Lido Cinema, The Balcony, Centreplace, 501 Victoria Street, Hamilton
Hamilton Film Society's 2013 Season screens at the Lido Cinema, The Balcony, Centreplace, 501 Victoria Street, Hamilton, March – December, Mondays at 8:00pm, as noted below. Please note: no screenings on public holidays
Most screenings are members only. Please arrive early – no guaranteed seating.
We reluctantly reserve the right to change the programme if a film does not arrive. Late changes will be advised on the home page of this website.
Opening Night
4th March
8:00 pm NO
Pablo Larrain, Chile/USA, 2012, 115 minutes
An ad executive comes up with a campaign to defeat Augusto Pinochet in Chile's 1988 referendum. - IMDB
Thanks to the LIDO CINEMA
11th March
8:00 pmBEAU TRAVAIL
Claire Denis | France | 1999 | M low level offensive language
Denis reimagines Melville’s Billy Budd as a tale of jealousy and homoerotic desire among a company of French Legionnaires in remote Djibouti. “Denis’ visual style is hypnotic, rapturous… she makes barren landscapes look gorgeous, hard men look vulnerable.” - Entertainment Weekly
18th March
8:00 pmBOY MEETS GIRL
Leos Carax | France | 1984 | cert tbc
Leos Carax’s critically acclaimed debut feature. “Shot in luminous black and white, Boy Meets Girl moves with the youthful, anarchic spirit of Godard's early work, endlessly detouring through surreal comedy, romantic philosophizing, and spontaneous flights of fancy.” – AV Club
25th March
8:00pmCARAMEL (Sukkar banat)
Nadine Labaki | Lebanon/France | 2007 | PG sexual references
“A lovely little comedy-drama set around a Beirut beauty parlour where delicious, gooey caramel is cooked up for waxing legs… Weaving a poignant portrait of women muddling through the uncertainties of a culture caught between the modern and the traditional.” - Time Out
8th April
8:00pmTWO-LANE BLACKDROP
Monte Hellman | USA | 1971 | M offensive language
With its gorgeous widescreen compositions and sophisticated look at American male obsession, this stripped-down narrative from maverick director Monte Hellman is one of the artistic high points of 1970s cinema, and possibly the greatest road movie ever made.
15th April
8:00pmRUNAWAY
John O'Shea | New Zealand | 1964 | 35mm
Any film whose cast ranges from Barry Crump to Kiri te Kanawa has to be some kind of local classic. New Zealand's own answer to the French New Wave, an allegorical drama posing as an action movie, Runaway addresses the plight of Post-War Pakeha through the ubiquitous theme of the "man alone" and mystical identification with landscape.
22nd April
8:00pmTHE AWFUL TRUTH
Leo McCarey | USA | 1937 | PG
Packed full of gags, double entendres, witty remarks and snide comments, this zappy and sophisticated screwball comedy stars Cary Grant and Irene Dunn as a squabbling couple who divorce and then jealously attempt to undermine each other’s attempts at new romance.
29th April
8:00pmWHITE MATERIAL
Claire Denis | France/Cameroon | 2009 | R16 violence, content may disturb
Isabelle Huppert is mesmerising as a French coffee plantation owner refusing to budge from a West Africa riven by civil war in Denis’ apocalyptic vision of the postcolonial present. “A tense, convulsive portrait of change and a thing of terrible beauty.” – Village Voice
6th May
8:00pmTHE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE (Les amants du Pont-Neuf)
Leos Carax | France | 1991 | M violence, offensive language
Leos Carax earned the title of enfant terrible with this ambitious love story set along the banks of the Seine. Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche portray two lovers from very different walks of life drawn together by l'amour fou. “The great urban expressionist fantasy of the 90s.” - Chicago Reader
13th May
8:00pmDEEP END
Jerzy Skolimowski | UK/West Germany | 1971 | R18
London’s swinging ’60s get a gothic makeover in this tale of an awkward teenager’s crush on a mod coworker, set in a seedy public bath. Starring Jane Asher, with music by Cat Stevens and Can. “The most brilliantly baleful British comedy of the era” - Guide to World Cinema
20th May
8:00pmBADLANDS
Terrence Malick | USA | 1973 | R16 violence
Malick’s first film is still one of American cinema’s most powerful and daring debuts. Starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. “Transcendent themes of love and death are fused with a pop-culture sensibility and played out against a mid-western background.” - Dave Kehr
27th May
8:00pmERASERHEAD
David Lynch | USA | 1977 | M violence
Three decades on, David Lynch’s debut feature, a self-described “dream of dark and troubling things”, remains a work of queasy genius. “It astounds through its expressionist sets and photography, the startling, sinister soundtrack, and relentless imaginative fluency.” - Time Out
10th June
8:00pmBEATS BEING DEAD (Etwas Besseres als den Tod)
Christian Petzold | Germany | 2011 | cert tbc
A convicted killer escapes from police custody at the start of Petzold’s genre-bending and wonderfully unpredictable first installment. While the focus shifts to an offbeat romance between a shy hospital orderly and the Bosnian refugee he rescues from her abusive boyfriend, a police manhunt proceeds apace.
17th June
8:00pmDON'T FOLLOW ME AROUND (Komm mir nicht nachs)
Dominik Graf | Germany | 2011 | cert tbc
The second installment introduces a big-city police psychologist drafted into the manhunt who finds solace with an old friend with whom she shares a strange secret. Graf’s film deftly juxtaposes their personal drama with the ongoing search for the killer and a corruption scandal engulfing the police force.
24th June
8:00pmONE MINUTE OF DARKNESS (Eine Minute Dunkel)
Christoph Hochhäusler | Germany | 2011 | cert tbc
Hochhäusler’s dark, memorably strange fairytale brings the escaped convict into sharp focus for the nail-biting conclusion of the series. As a grizzled police inspector hot on the trail uncovers some strange inconsistencies in the killer’s conviction, the man himself flees deeper into the possibly enchanted forest.
1st July
8:00pmVIVA MARIA
Louis Malle | France | 1965 | PG
Starring Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau as a pair of feisty vaudeville dancers and Mexican revolutionaries, Louis Malle’s campy comedy-adventure is an underappreciated jeu d’esprit gleaming with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière’s surrealist gags and anticlerical hijinks.
8th July
8:00pmBLACK SUN
Gary Tarn | UK | 2005 | PG
This profoundly beautiful film, which pushes the boundaries of documentary, was inspired by the experience of artist Hugues de Montalembert, who was blinded by muggers in 1978. “A film about blindness that makes us see the world hungrily, deeply, anew.” - Daily Telegraph
15th July
8:00pmKINSHASA SYMPHONY
Claus Wischmann and Martin Baer | Germany | 2010
“A study of people in one of the world’s most chaotic cities doing their best to maintain one of the most complex systems of joint human endeavor: a symphony orchestra. A film about the Congo, the people in Kinshasa, and the power of music.” - New York African Film Festival
22nd July
8:00pmTROUBLE IN PARADISE
Ernst Lubitsch | USA | 1932 | PG
More Continental sophistication and precise comic timing from Lubitsch, this time featuring a pair of prodigiously talented and charming con-artists (Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins) who target widow Kay Francis’s vast fortune by posing as her personal assistants.
29th July
8:00pmNOSTALGA FOR THE LIGHT (Nostalgie de la luz)
Patricio Guzmán | France/Germany/Chile | 2010
Astronomy, archaeology and history are mesmerisingly interwoven and juxtaposed in this visually breathtaking meditation on Chile’s far distant and more recent past by the remarkable documentarian Patricio Guzmán. “Electrifying and unexpected.” - Hollywood Reporter
5th August
8:00pmTHE PIANO IN A FACTORY (Gang de qin)
Zhang Meng | China | 2010 | cert tbc
When his daughter says she will live with whichever of her divorcing parents can give her a piano, an unemployed steelworker must pull out all the stops to procure one. “Artfully blends music, romance, comedy and just a little social comment… a thoroughly enjoyable movie experience!” - Screendaily
12th August
8:00pmJOYLESS STREET (Die freudlose Gasse)
GW Pabst | Germany | 1925 | PG
The film that made a young Greta Garbo an international star, GW Pabst’s Joyless Street is an uncompromising portrait of post-World War I social malaise in an inflation-hit Vienna. “An extraordinary triumph of cinematography and Expressionist design.” - Pauline Kael
19th August
8:00pmFREE RADICALS: A History of Experimental Film
Pip Chodorov | France | 2011
Pip Chodorov’s film delves into the history of avant-garde cinema in Europe and the USA from early post-war pioneers through to the founding of New York’s Anthology Film Archives, surveying a generation of artists who pushed the boundaries of the medium.
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