About us
When we learned that the Palace Cinema in Alton was for sale and
potentially facing closure, we formed our community cinema. Our goal
is to create unique moments through film in Hampshire and work with
local filmmakers to bring their work to a wider audience, with the
intention of providing warm experiences of stimulating cinema!
Keep in touch, by signing up to our Bulletin or volunteering help. We
are independent, and can’t do this without your support. Please tell
your friends, and say hi if you’d like to be involved or offer suggestions!
The Lobster
We look forward to welcoming you to our next Experience Film event:
Emma (U)
Alton Community Centre
Saturday June 25th
Doors and cream tea from 7pm
Emma Woodhouse enjoys nothing
more than playing matchmaker to
lovers young and old in the rural
village of Highbury. But the course
of true love never did run smooth,
and Emma soon finds herself
embroiled in a tangled web of
confusion and mistaken affection. It
seems that things can't get any
worse, until she's certain of only one
person's true feelings - her own.
Thanks to our volunteers and to
Sean and Patrick of the Aldridge
Theatre.
The Aldridge Theatre
May 14th 2016
experiencefilm.org
(15)
Experience Film welcomes you to The Aldridge Theatre for:
The Lobster (15)
can be easily summarised in a single sentence. For every successful
high-concept film (Buried (2010), Ghostbusters (1984), The Matrix
(1999)), there have been dozens that have failed. Sometimes the central
premise just isn’t strong enough to hang an entire film on (Snakes on a
Plane (2006)), but often the cast just aren’t able to make it engaging
enough (The Invention of Lying (2009), or Hobo With a Shotgun (2011)).
But The Lobster is deftly handled – and Colin Farrell has proved that
he’s adept at the high-concept genre following a stellar performance in
Phone Booth (2002).
For many, The Lobster will be the first experience people have of Greek
director Yorgos Lanthimos. He came to prominence in 2009 with the
similarly dystopian and offbeat Dogtooth, in which a couple raise their
children in a fenced compound with no contact with the outside world.
A strong central premise, then, seems to be one of the hallmarks of
Lanthimos’s work. Both Dogtooth and The Lobster films share dark,
absurdist humour, and are set in worlds where society has been
deliberately constructed and rules must be unyieldingly adhered to. It’s
clear that both of these films aim to tell us something very truthful
about the foibles of the world we live in.
So much for the similarities. What sets The Lobster apart from
Lanthimos’s earlier work (aside from being his first film produced in
the English language) is that the central concept is very much grounded
in reality. The societal pressure – the expectation – that we must all find
a partner, settle down, get married, have children is very real. It’s also
plainly ridiculous.
It takes a special cast to pull a story like this off. The Lobster falls
squarely into the category of a ‘high-concept’ film – where the premise
The collaboration between cast and director has produced a superbly
crafted film, which succeeds in marrying a big idea with an intimate,
personal subject effortlessly. And it’s a collaboration that Lanthimos is
set to repeat – he announced just three days ago at the Cannes Film
Festival that Colin Farrell is to appear in the director’s next feature, The
Killing of a Sacred Deer, and it’s been known for a few months that
Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman will work again with Lanthimos on
another a future project titled The Favourite (a drama revealing the
workings of the court of Queen Anne).
There’s much to enjoy in The Lobster – and for those of you seeing this
filmmaker’s work for the first time: I hope you’re as captivated as I was.
Chris Campbell