony Asquith’s Underground (3 Apr), and reflects on the psychedelic art of David Vaughan with documentary David Vaughan: Black on Canvas, which is followed by a Q&A with director Dean Brocklehurst and Vaughan's daughter Sadie Frost (28 Apr).

Meanwhile, over at Gorilla, those RAD guys celebrate Record Store Day in style with a catchy double bill of music-movie faves High Fidelity and Empire Records (17 Apr), while Hold Fast Bar welcomes Certificate X for Italian-American horror Tentacles (5 Apr). Also, the Anthony Burgess Foundation dusts off two films as part of its Playing God film series, including Stanley Kramer’s evolutionary tale Inherit the Wind (7 Apr) and Charlton Heston-starring post-apocalyptic drama The Omega Man (21 Apr). 

At Liverpool’s FACT, you’ll find a selection of greats back on the big screen, including quintessential Spielberg flick ET the Extra-Terrestrial (2 Apr), suspenseful Hitchcock drama Vertigo (3 Apr), the playful Bugsy Malone (9 Apr) and Francois Truffaut’s seminal The 400 Blows (10 Apr). What’s more, the venue will also host a special screening of Richard Loncraine’s Richard III (28 Apr) to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. Stick around afterwards for an exclusive live satellite Q&A with film's lead, Ian McKellen.

Back in Manchester, Altrincham Little Theatre delves deep into the difficult life of a young nun in 1960s Poland with Oscar-winner Ida (2 Apr) and Manchester Central Library looks at our hard-nosed industrial past with Working Our Way Around the North West (26 Apr). Prefer your films in bite-size chunks? IndieFlix (6 Apr) at Manchester venue Texture will be hosting a night of shorts and inviting the audience to award their favourite. Film viewers these days, eh? Everyone’s a critic…