Northwest Film Event Highlights – March 2015

It gets a bit dusty in this month's event column as Manchester institution Cornerhouse delivers its final ¡Viva! events and a celebratory That’s a Wrap! film season

Preview by Simon Bland | 09 Mar 2015

Spring’s just around the corner but before we’re all lured into booze-soaked festival fields, there're still plenty of reasons to head to the cinema. In fact, Cornerhouse Manchester are bringing the festival fun indoors with ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival’s 21st birthday party (5-9 Mar). Boasting the very best in international cinema, ¡Viva! will be celebrating in style with exclusive screenings, director Q&As and post-movie drinks. Dark comedy and opening gala feature Who Killed Bambi? (5 Mar) and award-winning tearjerker María and Spider (9 Mar) are just two of our picks, with Cornerhouse extending the fun into their new home, er, HOME, with two more ¡Viva! events throughout the year. Keep your eyes peeled for June’s Mexican Weekender and a Spanish cinema fiesta in autumn.

Meanwhile, Manchester’s Grimm Up North team continue their Stephen King season at The Dancehouse with suburban vampire tale Salem’s Lot (12 Mar). Directed by horror giant Tobe Hooper – originally as a mini-series – this bumper feature-film edition is based on King’s second novel and marks the second time his work was brought to the screen. The Grimm gang also celebrate Friday the 13th of March with a slasher double-bill at Gorilla featuring 80s classics Prom Night and – you guessed it – Friday the 13th. Influential and controversial (at the time at least), these blade-wielding bloodfests redefined the horror genre and gave us a brand new one: teen. What better way to spend the creepiest day of the year?

Over at Manchester Central Library, David Fincher’s Fight Club (26 Mar) fittingly kicks off a new Retro and Dangerous season celebrating films based on the works of cutting-edge contemporary authors, while The Italian Club in Liverpool host a Godfather double-bill with a difference. They’ll be showing parts one (2 Mar) and two (3 Mar) complete with a pre-screening two-course meal and glass of wine that’s ‘to die for.' Also in Liverpool, Toxteth’s Pop-Up Cinema (21 Mar) will be offering free screenings of ace animation A Cat in Paris, Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs The World and the quirky Submarine.

And finally, it's almost a wrap for Cornerhouse, as the iconic Mancunian venue prepares to shut shop and move down the road to a fancy new location. To celebrate, they’ll be hosting That’s a Wrap!, a season of farewell films chosen by the public – and haven't they chosen well. The season kicks off on 13 Mar with Terrence Malick’s poetic lovers-on-the-run yarn Badlands and closes 2 Apr with David Lynch's dreamy and disturbing Blue Velvet. In between, the eclectic lineup includes Manchester-set noir Hell is the City (14 Mar), Gaspar Noé's brutal Irreversible (18 Mar), Jean Vigo's groundbreaking romance L'Atalante (25 Mar) and Francis Ford Coppola's dazzling study of the horror of war, Apocalypse Now (28 Mar). See Cornerhouse's for full details (www.cornerhouse.org).