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David Clare (Chairman)

A MESSAGE FROM
THE CHAIRMAN

David Clare
CHAIRMAN

Welcome to a new season, or to put it another way, seventeen unique worlds to visit on Monday evenings over the coming year. And yes, that seventeenth film seems to have become a fixture, and again we have chosen a documentary, Mugabe and the White African, a film we in fact considered for inclusion last year. It will make a compelling and emotive opener in September, I am sure.
Elsewhere it is the mix as before, sixteen titles evenly balanced between English and foreign language (the latter all subtitled), representing the best of world cinema. Eleven come from the members� questionnaire and all but three date from the last three years.
As always we have striven to arrive at a variety of tone and genre, the one constant being that these are stories of people learning to deal with a crisis of one kind or another (nothing new there). The exception here, I suppose, is Lourdes, which adopts a slightly more detached and leisurely approach to its treatment of a miraculous event. Elsewhere we have sobering drama from the likes of Winter�s Bone, Debra Granik�s gritty tale of a girl�s struggle to hold her home together in desperate socio-economic circumstances. There is Oscar-winning drama in the shape of Susanne Bier�s In a Better World (five of the season�s films are directed by women), and tough, continental drama in Jan Troell�s Everlasting Moments, as its heroine pursues her photographic passion in between beatings from her husband.
Changing tack slightly, both The Ghost and Mother offer narratives turning around the uncertain authorship of unnatural deaths, with slightly more generic pleasures as a consequence. Press corruption comes under the spotlight with our revival of Alexander Mackendrick�s classic Sweet Smell of Success, and corruption of a familial/industrial kind with the Italian I Am Love, a ravishing Lady Chatterley love story for our moneyed times, with which we end the season.
Eager to offer special treats to those with special tastes, we are also showing a Science Fiction film, Moon, in which Sam Rockwell deals with solitary confinement on a lunar base while contending with flashes from Solaris, 2001 and Philip K. Dick. Le Concert offers unsophisticated delights for lovers of a certain brand of European comedy dealing in, shall we say, broad brush types as opposed to characters as such; meanwhile The Private Life of Henry VIII reaches for a higher register and still manages to both amaze and make us chuckle nearly eighty years on. Then there�s entertainment of a very special kind with Sylvain Chomet�s L�Illusionniste, a delight for connoisseurs of both Jacques Tati and hand-drawn animation. Finally, to prove that populism of the most unashamed sort can have its place at the right time, and done with a certain style, we are programming Capra�s perennial favourite It�s a Wonderful Life for our Christmas film (definitely bring a hanky).
If that whets your appetite, don�t delay. Pick up a brochure and application form from the Film Theatre or Tourist Office, or simply print off the PDF version available on our web site and forward it to our Membership Secretary with your cheque. We do have a loyal membership and quite a waiting list, but if you are prompt you may be lucky! If not, at least you will be mailed a brochure in plenty of time next year.

Membership �30.00 - Student �15.00
Guest �5.00 - Student �2.50
Ipswich Film Society would like to thank Ipswich
Film Theatre for the continued use of the facilities