Harrogate Film Society

https://www.harrogatefilmsociety.org/event-details/black-dog

Black Dog | 2024 | 12A | Dir. Guan Hu | China | IMDb 7.2 | Subtitled | 110 minutes

November 3rd 7.30 – 9.30 pm

Winner of A Certain Regard at Cannes in 2024, Black Dog is a beautifully filmed exploration of human resilience and the need for connection. A taciturn loner, Lang (Eddie Peng) recently released from prison returns to his home - a dying Chinese town on the edge of the Gobi Desert.
Hauntingly beautiful widescreen photography offers a window into a rarely seen side of modern China.

Lang takes a job clearing the streets of stray dogs before the 2008 Beijing Olympics and unwillingly strikes up a rapport with the titular Black Dog (Xin).

Director Guan enigmatically blends social realism, dead pan humour and elements of surrealism to ensure this story of Man and Dog avoids all cliches.

The nuanced performances from both Peng and Xin as two lost souls seeking redemption amid societal decay gives adage to the old saying
“You may not get the dog you want but you get the dog you need!”
Xin won a Palm Dog at Cannes for his performance and the rapport between Peng and Xin was so genuine that Peng adopted the dog after filming!

· Screen 2 upstairs - Unreserved seating
· Doors open 7pm
· Welcome from our chair Paula Stott @ 7.30pm
· Free parking available at the Odeon
· We invite every viewer to score the film afterwards using a token system in the lobby

Entry is free for HFS members who have paid an annual subscription via our website. Membership costs just £52.50 for all 15 films and just £30 if you are lucky enough to be under 25! Join on the Harrogate Film Society website.

Tickets for non-members are not available in advance for this film but may be offered after 7pm in person on the night. This is to ensure that our members are given priority.

https://www.harrogatefilmsociety.org/event-details/la-chimera

La Chimera | 2023 | 15 | Dir. Alice Rohrwacher | Italy | IMDb 7.3 | Subtitled | 131 mins

November 17th 7.15 – 9.30 pm @ Harrogate Odeon Screen 2

La Chimera (2023) is a beguiling journey into 1980s Tuscany, weaving grief, myth and antique hunting into a caper with tomb-raiding rogues that wouldn't look out of place in a Fellini film. Josh O’Connor stars as Arthur, a haunted British archaeologist newly released from prison, who uses a mysterious intuition - a kind of divining rod - to locate buried Etruscan treasures, as he chases the memory of his lost love Beniamina.
Rohrwacher, both writer and director, makes a film rich in folklore and satire. Drawing on her upbringing surrounded by ancient sites and tombaroli (grave‑robbers), her narrative examines our relationship with history, the commodification of culture, and the illusions of capitalism. Her collaborators - particularly cinematographer Hélène Louvart add to the texture and mood by mixing 35 mm, Super‑16 mm and 16 mm film stocks that feel tactile and very 1980s.

An initially unrecognisable Isabella Rossellini also stars as Flora - a formidable aristocrat who shares in Arthur's grief and longing.
Together, Rohrwacher’s vision, O’Connor’s soulful performance, and the ensemble cast make La Chimera a cinematic artefact well worth exploring. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw said it is "a beguiling fantasy-comedy of lost love: garrulous, uproarious and celebratory in Rohrwacher’s absolutely distinctive style. It’s a movie bustling and teeming with life."

Empire magazine said "Enigmatic, absorbing and so much more alive than any pottery behind glass in a museum, this is an exquisitely crafted, grown-up Indiana Jones steeped in its own distinctive magic."
Wendy Ide in the Guardian gave it 5 stars and said "La Chimera is a cinematic artefact that lingers like a thread between love and history, myth and reality".

· Screen 2 upstairs - Unreserved seating
· Doors open 6.45pm
· Welcome from our chair Paula Stott @ 7.15pm
· Free parking available at the Odeon
· We invite every viewer to score the film afterwards using a token system in the lobby

· Screen 2 upstairs
· Doors open 6.45pm
· Welcome from our chair Paula Stott @ 7.15pm
· Free parking after 6pm if you DISPLAY an orange parking voucher, available from the Odeon lobby
· Unreserved seating
· We invite every viewer to score the film afterwards using a token system in the lobby.

Entry is free for HFS members who have paid an annual subscription via our website. Membership costs just £52.50 for all 15 films and just £30 if you are lucky enough to be under 25! Join on the Harrogate Film Society website.

Tickets for non-members are not available in advance for this film but may be offered after 7pm in person on the night. This is to ensure that our members are given priority.

• Seating limited to 64 so we recommend you book in advance.
• Ticket price includes a glass of wine.
• Screen 3.
• One wheelchair space - get in touch to reserve this - at contact.harrogatefilmsociety@gmail.com
• Doors open at 6.45pm and the film will start after the introduction @ 7pm.
• All seating is unreserved.
• Free parking in Odeon car park but you must display a parking voucher available from Odeon staff.

https://www.harrogatefilmsociety.org/event-details/kneecap

Kneecap | 2024 | 18 | Dir. Rich Peppiatt | Ireland | IMDb 7.6 | Subtitled | 105 mins

December 1st 7.30 - 9.40pm @ Harrogate Odeon Screen 2

(sex scenes, drug use, large amount of bad language)

“Kneecap is one of the funniest films of the year…..but won’t be for everyone” (Guardian August 2024)

Before the word “Kneecap” became synonymous with outrage and protest at what is happening in Gaza, there was “Kneecap” the award-winning film, based on “Kneecap”, the real life, hip-hop band from Belfast.

To date, “Kneecap” has received 66 nominations and 28 awards including:
2024 - Winner British Independent Film Awards for best British Independent Film
2024 - Winner Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival
2025 - Winner Outstanding Debut by British Writer, Producer, Director at the Baftas
2025 - Ireland's Oscar entry for Best International Feature.

The Troubles meets Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting in Kneecap, a riotous Belfast-set comedy tracking the fictional rise of a real-life hip-hop trio whose music harks back to the glory days of gangsta rap. Rich Peppiatt’s film excels as a love letter to the Irish language and a raucous portrait of the generation growing up in the 1990s post IRA, ceasefire Northern Ireland, known, as “ceasefire babies”. They are united by being too young to remember the Troubles — but they have got their own troubles to contend with.

However, these deeper themes are optional extras, in a movie brimming with glorious skits involving ketamine, mosh-pits, and mad-cap chases.
“Trainspotter” portrait of heroin addicts romping through Nineties Edinburgh, is the obvious influence on Peppiatt’s pedal-to-the-floor directing. Yet what might have been a derivative affair is elevated by heartfelt performances by the Kneecap threesome of Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh and JJ Ó Dochartaigh. First-time actors, they impress playing cartoonish versions of their real selves while poking fun at clichés about Northern Ireland and its history of conflict. It’s Spice World with Semtex – and an absolute hoot.
Kneecap in the real world have proudly upheld hip-hop’s tradition of scaring the bejaysus out of the moral majority. Their early single Cearta – performed, like most of their material, in Irish – was banned by Irish radio for “drug references and cursing”.

The cast is headed by the always impressive, Michael Fassbender, who famously portrayed real-life Republican Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s Hunger in 2008. Here, he plays a watered-down Sands in the form of Arlo, a former terrorist who faked his death to escape the authorities – leaving his son Naoise to grow up without a father.
Naoise, though, doesn’t have time for daddy issues. He and his best friend, Liam (Ó Hannaidh), are gainfully employed selling drugs bought off the dark web. When they are arrested and insist on being interrogated in Irish, schoolteacher JJ (Ó Dochartaigh) is brought in as a translator. Noting Liam’s hand-written lyrics, the budding music producer encourages the duo to pour their passion for Irish into hip hop and, together, the three form Kneecap.

There’s lots of music in Kneecap and the Public Enemy-style raps are explosive. But Peppiatt never forgets he’s making a movie rather than an extended music video and, as the trio grow in popularity, they attract the attention of bungling dissident Republicans and the “peelers” in the PSNI. Liam must also navigate a “through the barricades” romance with protestant Georgia (Jessica Reynolds) – all against the background of a (real life) campaign for Irish to receive official language status in Northern Ireland.

Kneecap is helter-skelter and often hilarious – a scene in which the group accidentally take ketamine before a show is particularly hysterical. Most impressively of all, Peppiatt captures the raw power of a great rap song. It is hard punching and cheerfully riotous throughout”
(Abridged from Telegraph Article August 2024)

· Screen 2 upstairs - Unreserved seating
· Doors open 7pm
· Welcome from our chair Paula Stott @ 7.30pm
· Free parking available at the Odeon
· We invite every viewer to score the film afterwards using a token system in the lobby

Entry is free for HFS members who have paid an annual subscription via our website. Membership costs just £52.50 for all 15 films and just £30 if you are lucky enough to be under 25! Join on the Harrogate Film Society website.

Tickets for non-members are not available in advance for this film but may be offered after 7pm in person on the night. This is to ensure that our members are given priority.