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The Oswestry Film Society programme will appear on this site once films are scheduled. Keep checking back to find out what's being screened and when, and please come out and support us.
Thank you to our former long-term hosts in Oswestry, the Kinokulture cinema. We are now based just round the corner at the Hermon Chapel Arts Centre. You can check out their own varied range of music and arts events at their separate website, www.hermon-arts.org.uk
2023
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The next season for Oswestry Film Society is still being put together by the people now running the show! Films will appear below once scheduled. Keep checking back to find out what's being screened when, and please come out and support us.
Tues March 7th 2023
I Start Counting (15)
David Greene's much sought-after British thriller is a gripping, cult classic of late-1960s cinema.
In a rapidly modernising English town, a serial killer is on the loose terrorising local young women. Fourteen year old Wynne (Jenny Agutter) begins to suspect that George (Bryan Marshall), her adoptive stepbrother with whom she's infatuated, is the perpetrator. But could he really be responsible for such horrific crimes?
As the Oswestry Film Society’s latest showing in its continuing season of mainstream actors in lesser-known films, I Start Counting features a stand-out performance of innocence and intrigue from a young Agutter (16 at the time). It’s a haunting coming-of-age tale that also touches several taboo subjects, including incest, drugs, rape, and teenage sexuality and confusion.
I Start Counting played cinemas in 1969, but its long-held obscurity is hard to fathom. Now the OFS is delighted to bring this recently restored film to you.
Tues March 21st 2023
My Favourite Year (PG)
The fabulous stage and screen actor Peter O’Toole steals the show as we continue our series of big-name stars in lesser-known films.
Best remembered perhaps for his stand-out lead in Lawrence of Arabia, but among many others for his Shakespeare roles and the one-man Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell stage phenomenon, O’Toole is at his flamboyant best in this 1982 film.
He plays a former swashbuckling movie idol and notorious drunk Alan Swann, who’s set to appear on a 1950s live TV talk show – but can a junior comedy writer and self-confessed fan of Swann’s silver-screen characters nursemaid him through the preparations and to the studios in one piece? Add in along the way a giant party gate-crash, a union boss with a grudge against the TV show, stage sabotage, several ex-wives and a series of mishaps and mayhem – all tied together with a well-worked script and direction – and you’ve got simply a very funny film.
The Alan Swann character is said to be based on real-life swashbuckler Errol Flynn – although of course the often riotous O’Toole was no mean tippler himself!
A film high on suspense sees a one-armed stranger stepping off the train at the title-cited Black Rock, a tiny town possessing a terrible past that it desperately wants to keep secret.
The great Spencer Tracy in the role of the stranger creates huge suspicion among the antagonistic and complicit locals. As Tracy digs deeper and the tension builds, the wrongs that have been done gradually become clear.
Though essentially a crime-drama with the subtle feel of a modern-day western, the film is one of the first to recognise discrimination against Japanese-Americans in the second world war that the U.S. would rather have swept under the carpet.
Continuing our season of well-known names in lesser-known roles, Tracy leads a cast that includes other big-hitters like Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine and a young Lee Marvin.
Tracy's career spanned 40 years-plus at the top, often most notably for his acting partnerships with Katherine Hepburn. But his performance in Bad Day At Black Rock is a tour de force in a taut film that from start to finish doesn't waste a second of its run-time.