As one of the leading festivals in the north, MANIFF’s focus is on making a week-long event as entertaining for all their attending guests as possible. Whether they are budding film directors, big recognisable film stars, or simply film fans coming to support the filmmakers that they love. It’s the bustling atmosphere, paired with the stunningly real ‘Manc’ location that gives new meaning to the phrase ‘This is Manchester, we do things differently here.’

This year the festival will host 45 feature films and more than 100 short films. Northwest shorts is a returning category, showcasing some of the latest and greatest talents in the northern region. Juliette Holmes, a member of the awards panel, says: “The addition of the Northwest shorts category is a great way of celebrating stories and filmmakers from the region. It is a really popular screening, as so many local filmmakers attend to show their support to colleagues. There’s always a chance you’ll see a familiar face”.

Industry professionals like Luke Bather have attended and featured in recent years festivals, coming away with awards. He says: “MANIFF has always been brilliant, not only for being able to see amazing shorts and features but also for the people that I’ve had the chance to meet simply through attending the festival!”

From start to finish, the festival hosts evening events for their filmmakers to connect and unwind following the stresses a launch can bring. The festival is known for its positive energy that doesn’t stop when the screenings fade to black, with festival director Neil Jarem-Croft reflecting on fond memories: “From a 3-day festival to the 10-day extravaganza that we have now. What has been most enjoyable over the years has been meeting so many talented filmmakers and sharing their films with an audience”.

Kicking off the festival will be the UK premiere of The Convert, starring Guy Pearce.
The Convert is directed by Lee Tamahori and tells the story of a preacher who arrives at a British settlement in 1830s New Zealand. His violent past is soon drawn into question and his faith put to the test, as he finds himself caught in the middle of a bloody war between Maori tribes.

One of the highlights of this year’s festival is the UK premiere of The Trap, marking the directorial debut of Lena Headey. Other The world premieres hosted at the event include UK films Of God’s Men, Straight Through Crew, The Can and Die Before you Die.

The closing night also promises to be a cinematic treat with the screening of the latest Rose Glass film, Love Lies Bleeding, starring Kirsten Stewart, Katy O’Brian and Ed Harris.
The film sees Stewart star as Lou, a reclusive gym manager who falls hard for Jackie (O’Brian), an ambitious bodybuilder who’s heading to Las Vegas to pursue her dream. Their love soon leads to violence as they get pulled deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family.

The festival runs from March 15-24 at Odeon, Great Northern. Forfull details of the films and tickets visit MANIFF’s official website. Here’s to the next 10 years!

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Over the next three weeks the venue will host several UK exclusive premieres as well as screening classics from genius film director, Luis García Berlanga.  From Latin American cinema buffs to those who just want to see something fresh on the roster, there is a film for everyone on the line-up with the films covering a wide range of genres – coming-of-age dramas, capitating documentaries, and an explosive musical. This year, the festival features many familiar names in Spanish cinema including Ingrid García Jonsson, Blanca Portillo and Emma Suárez. Guests from four of the titles will give a post-screen Q&A to answer your questions about the films.

To find out more about this feel-good festival, we spoke to HOME’s Head of Film and festival curator, Rachel Hayward where she reveals her favourite film and how the festival champions fresh talent.

How did the festival start?

Rachel: “It very much came from a moment of importance in Spanish cinema; there were some interesting films coming out at that time. What’s impressive is that it started as a Spanish festival, now it’s Spanish and Latin American. The festival focuses on Spanish-speaking countries within Latin America, so we have other languages within the festival, like Catalan.”

What is the inspiration behind the name ¡Viva!?

Rachel: “It’s the feeling of the festival. That celebratory sense of the festival, that fiesta idea is what we carry forward now. If we gave ¡Viva! an identity that would be it, it’s a joyous and celebratory thing so the name really encompasses that.”

How does ¡Viva! stand out from other European film festivals?

Rachel: “What’s important for venues like HOME is that we have a connection with our audience. This is not what differentiates us from other festivals, this is what makes festivals so special. Connections with your local audiences and giving people opportunities to experience things they might not get to do. You may be able to speak to a film director in a language that you’re learning for example.

“We’ve brought films to the festival that just wouldn’t be seen in the UK and certainly wouldn’t been seen in Greater Manchester. Most of our films can only be seen in the UK in Manchester, so that exclusivity is really important.”

Which film are you most excited for?

Rachel: “There’s a relatively small number of films in the festival so we love them all! I tend to lean towards more issue-based films, the one I particularly love this year is ‘Nudo Mixteco’. It’s from Mexico and tells the story of three indigenous women and their lifestyles – it’s a beautiful film.

“One of our films is a preview, so it will have a UK release later in the year, is ‘Clara Sola.’ It’s an interesting and beautifully done film but it has quite challenging aspects too. The film is a story of a 40-year old woman who has lived a very sheltered life with lots of difficulties. It’s about her sexual awakening in some ways and her aspirations about her own life.”

Explota Explota is described as a “feelgood musical romcom”, do you think this could be the next ‘Mamma Mia!’?

Rachel: “I’d love it to be! ‘Mamma Mia!’ is a good comparison because the songs within the film are famous songs that Spanish and European audiences will be familiar with. The film was constructed around those songs to showcase them. It definitely has a ‘Mamma Mia!’ element for sure.”

Is watching films from the festival a good entryway into learning a new language?

Rachel: “That was my route into film! The reason I started watching European films is because I was learning French and German. We can’t travel all of the time, or hear different accents and intonations, so watching films can be so important.”

How will ¡Viva! inform a better appreciation for film as a whole?

Rachel: “We’ve still got these repercussions of the pandemic so having international film is such a brilliant window to the world that we’ve not been able to explore. It’s a way to learn about history and culture. It’s also a great way to interrogate ourselves about who’s making those films – whose voices don’t we hear? We give opportunities to voice those filmmakers whose work is not necessarily shown, and signpost things to audiences that they might not know about. That worldview is really important I think.”

Why is it so important to champion this new talent?

Rachel: “There’s a wealth of new talent coming through from Spain and Latin America and part of the festival gives us opportunities to showcase new voices, opinions, and ideas. There’s an obligation there, not just wanting to do it but also in terms of diversity.

What kind of impact does hosting big-name directors in the Latin American and Spanish community have?

Rachel: “It impacts the audience in a really positive way. People know that they’re going to get the best film choices means they’re going to tell other people about the festival. We’re able to secure funding for when we get these big-name directors which help us profile ¡Viva! both nationally and internationally. Ensuring these directors have a really good experience in Manchester is hugely important.

“In each country we work in, we want to have a really positive impact on new and established filmmakers. We track a lot of first-time film directors, and we want to showcase those films. There are several directors that have worked one festival before or even all of them and we want to champion their work. We want longevity through association with directors, but also showcasing first-time directors in a UK festival.”

How does HOME aim to promote more gender, race, and disability inclusivity?

Rachel: “This is really important for me as it’s not something you can sit back on and hope that you’ve done it. It’s a continuous area to work on and we look at how we can build on things. In terms of diversity, working with partnerships is important so that it’s not just my worldview that’s seen.

“Diversity needs to be looked at three different areas – what’s on people’s screens, who the audiences are, and who we’re working with. It’s important that we have a broad range of stories, histories, and voices on our screens; and we’re promoting them through the appropriate channels”.

How is important is film for advocating societal change?

Rachel: “For us, that drive towards societal change underpins a lot of what we do. Every month we look at the films on show and we think about the societal message and so many of our films have that at the heart of them. Whether they’re documentaries or dramas, it’s a crucial driver for change. HOME is a place with space so we try and have opportunities that are free, or at very low cost, where people can come and have discussions. We have an ongoing strand at the moment around environmental work which is very crucial”.

¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Festival 2022 runs from 18 March to 7 April 2022.

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What made you interested in the story of Tadeusz “Teddy” Pietrzykowski, a boxer from KL Auschwitz, and why did you decide to write a script about him?

Maciej: “Tadeusz Borowski, a famous war-time Polish writer, wrote in one of his stories: ‘There is still the memory of the number 77, who used to box the Germans as he wanted, taking revenge in the ring for what others got in the field’. This sentence intrigued me so much that I began to investigate the fate of the prisoners of the first transport to the Auschwitz camp, especially Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, marked with number 77. I was fascinated by the fact that for his fellow inmates he was a symbol of hope for victory over Nazi terror. At the same time, it turned out that today he is a relatively unknown, although due to the place and circumstances in which he had to fight, his duels became almost mythical. For his contemporaries, he was a superhero”.

The film opens with information that it is inspired by real events. How much truth is there and how much fiction?

Maciej: “Most of the events shown in ‘The Champion’ actually happened. However, as in the case of other fact-based films, the need to maintain a clear narrative and emotional tension imposed the necessity to introduce changes, whether in terms of the chronology of events, locations or characters with whom the main character comes into contact. Due to the rules of the art of film drama, introducing such changes was necessary, but I wanted to preserve the historical texture of the events, as well as to reveal the truth about the essence of the main character”.

Was the fact that you are the author of the script helpful in the work on the set?

Maciej: ” Of course, the communication between the director and the scriptwriter ran relatively smoothly and almost without conflicts (laughs). The amount of information about the Auschwitz camp and Tadeusz Pietrzykowski gathered during the almost three years of preparation for the shooting has often proved to be useful in cooperation with all production divisions”.

How did you decide on Piotr Głowacki for the lead role?

Maciej: “When I started working on the script for “The Champion”, some people suggested that the main role should be played by an athletic young actor with a bully appearance. Meanwhile, Teddy’s strength lay not in his muscles, but in his masterful technique and fortitude. I knew that in order to create a convincing character of Teddy I was going to need an actor who, at first glance, would be the opposite of the boxer archetype.

“Someone who looks inconspicuous, even harmless, but in whose eyes you can see two clenched fists. At the same time, it should be an actor who, for the role of an Auschwitz prisoner, is willing to undergo a radical transformation of his body, but also to master the boxing technique to the extent that allows fighting without cuts and without the participation of a double. I am convinced that for years there has not been a role in Polish cinema that would require such a far-reaching physical and workshop commitment from an actor. Piotr was my first and only choice and he more than met these expectations”.

You can also see other great Polish actors in the film, including Grzegorz Małecki, Marcin Bosak, Marian Dziędziel, Piotr Witkowski and Rafał Zawierucha. What was your way of getting the best out of them on set?

Maciej: “There was no magic recipe here. I realized that with such a demanding project, a very tight schedule of shooting, with German-speaking roles played by Polish-speaking actors, the key to success would be intense and long lasting rehearsals. We spent the entire summer of 2019 rehearsing and polishing the nuances of the characters. Entering the set, the actors basically once again performed what we had developed earlier, modifying the details of their performances to a specific location or scenography”.

Is Tadeusz “Teddy” Pietrzykowski a hero that the contemporary viewer can identify with?

Maciej: “Definitely. Pietrzykowski, like the biblical David, fought Goliath in the camp arena, just as each of us struggles with adversities every day. The fact that he fought his fights under the most difficult conditions, in the worst time and place in the world, and continued to win despite everything, gives each of us hope that there is no such obstacle that ultimately cannot be overcome. It can be said that we are all warriors in the ring of our lives. On the other hand, the screen character of Pietrzykowski reminds that even if all hope is fading, even in the worst circumstances one should not lose it and stop fighting”.

What were the biggest challenges on the set of The Champion?

Maciej: “The weather. A dozen or so days before the shooting, a storm passed over Poland and destroyed our camp scenography. In this situation, we had to reconstruct what we could and “add” the rest in post-production using digital effects. Fortunately, despite a modest budget, thanks to hard work and commitment of VFX specialists, the marriage of real sets with VFX elements was successful”.

Why do you think this movie is worth watching?

Maciej: “From the beginning of my work on The Champion, I wanted to provide emotions that were often lacking in cinema referring to the subject of war or sports. We tried to create a film story, which, thanks to the level of execution and its universal message, would be able to compete with international features. Most of all, however, The Champion is worth seeing because it is a movie that combines a story about an extraordinary man with a contemplation on the meaning of hope in extreme situations. And the price we sometimes have to pay for hope.”

The Champion of Auschwitz will be available in UK/EIRE Cinemas from 3 September 2021

Read our review.

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What were your preparations for the role of the legendary KL Auschwitz boxer Tadeusz “Teddy” Pietrzykowski?

Piotr: “Every time I work on a character, what interests me is the profession, the skills that the character has. They are the key to his body, movement and psyche. Here such a distance was significant. We are dealing with a boxing champion, a man who fought in a bantamweight before the war. From the very beginning, I saw a long way to go, especially since I had never practiced any martial arts before. I had a lot to show off, but also work to be able to represent him on the screen.

“During several months of preparation, for the purposes of the role I lost 16 kg, which is 20% of my body weight. It was the result of a proper diet and intense physical activity under the supervision of trainers. I was offered the role in The Champion in 2018. We set up a preparation plan very quickly. I started my first strength exercises in July 2018, and boxing training in September of the same year. I worked with two coaches, Konrad Ostrowski and Michał Pluskota, who made sure that we were going in the right direction, and this was the direction of Tadeusz Pietrzykowski’s photos from before the war.

“Due to the fact that I had to be in the training room several times a week, I had time to make friends with the character, feel his effort, sports path, fascination and passion for boxing. At the same time, I was also studying Teddy’s story. During the preparations, I visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. Thanks to the very friendly attitude of the museum staff, I spent several days there, having access to all places, archives, warehouses and, above all, to the enormous knowledge of the people working there. I had a chance to live for a few days in this place, which was the prison of Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, but also the place where, paradoxically, he achieved his greatest boxing success.

“At the end of the preparations, I managed to establish contact with one of the oldest Polish active trainers – Mr. Marian Basiak. It was important, because he himself, like Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, was a student of the legendary Feliks Stamm. We also wanted to show what pre-war boxing looked like. During several months of preparation, I was able to stay in places where both amateurs and professionals train. I talked to them, we met during the exercises.

“The issue of training is not just a matter of building your body, it is also networking, meetings where you hear stories, meet people, watch boxers during training. During the preparation for the role, you train in the gyms, both with people for whom it is a hobby, a way of life, and also with those who are true masters. You then see this distance between the amateur and the professional athlete. At the same time, you are preparing to become a boxing champion, so you can see that even in a year of training, you will not achieve such a high level. So your job is not only to learn authentically what you need for the role, but also to learn how to present it to create an impression of championship on the screen. In the training room, under the guise of observing exercises, you also see the way of being, behaviour, psyche, habits”.

How do you remember working on the set?

Piotr: “What I remember above all is the enormous commitment of all people working on this production. The film paradox is that when we touch scary or painful topics, we also do it out of our passion for cinema. It is beautiful that The Champion is about not only the evil that hit the world at that time, but that we made a film about a passion that allows you to oppose this evil.

“It was possible thanks to the passion of the entire team. These moments when everyone was focused on a specific goal and managed to achieve it are the most beautiful and probably the most memorable moments of this work.

“For the first time on the set of this film, I had the opportunity to work with the director Maciej Barczewski. Thanks to this, it was an adventure with elements of getting to know and trying to get along and it was a really interesting experience. I remember when I started reading the script I had very strong naturalistic associations at first. It is thanks to Maciej that we have reached such a degree of formal meditation that raises this topic to the level of the main character’s passion. Everything was done in harmony and based on calm dialogue. Maciej was very open to any suggestions and ideas from each member of the team.

“As for the actors, I have worked with most of them before. It is interesting in this profession that we meet on the set in different configurations. For example, we have already appeared in a war movie with Marcin Bosak (who played the role of Lagerführer). We met for the first time 15 years ago on the production set of the Warsaw Uprising”.

What made you not use the stunt-double on the set?

Piotr: “At a certain stage of the preparations, Maciej Maciejewski – the stunt coordinator, told me that he has such kind of support for me. However, we agreed that it would not be needed. We went through this movie scene by scene knowing what my fitness needs would be, what the demand for my movement would be. I really wanted to be able to be at any moment with my character. In a film where body and physicality are the essence of his fight for life, every moment of his presence on the screen is a story about this character”.

Why do you think this movie is worth watching?

Piotr: “While working on The Champion, we thought about someone who, thanks to a strong will to survive and his passion, could overcome the greatest, unimaginable evil. I think that this is a picture which, by showing closely the individual fate of Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, can give hope that if we strongly believe in something, if we work hard for something, we are able to overcome all adversities, including our fears and anxieties. I treat the title of the movie The Champion as a word that has many different definitions and interpretations. The entire film is an attempt to answer the question: What does it really mean to be a champion? We are bidding farewell to the last people who experienced Second World War personally. Hence this story has a mythical / mythological element, especially for the young audience. We show this story to give people confidence in themselves and in what they do. Thanks to this, everything is possible”.

The Champion of Auschwitz will be available in UK Cinemas from 3 September 2021 Read our review.

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Maya (voiced by Coco Jack Gillies) spends her time trying to be helpful and going on adventures with Willi, her B(ee).F.F. However, although Maya’s heart is in the right place, she doesn’t always manage to stay out of trouble.

When Maya nearly destroys the hive after waking early and attempting to be useful on the first day of spring, the Queen Bee decides she has had enough of these mishaps and threatens to split up the two friends.

While out and about the pair can’t help but come to the aid of an ant carrying a golden orb being pursued by a trio of burly beetles. These parkour performing pests, Rumba, Henchie and Boof, provide the mild threat to the heroes as well as a good few chuckles. What follows is a road trip with Maya entrusted to protect the orb and deliver it to prevent an all-out turf war between the ant colony and the beetle brigade.

Their quest also re-unites them with a hapless pair of comedy soldier ants, Arnie and Barnie who join them on their trek and provide some of the laugh out loud moments. Although it wouldn’t be right to class this as a musical, there are some short rock songs to change the tempo. Pretty much every song in the film is performed by the lead beetle, Bumbulus.

This cute and colourful adaptation, in line with Pixar’s A Bugs Life, is a cut above other children’s spin-offs and is enjoyable throughout. The direction by co-writer Noel Cleary (who also voices Henchie) keeps the movie moving at pace and keeping the audience’s attention throughout. This would be a great re-introduction to cinema for all of those children who have only been able to watch films at home for a year. Although predominately aimed at very young children, my 9-year-old thoroughly enjoyed it as we giggled through the movie together.

Maya The Bee 3: The Golden Orb is on general cinema release from 17 May 2021

The post Maya the Bee 3: The Golden Orb – Film Review appeared first on Quays Life.

In the Lowry galleries a short film, made in 1957, runs on a loop about the artist’s life in Pendlebury, Salford. While preparing for his role as L.S. Lowry in Mrs Lowry and Son, Timothy Spall watched that same film six or seven times a day to capture the humanity and physicality of Laurie Lowry, the man behind the paintings. “You don’t see him speaking, you see him wandering around, it’s a postage stamp portrait of how he did it, his influences and so on,” Spall explains. “Films about artists can be very dull particularly if they reinforce our ideas of a romantic character with flowing hair. There was this clumsiness about Lowry and this wonderful, spritely ungainly thing. There’s this – for want of a better word – ordinariness.

“I’ve found out that all artists are like any human being – they have the same worries however much driven by their desire to record what they see. And often, contrary to popular opinion or romantic opinion, artists are not romantic, dashing, rather lovely characters. They are often surprisingly very ordinary and unpalatable in some cases. But they use their great talent as artists to communicate their feelings and often they can teach us things about us and our environment”.

The unpalatable part of Lowry’s history presented in the film, is the psychological abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother, Elizabeth, whom he cared for in their two-up, two-down terraced home until she died in 1939, when Lowry was 52-years-old.

The film is adapted from a Radio 4 and later a stage play of the same name, also by writer Martyn Hesford. Set in 1934, between the hardship of two World Wars, it is more or less a two-hander which focuses on the complicated and claustrophobic relationship between Lowry and his hyper-critical mother, played by Vanessa Redgrave.

Although bed-ridden, Elizabeth manages to control her bachelor son through constant checks on the minutiae of his life, such as clocking the exact time he arrives home, demanding his coat, damp from a Manchester downpour, doesn’t drip water on the floor and quizzing him about washing his hands. At times appearing vulnerable, Elizabeth pleads for her son never to leave her in one sentence, yet as Vanessa Redgrave reminds us there is nothing redeeming in her character, for her next breath is used as a spike: “After all, what woman would have you?”

We know little about Elizabeth’s life aside from that which involved her son. The film leaves us little the wiser, but as Ms Redgrave remarks, that keeps our focus on the artist. “I don’t expect them (the audience) to feel anything for her because you don’t learn quite enough about her,” she says. “When you see the film, you learn more about who she was, but especially about who her son was.

“What makes me want to watch the film is to see this man, a human being, living in a crucible of suffering and simultaneously his spirit is connecting through the paint to every human being that he sees. Great art – where does it come from? That’s what makes one want to see this story.”

Although heavily influenced by his mother, Lowry’s talent was rarely encouraged by her. In the film we see her reading out bad newspaper reviews calling his work an ‘insult to the people of Lancashire’ as if he had painted in order to embarrass her. In her view his paintings are ‘squalid industrial scenes that nobody wants to buy’ and he is a disappointment to her snobbish desire for social climbing, just like his father was before him.   

“He does suffer but also it was the only life he knew,” says Spall. “It was difficult. We see her disapproving, but he grew up enthralled to her every need. There was no other, as far as we know, no other human being infiltrated into that intimacy, because he was conditioned to be like that. He got his joy, his pleasure and his satisfaction all from her. He had friends as we all know, individual friends, he never mixed them.

“As far as he did take this abuse, the painting also grows out of that abuse, but it also grows out of a stubbornness which he inherited from her. It’s also private, it’s not revenge but like Vanessa said – the spirit, the compulsion. He knew that he was upsetting her, and I think that’s in the work.

“It’s a bit like saying if Dickens hadn’t grown up with an extraordinary father who was a failure and ended up having to go and work in a bottling factory at the age of 12 or 13, coming from a middle class background would he be Charles Dickens? Probably not, because he was forced to live in an environment that he wouldn’t have done before and so he understood it. You can’t take the man out of the circumstance”.

When Lowry’s father died, both he and his mother were saddled with debts which had accumulated from the family striving to live beyond their means in the middle-class area of Victoria Park. When the family’s aspirations come crashing down, Elizabeth becomes embittered and angered at now living within ear-shot of the cotton mills and industrial chimneys that feature in so many of Lowry’s paintings. While she feels demeaned to find herself alongside the working classes, Lowry embraces his situation. Where she sees bleakness, he sees beauty and acceptance. And while on the outside Lowry would seem to have much to complain about, his demeaner maintains a hope, humour and playfulness that comes out in his interactions with the kids, playing street games as he goes about his rent collecting rounds.

This playfulness comes across too in Lowry’s paintings, which early reviewers derided as childish – a criticism with which, in the film, his appearance-conscious mother is only too quick to agree.

“You could be lulled into thinking he was an innocent, but there is a mass of sophistication in his work,” says Spall. “The more I look at him and the more I think about him I realise that he is a brilliant, brilliant artist. There’s nobody like him. He’s imitating nobody and nobody can really imitate him. He’s completely and absolutely, totally and utterly unique. And this thing about him painting like a child. When you go and look at his early work in this gallery here, he was a draftsman, this was a development. He wasn’t a naïve, he wasn’t a primitive. Picasso said: ‘It took me 70 years to learn how to paint like a child.’ That’s Picasso – no-one actually says we’ve got our own Picasso, it’s staring you in the face – he’s called Laurence Lowry”.

No doubt the film will bring a new insight into Lowry’s work. “I had respect but not enough respect,” says Ms Redgrave. “One of the wonderful things about working in this profession is that you get a chance to escape your own ignorance.”

Sadly, Lowry received little recognition during his mother’s lifetime. We can only imagine how probably even more so than her son, Elizabeth would have delighted in learning of the arts centre and five-star hotel in Salford that now bear his name. Perhaps that is why Lowry found such beauty in authentic acceptance, because his mother never had the confidence to enjoy anything someone had not previously deemed beautiful or worthy of attention. In the film’s story at least, Elizabeth is portrayed as a women who feels shame about where the post-war depression has brought her, and her son, for all his hard-work and talent, lived most of his life in the shadow of that shame.

For those who want to learn more about the making of the film, The Lowry is hosting a special display alongside its permanent Lowry exhibition, which includes behind the scenes photographs, props from the set, film clips, mood boards, shooting schedules and the final screenplay signed by the film’s stars.

The exhibition is also a chance to view a selection of paintings and watercolours by Timothy Spall, which he painted during and after filming as L.S. Lowry.

“God knows what people will make of them but they’re out there for people to say what they like,” Spall laughs because as an artist of any kind he knows only too well. “You stick your neck out, you’re going to get it chopped every now and then”.

Mrs Lowry & Son opens nationwide on Friday 30 August 2019. The Mrs Lowry & Son display at The Lowry Galleries, Salford Quays sits alongside The Lowry’s permanent exhibition, LS Lowry: The Art & The Artist.

County Durham centenary celebrations for mining artist Norman Cornish.

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On 16th August 1819, 60,000 people gathered from all over the region on what was then known as St. Peter’s Field in Manchester to hear orator, Henry Hunt speak about political reform to allow people of Manchester to have representation in parliament through a democratic vote. Like many parts of the country in the early nineteenth century, Manchester and Salford had no MP, and no voice in parliament. At that time only the richest land-owners had the right to vote vote, with many believing that all men should not be given this right.

Whole families, many of whom had barely eaten due to poverty, marched from as far as Oldham to be part of the peaceful protest. Mike Leigh’s film, starring Maxine Peake and Rory Kinnear, depicts the poverty and social injustice experienced by many people living in Manchester in the run up to the demonstration. Soldiers were returning from the Napoleonic Wars with no work to come home to. Industrialisation was taking jobs in the cotton industry and the Corn Laws were keeping the price of food artificially high.

Although we know the outcome – 18 people murdered and approximately 700 injured when cavalry charged the crowds – Leigh’s film brings humanity to those who lost their lives, and hits us with the cruel brutality of the day that came to define Manchester as a radical city and to mark a turning point in British democracy.

Peterloo – pay what you can – with a Q&A with director Mike Leigh is at HOME Manchester on Sunday 18 August 2019 at 4pm. The film has a 12A certificate. Tickets are only available from the Box Office and you are invited to pay what you can into a collection box at the Box Office counter when collecting your ticket. Advance booking is recommended, and no refunds can be given for this screening.

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