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ON THIS MONTH: CINEMA<br />
Film '18<br />
Dexter Lee's cinema round-up<br />
Alfred Hitchcock’s film career started as far back<br />
as 1920, as a film-title designer, and by 1922 he’d<br />
graduated to being a director. His early works are<br />
rarely screened, but Depot Cinema are bucking<br />
that trend in <strong>April</strong>. First up, on <strong>April</strong> 1st we’ve got<br />
his full-length directorial debut, The Pleasure<br />
Garden (above), a 1925 silent movie in which you<br />
can play spot-the-future-Hitchcock-motif. It’ll<br />
be shown at the Sunday 2pm slot on Screen One,<br />
which is becoming something of a club for film<br />
aficionados. On Tuesday 3rd there’s The Lodger,<br />
a 1927 murder-hunt movie, the first to feature<br />
Hitchcock in a cameo role, which is accompanied<br />
by a live score on piano and violin; on the 8th<br />
(Sunday 2pm again, see you there, guys) we’ve got<br />
Blackmail, made in 1929 and often cited as Britain’s<br />
first talkie. Imagine how exciting an event that must<br />
have been in its time. Fits our theme, too.<br />
Easter Monday (2nd) is World Autism Awareness<br />
Day, and there are activities for children on the<br />
autistic spectrum, and their siblings, before and<br />
after the screening of Peter Rabbit (1pm); in the<br />
evening there’s an autism-friendly singalong screening<br />
of The Greatest Showman, to which everyone<br />
is welcome.<br />
The ‘Every Picture Tells a Story’ strand invites<br />
viewers to watch a film and afterwards join a discussion<br />
about the way it’s been adapted from the book<br />
it was based on: this month (4th) it’s Gentlemen<br />
Prefer Blondes, starring Jane Russell and Marilyn<br />
Monroe, both at the height of their acting powers.<br />
Oscar winning short film The Silent Child, about<br />
a girl who can’t communicate until she learns to<br />
sign, is being shown on the 16th. Which is a good<br />
point to remind everyone that on Mondays all the<br />
Depot’s films (if they come with that facility) are<br />
caption screenings, meaning both the dialogue and<br />
audibles (‘telephone rings; ‘Beethoven plays in the<br />
background’, etc) are titled.<br />
Back to that Sunday afternoon slot: starting on the<br />
22nd, with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,<br />
there’s a trilogy of Sergio Leone ‘Spaghetti Westerns’.<br />
Once Upon a Time in the West follows on<br />
the 29th, with A Fistful of Dynamite providing<br />
an explosive finish on May 5th. This film, aka Duck,<br />
You Sucker, set in early twentieth-century Mexico,<br />
is often given the ‘underrated’ tag, by those in the<br />
know. All three films, of course, feature scores by<br />
Ennio Morricone.<br />
We’ll finish with mention of three hard-hitting<br />
documentaries. The Island and the Whales (from<br />
4th) takes the viewer to the Faroe Islands looking<br />
at the annual slaughter of whales by the locals.<br />
Even When I Fall (20th) and Namaste (25th),<br />
meanwhile, are both set in Nepal: one looks at the<br />
traumatic homecoming of a group of kidnapped<br />
youngsters; the other sees a British doctor, Kate<br />
Yarrow, following the difficult journeys made by<br />
people seeking medical attention in the Himalayas.<br />
There’s a Q&A with Kate afterwards.<br />
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