Love For Sale

As Oscar contender ‘Anora’ returns to Chichester Cinema, this talk will explore the rich and varied history of sex work on the big screen.

Sean Baker’s demi-monde caper ‘Anora’ is a hotly tipped Oscar contender, and success on the night would put it in a long tradition of Academy Award-winning films about sex work. Why does playing a lady of the night so often guarantee Oscars success? And why is the cinema so fascinated with the oldest profession? Where society turns a blind eye, movies, from Fellini’s ‘Nights of Cabiria’ (1957) to Alan Pakula’s ‘Klute’ (1971) to the hit romcom ‘Pretty Woman’ (1990), sprinkle stardust on the street corner. Alongside films that glamorise the brothel, there is also a complementary lineage of feminist cinema advocating for sex workers’ rights, and illuminating a little-understood world, both in documentary and fiction, going right back to the silent era. In this illustrated lecture with clips, Pamela Hutchinson will explore the portrayal on screen of what Beeban Kidron’s scandalous 1993 documentary called ‘Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and their Johns’.

100m inc Q&A

Tickets £7.50

Sat 22 Feb 10:30 - In the Auditorium

During the 1972 Munich Olympics, an American sports broadcasting crew finds itself thrust into covering the hostage crisis involving Israeli athletes.

After another day of Mark Spitz winning swimming gold medals, gunshots are heard at the Olympic Village, just a few blocks away from ABC’s temporary headquarters. The broadcast team includes the executive in charge Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard); smart and testy head of operations Marvin (Ben Chaplin); local German translator Marianne (Leonie Benesch); and young producer Geoff (John Magaro), meant to cover an uneventful day of boxing and volleyball, who winds up landing on something much more significant. The film details all the logistical hurdles the team needed to scale so they could capture the crisis as it happened, relying on massive TV cameras, smuggled 16mm film stock, a slew of walkie talkies and plenty of ingenuity. Even more importantly, the movie tackles the tough questions faced by several hardworking newsmen - and one vital female translator - as they dealt with a situation in which many human lives hung in the balance. The film focuses mainly on the coverage of the situation, not really concerning itself with the politics behind it – it can be compared to Spielberg’s ‘The Post’. (Some subtitles)

Germany 2024 Tim Fehlbaum 91m

Legendary British filmmaker Mike Leigh skilfully presents a tragicomic study of human strengths and weaknesses.

Reunited with Leigh for the first time since Oscar-nominated ‘Secrets and Lies’, the astonishing Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a woman wracked by fear, tormented by afflictions and prone to raging tirades against her husband, son, and anyone who looks her way. Meanwhile, her easy-going younger sister (Michele Austin), is a single mother with a life as different from Pansy's as their clashing temperaments. After ‘Mr. Turner’ (2014) and ‘Peterloo’ (2018) Leigh returns to the contemporary world with a fierce, compassionate, and often darkly humorous study of family and the thorny ties that bind us. Marianne Jean-Baptiste delivers what is sure to be one of the best performances of the year, in this stunning film full of heart and compassion.

UK 2024 Mike Leigh 97m

2024 Palme d’Or Winner! A young sex worker from Brooklyn meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch, but once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as the parents set out for New York to get the marriage annulled.

Anora (Mikey Madison) is a New York escort and table dancer. One night, her club manager announces that a high roller is in the house, asking for a dancer who can speak Russian. Ani, who is from an Uzbek background, volunteers. The man is the sweet-faced but otherwise appalling and entitled son of an oligarch, and he quickly takes her back to his luxurious apartment and proposes a Vegas marriage. When Vanya’s less-than-delighted father hears the news, he sends some goons round to sort out the situation with his boneheaded son. Scene-stealing leading lady Madison is surely destined for stardom thanks to her role in this high-energy panic comedy that offers a more realistic take than ‘Pretty Woman’.

USA 2024 Sean Baker 139m