Award Winning Independent Cinema

There are few books that shorthand themselves so readily as Emily Bronte’s 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights. Windswept moors, doomed lovers, youthful angst. A passionate, yearning love for the ages. It’s an easy sell. But Bronte’s multi-generational saga presents several challenges to the film-maker who wants to adapt it for the big screen. Its complex structure; it has not one but two (highly) unreliable narrators, and when adapting the book in full would mean your film’s running time would be 5 hours long, where do you start making cuts? It is interesting to note ... Continue Reading

It’s fair to say that cinema has found a great deal to mine from Shakespeare. Whether it’s the man himself, hurrying along to the playhouse, trying to stave off writer’s block, in John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love, or Laurence Olivier’s smiling villain, played-to-camera, in Richard III, the adaptations – and interpretations – keep on coming. Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, Hamnet imagines the family Shakespeare left behind in Stratford to pursue his theatrical career in London. The scraps of information we have about them – ... Continue Reading

Reviled (or revered) as the Bad Boy of Italian Art, Caravaggio’s reputation seems to be unassailable. The bravura artist that deployed chiaroscuro to bring a cinematic flair to religious iconography, his fan base extends far beyond the art world. The director Martin Scorsese remarked on his ability to craft a scene from light and dark. In taking a deep dive into Caravaggio’s life and work (the two are deeply connected), the problem is not how to convey what we already know of the artist, it’s approaching him from a fresh perspective. For their ... Continue Reading

When it comes to making the transition from page to screen, there are few novels that can rival the track record of Jane Austen’s 1813 classic, Pride and Prejudice. The book’s blend of romance and comedy has proved an irresistible combination, with film and television adaptations appearing regularly over the decades, although they vary wildly in tone and attitude. We have Greer Garson’s frothy, morale-boosting comedy from 1940. It gets the lilt of Jane Austen’s humour, but purists scoff at the wardrobe choices, which leapfrog straight over the Georgian period and into the Victorian ... Continue Reading

It’s hard, from our perspective, to imagine a time when Impressionism wasn’t popular. It’s not only popular but ubiquitous. Images of sunlit meadows, leisurely riverbanks and ornate gardens have become artistic shorthand. Even if we think we know nothing about art, identifying a Monet would be easy enough. In their latest film, the Exhibition on Screen team take up the challenge of taking us back to the roots, and the inauspicious beginnings, of Impressionism itself. Dawn of Impressionism: Paris 1874 starts in a familiar place. We are watching an art auction take place. Impressionist paintings are selling for eye-watering sums. You ... Continue Reading

With a career spanning three decades, actor Ralph Fiennes has just received his third Oscar nomination. His role in Edward Berger’s ecclesiastical hit Conclave has impressed critics and audiences, and the nominations have been quick to follow. We may still think of Fiennes’ career high point as being the late 1990’s: Schindler’s List in 1994 and The English Patient in 1997 are still the films he is best known for, if we don’t count the recurring role of Voldemort in a certain franchise. But if we ... Continue Reading