The best of British - Hay on Wye film society (From Hereford Times)

The best of British - Hay on Wye film society

8:00am Friday 4th September 2009 in Local Film

HAY-on-Wye’s award-winning film society, The Screen@Hay, celebrates the glories of British film in its first Festival of British Cinema this weekend.

Launched and hosted by Francine Stock and supported by the Hay Literary Festival, the weekend will be packed with some of the most potent and controversial films (classic and contemporary) this country has produced.

Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio and Michael Powell’s disturbing Peeping Tom receive an airing alongside latenight screenings of The Wicker Man and Performance. Among other rarities is The Gigolos (2006), starring Susannah York, Sian Phillips and Anna Massey.

The cult and classic section provides an opportunity to see old favourites such as Mike Hodges’ Get Carter, Hitchock’s Rebecca and Attenborough’s Oh! What a Lovely War and new British talent is represented by two new independent films: Havana Marking’s Sundance Festival prize-winning Afghan Star, and Jan Dunne’s The Calling – about a young graduate who joins a closed Benedictine order – will be screened, pre-release, on Sunday.

On Saturday, Francine Stock hosts a series of talks including Q&As with Duane Hopkins (Better Things) and Mike Hodges, director of Get Carter.

Those who love local history and rural life will be catered for with an exploration of Welsh and borders life and culture, past and present through talks, documentaries and local archival film.

Bill Laws, of Borderlines Film Festival, will introduce Fieldwork - Farming Memories from the 20th Century.

For the full programme, visit filmfestivalhay.

co.uk, where you can book online, or call 0870 9901299.

■ Meanwhile, Flicks in the Sticks autumn screenings have started throughout Herefordshire and Shropshire.

Touring extensively is Morris: A Life with Bells On, a low-budget British comedy that couldn’t find a distributor until a campaign by supporters generated an online petition with more than 8,500 signatures.

The subsequent press coverage meant that the Morris men went global and the public support has now earned the film – an entertaining mock-doc featuring ‘extreme Morris’ dancing – a national release on September 27.

The Flicks in the Sticks office has had its fair share of requests and Morris: A Life with Bells On, which stars Naomie Harris, Sir Derek Jacobi, Aidan McArdle, Harriet Walter, Greg Wise and Jasper Britton, plays from the beginning of October in Acton Scott, All Stretton, Aston-on-Clun, Ballingham, Bishop’s Castle, Clungunford, Dilwyn, Hereford (WRVS), LLanfair Waterdine, Much Birch and Pencombe.