Class: PG – Wimbledon Film Club

Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom

Bhutanese writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji’s first feature film – made on an extremely small budget – weaves together images and stories that he collected as a photographer within Bhutan. Filming in the remote Himalayan village of Lunana was sun-dependent, as solar panels were used to power the crew’s camera, sound and laptop; Dorji explains that…
Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War

Eric Ravilious, painter, illustrator and designer, came from a poor background but was taught by leading artists Paul Nash and Henry Moore. With his distinctive use of watercolour he created ethereally romantic landscapes of the British Isles.
El Sur

Victor Erice is little known outside Spain despite the plaudits earned by his 1973 debut, The Spirit of the Beehive. In part this is because he has only made 3 feature-length films. El Sur was his follow-up, and arguably his masterpiece, though the finished film is only half of what he planned, the producers having…
Limbo

Scottish director Ben Sharrock crafts a darkly-comic tale of bureaucracy and humanity set on a Hebridean island where four refugees find themselves trapped between their past and future lives, waiting on the decisions of a British state that is both physically and emotionally distant.
Talking About Trees

Once, they were acclaimed film directors; today they are virtually forgotten. Four members of the Sudanese Film Group decide that if the government will no longer let them make films, then at least they will try to show them. That means finding a venue, overcoming bureaucratic obstacles, and attracting a contemporary audience – all documented…
The Personal History of David Copperfield

Dickens’ works tend to be adapted as serials, which is how he wrote them; the last cinema version of David Copperfield appeared over 50 years ago. The format imposes difficult choices: what to include, compress or omit? how to handle the novel’s first-person narrative and autobiographic perspective? Blackwell and Iannucci are both Dickens enthusiasts, and…
The Farewell

In 2013, Chinese-American director Lulu Wang was told that her grandmother (‘Nai Nai’ in Chinese) had Stage 4 lung cancer with three months to live. The family decided not to tell Nai Nai of the diagnosis and devised a ruse — a fast-tracked wedding in her hometown Changchun —for everyone to see her one last…
I Vitelloni

With his third film, 33-year old Fellini made his name and found his voice: evolving from Italian Neo-Realism into a freer, more poetic and episodic style.The narrative is sprinkled with many of his recurrent motifs: variété and carneval; storms and windswept beaches, the Catholic Church; the happy fool and the wise child – all bound…
The Lunchbox

Irrfan Khan, who died last month age 53, was that rare Bollywood star also to receive international acclaim, if mainly through films by Western directors, such as Slumdog Millionaire, Life of Pi and The Amazing Spider-Man. Batra’s The Lunchbox is that other rarity: an Indian film which reached a worldwide audience. The award-winning short filmmaker…
So Long, My Son

China’s recent history – from the lingering sting of the Cultural Revolution and the draconian one-child policy (in effect 1979-2013) to the dramatic shifts in social structures as the country careened toward a market economy – is explored through an intimate focus on two families, exposing the human cost and personal hurt tempered by compassion,…