Viva Lewes Issue #138 March 2018

ON THIS MONTH: CINEMA
Man with a Movie Camera
Secret of Kells
Film '18
Cinema round-up
The highlight of the month at Depot Cinema, as
far as cineastes are concerned, has to be the screening
of the 1929 documentary Man with a Movie
Camera (Sun 11th, 3pm), part of the U3A’s Soviet
film season.
The ‘Man’ in question is Dziga Vertov, who presents
a vibrant warts-and-all picture of urban life
in four Soviet cities – Kiev, Khartov, Moscow and
Odessa – through a series of moving snapshots of
the citizens at work and play, starting at the break of
dawn and ending well after the lights go out.
Film critic Peter Bradshaw loves the film’s ‘spirit of
pure punk rock’: Vertov experiments with any number
of pioneering techniques – double exposure,
fast motion, jump cuts, tracking shots et al. The
editor, interestingly, was his wife Elizaveta Svilova,
who must have had her work cut out curtailing all
the footage to 68 rip-roaring minutes, like someone
clearing up after a great party. My favourite scene?
The homeless chap bursting out laughing as he
wakes in the morning to find a film crew in front
of him.
The other film in this three-part series (which
started in Feb with Battleship Potemkin) is Warren
Beatty’s 1981 classic Reds (4th, 2pm), in which
producer/director/scriptwriter Beatty stars as
Communist journalist John Reed (author of Ten
Days that Shook the World), alongside Diane Keaton,
who plays his lover-then-wife Louise Bryant. It’s
something of a monster, weighing in at 3 hours 15
minutes: American critic Roger Ebert called it ‘a
thinking man’s Dr Zhivago… from the other side.’
Another season to report is Depot’s ‘Documenting
Reality’ series of five classic documentaries,
screened in the Depot’s studio, and preceded by a
lecture by University of Sussex’s Wilma De Jong,
with a more informal discussion afterwards. These
started in February 22nd (with Michael Moore’s
Sicko) but there are four more to come in March,
starting with Sarah Polley’s raw and intimate
family tale Stories We Tell (1st and subsequent
Thursdays, 7pm).
As ever there’s the chance to do a bit of travelling.
Last month we mentioned Depot’s Japanese
season; this continues with the anime samurai tale
The Sword of the Stranger (3rd, 12pm); Kazura
Shiraishi’s mystery drama Birds Without Names
(6th, 8.30pm) and Shinji Azura’s Where I Belong
(13th, 8.30pm). Nearer to home, on St Patrick’s
Day (17th) there’s a rare big-screen chance to
see the brilliant 2009 Irish animation Secret of
Kells; further afield (and then some) the sci-screen
season continues with The Martian (27th).
It’s Oscars month, of course, but there’s much
more besides Hollywood fare (check out lewesdepot.org
for day-to-day listings of first-run and
other films) including live and as-live screenings
of stage performances including Bizet’s opera
Carmen (6th, 6.45pm); Shakespeare’s Julius
Caesar (directed by Nicholas Hytner, 22nd, 7pm);
The Royal Ballet’s Bernstein Centenary (27th,
7.15pm), and Handel’s Messiah, staged by Tom
Morris (28th, 8pm). Hallelujah to all that.
Dexter Lee
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