Summer Soul (...Or When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) - Directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (2021)

Such an amazing film! Footage unseen for 50 years. Amazing performances from: Stevie Wonder, Sly and the family Stone, Nina Simone, Staple Singers... Great music but also covers the shift in politics, culture and identity. Essential watch!

”Summer of Soul (...Or When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is the acclaimed debut by filmmaker Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson. For six weeks in the summer of 1969, just 100 miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). It was an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture and fashion. After that summer, the footage was never seen and largely forgotten – until now.

Summer of Soul brings us back to a powerful and transformative moment in history and stands as a testament to music and culture as collective empowerment. In times of unrest, it comes as a moving testimony and an inspiration. Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson presents a powerful and transporting film that includes never-before-seen concert performances from Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Ray Baretto, Abbey Lincoln & Max Roach and more.” - Watershed

Nomadland (2021) - Dir. Chloé Zhao

Nomadland is a stunning film by Dir. Chloé Zhao, with amazing performance by Frances McDormand.

It won Best Picture award at The Oscars - 93rd Academy Awards 2021

Now streaming on Disney+, and Amazon, and showing in selected cinemas when they reopen from May 17th.

SONGS MY BROTHERS TAUGHT ME (2015), also Directed by Chloé Zhao, is currently on Mubi (Free with student account) and her 2015 film The Rider for £2.49

MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001) - Dir. David Lynch

SYNOPSIS

After arriving in Hollywood, aspiring actress Betty (Naomi Watts) befriends an amnesiac woman (Laura Harring) and tries to help her recover her memory. The film establishes these characters but then proceeds to subvert any certainty about them, weaving its plot around L.A.’s signature industry.

MUBI’s TAKE

Initially conceived as a TV pilot, only to be transformed into a feature film, Mulholland Drive is lightning in a bottle of Hollywood fantasies, baroque emotions, and noir dreamscapes. Lynch’s surrealist masterpiece is a nightmarish puzzle box of doubles and desires, where nothing is what it seems.

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 - GÖRAN OLSSON (2011)

‘From 1967 to 1975, fueled by curiosity and naïveté, Swedish journalists traversed the ocean to film the black power movement in America. The Black Power Mixtape mobilizes a mosaic of images, music, and narration to chronicle the movement’s evolution.’ - MUBI

Question Bridge

Question Bridge is an innovative transmedia project that facilitates a dialogue between Black men from diverse and contending backgrounds and creates a platform for them to represent and redefine Black male identity in America.

Chris Johnson originated the Question Bridge concept with a 1996 video installation he created for the Museum of Photographic Arts and the Malcolm X library in San Diego, California

The Tree of Life (2011) Dir. Terrence Malick

The Cinematography in this film is beautiful!

'The Tree of Life is a 2011 American experimental drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick and starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain. The film chronicles the origins and meaning of life by way of a middle-aged man's childhood memories of his family living in 1950s Texas, interspersed with imagery of the origins of the universe and the inception of life on Earth'.

Meek's Cut Off. Dir. Kelly Reichardt (2010)

The year is 1845, the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, and a wagon team of three families has hired the mountain man Stephen Meek to guide them over the Cascade Mountains.

Wendy and Lucy dir. Kelly Reichardt (2008)

Starring Michelle Wiliam Wendy and Lucy is the latest film from director Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy).

The third feature from director Kelly Reichardt is a hugely important one in the context of contemporary American Independent cinema. As is consistent with all of Reichardt's films,Wendy and Lucy explores the disconnection and alienation that people feel when living on the margins of society. Reichardt's character's exist outside of the boundaries of capitalist society: they don't have jobs, homes, or means of communication. As such Reichardt questions to what extent these characters exist at all in an unforgiving contemporary society.

Night Moves - Dir: Kelly Reichardt. (2014) USA.

Night Moves - Dir: Kelly Reichardt. (2014) USA.

'A Hitchcockian tension infuses this eco-terrorist thriller, confirming Kelly Reichardt's talent at capturing the realities of American life at a granular level of detail as she returns to Oregon (the home of previous work Wendy and Lucy, Old Joy and Meek's Cutoff) to tell this shadowy tale of the fallout of political radicalism gone horribly wrong. It tracks the fate of three activists (Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard) who have come together to carry out an explosive act of defiance when they embark on a dangerous plot to blow up a hydroelectric dam.

When their plan goes tragically wrong, the three find it impossible to go their separate ways as distrust and paranoia pervades their lives. How do you pursue a stance of resistance in a world that seems impervious to change? How far can you go in pursuit of your own ideals? And does any of it add up to anything anyway? Night Moves raises all these questions and portrays with devastating accuracy the thin line between moral action and terror.'

http://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/4925/night-moves/

Showing: 29 Aug - Thu 11 Sept, 2014 at Watershed, Bristol

Ticket prices: Screenings before 16:00: £5.50 full / £4.00 concessions. Screenings after 16:00: £8.00 full / £6.50 concessions.'

http://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/4925/night-moves/

Boyhood (2014), Richard Linklater. (USA).

Richard Linklater's latest film 'Boyhood' is showing at The Watershed, Bristol, Fri 11 - Thu 24 July 2014.

'Filmed with the same group of actors over a 12 year period from 2002 to 2013, the latest film from Richard Linklater is an engrossing one-of-a-kind epic about the ordinary: growing up, the banality of family life, and forging an identity. The film tracks 6 year old Mason (Ellar Coltrane) over life's most radically fluctuating decade, through a familiar whirl of family moves, controversies, faltering marriages, re-marriages, new schools, first loves, lost loves, good times, scary times and a constantly unfolding mix of heartbreak and wonder.

Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke play Mason's parents struggling to help Mason navigate life's non-stop flux, and watching as he emerges to head down his own road. A critical smash at this year's Sundance, Boyhood is totally unprecedented in its intimacy and quietly radical in its own unique way. What an astonishing achievement, and what an impressive feat of filmmaking from all involved - this is a film to celebrate and savour, and one that will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.' *Watershed

Sunset Boulevard (1950)