Let’s Spend the Night Together

The Sexual Revolution of the 60s on Screen

With the new play ’Redlands’, an account of the trial of the Rolling Stones in Chichester in 1967, at the Festival Theatre, this is the first of two talks this season looking at the wider context of the trial on the big screen

Sat 21 Sep 10:30

The story of photographer Elizabeth 'Lee' Miller, a fashion model who became an acclaimed war correspondent for Vogue magazine during World War II.

The film portrays a pivotal decade in the life of American war correspondent and photographer, Lee Miller (Kate Winslet). Miller's singular talent and unbridled tenacity resulted in some of the 20th century's most indelible images of war, including an iconic photo of Miller herself, posing defiantly in Hitler's private bathtub. Miller had a profound understanding and empathy for women and the voiceless victims of war. Her images display both the fragility and ferocity of the human experience. Alexander Skarsgård portrays her husband Roland Penrose, while Andy Samberg takes a dramatic turn as her partner in the field (and sometimes in the bedroom), David E. Scherman, a war correspondent for Life. Winslet shines in this biopic with a superbly powerful performance. She remains one of our most treasured actors and she brings a fierceness to this role.

USA 2023 Ellen Kuras 116m

NT Live

Jodie Comer's West End debut. 'Prima Facie' takes us to the heart of where emotion and experience collide with the rules of the game.

Thu 12 Sep 19:45

Sat 21 Sep 15:15

Le Procès Goldman

Chronicles the trial of Pierre Goldman, a French left-wing revolutionary who was convicted of several robberies and later mysteriously murdered.

November 1975, and a second trial begins of French leftist radical Pierre Goldman (Arieh Worthalter), who was subject to police prejudice and antisemitism, and accused of several armed robberies and the death of two chemists. As the trial proceeds, it becomes fairly evident, at least to the viewer, that the man is innocent. The question is therefore whether the French state will return a ‘not guilty’ verdict. The trial caused a media frenzy, and was attended by philosopher Régis Debray and actress Simone Signoret, elevating Goldman to cause célèbre status in the wake of May 1968 with the government, especially the criminal justice system, pitted against the left. Alongside the recent ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ and ‘Saint Omer’, this continues a recent trend for quality French indie courtroom dramas. (Subtitles)

France 2023 Cédric Kahn 115m

25th Anniversary Performance

The epic love story tells the tragic tale of young bar girl Kim, orphaned by war, who falls in love with American GI Chris – but their lives are torn apart by the fall of Saigon.

Sun 22 Sep 14:45

Moin Hussain’s arresting debut feature about an alienated night-shift worker turns the humble service station into a nightmarish modern limbo

Adam a shy and quiet protagonist working the night shift at Sky Peals Services, a motorway service station and lives a small and lonely life. Upon hearing that his estranged father has died, he finds himself in search of answers. When Adam learns that his late father believed that he was an alien, he becomes more sensitive to his own surroundings and starts to become more observant – reviewing footage of his father from before he died, experiencing blackouts, hearing noises. This isn’t your typical thriller. Adam isn’t looking for some sort of killer. The film is more interested in asking questions than giving answers. All these events are effectively conveyed with against a backdrop of imaginative production design with its use of wide, empty, dark spaces – likely an allusion to the main character’s state.

Part of Venice’s International Critics’ Week selection, ‘Sky Peals’ probes the existential questions of life in this haunting and impressive feature-length debut.

UK 2023 Moin Hussain 91m

Amu Darya: River to a Missing Sea

Through oral histories and tales of loss, adaptation and hope, this short film presents a memory of the Amu Darya – the Central Asian river that no longer reaches its destination. It tells how local communities are dealing with the river’s desiccation and how the USSR turned the world’s fourth largest lake – the Aral Sea – into its youngest desert. The human story of an environmental disaster.

With poem translated by Chichester poet Andrew Staniland after he visited the region and got to know the young filmmakers from the Amu Darya Project.

UK 2024 James Chapman, Annie Liddell & Oscar Fraser Turner 28m

Our Sea Forest

Narrated by Chris Packham, this moving documentary tells of the remarkable regeneration of the vast underwater kelp forest off our Sussex shores. Told through the eyes of 74-year-old Eric Smith, a free-diver of the forest since he was a child, it charts the destruction of this once-thriving ecosystem by trawling to its miraculous recovery in recent years. Teeming with sea life and hope. Filmed at Shoreham, Goring and Bognor Regis. Thanks to BBC1 and Big Wave Productions Ltd.

Introduced by Sarah Cunliffe, director of Sussex-based Big Wave Productions which made the documentary aired on the BBC.

UK 2023 Sarah Cunliffe 30m