WHAT’S ON

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SAT 19 OCT: ‘LAST BREATH’ (12A)

Doors open 7:15 for a 7:45 start
£5 / £3 student and Young Scot card
Ratings Info: moderate threat, infrequent strong language

 

We’re tying in with the Stromness Museum conference SCAPA 100: The Orkney Story, to bring you this nail biting documentary.

A commercial diver is stranded on the seabed with 5 minutes of oxygen, but no chance of rescue for more than 30 minutes. With access to amazing archive, this is the true story of one man’s impossible fight for survival.

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FRI 01 NOV: AMAZING GRACE (U)

Our FILM FOCUS FESTIVAL series kicks off tonight with a thrilling must-watch documentary!

Doors open 7:15 for a 7:45 start
£5 / £3 student and Young Scot card

Brilliantly capturing a remarkable performer near the peak of her prodigious power, Amazing Grace is a thrilling must-watch documentary for Aretha Franklin fans.

By 1971, Aretha Franklin was known as the Queen of Soul. In the culmination of five years of chart-topping hits, she and her producer, Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records, decided her next recording would take her back to the music of her youth, to the world of American Gospel music.

Amazing Grace was not intended as a swan song, but it would turn out to be an elegiac moment in American musical history as well as a salute to the gospel heritage that had transformed American music in the 1960s.

Recorded live at Rev James Cleveland’s church in Watts, California in front of a lively audience/congregation, Amazing Grace would become the highest selling album of Franklin’s career and the most popular Gospel album of all time.

However, the film was never released publicly. Until now.

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SAT 02 NOV: THE IRON GIANT (PG)

2O YRS ANNIVERSARY SCREENING

The second feature film in our FILM FOCUS series

Doors open 1:30 for a 2PM start
Pay on the way out what you think it’s worth!
Ratings Info mild fantasy action violence, infrequent mild bad language

The endearing Iron Giant tackles ambitious topics and complex human relationships with a steady hand and beautifully animated direction from Brad Bird.

Something huge is on the horizon. Hogarth Hughes just rescued an enormous robot that fell from the stars to Earth. Now young Hogarth has one very big friend and an even bigger problem: How do you keep at 50-foot-tall, steel-eating (junkyard cars are especially tasty) giant a secret? It’s even harder when a nosy government agent arrives in town to hunt down the ‘alien invader’ and the combined land, sea and air might of the US military is sent to demolish the giant. The result: an incredible adventure that’s part metal, part magic, all heart.

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SAT 02 NOV: DO THE RIGHT THING (15)

3O YRS ANNIVERSARY SCREENING

The third feature film in our FILM FOCUS series

Doors open 7:15 for a 7:45 start
£5 / £3 student and Young Scot card
Ratings Info strong language, racist language, violence, nudity

Smart, vibrant, and urgent without being didactic, Do the Right Thing is one of Spike Lee’s most fully realised efforts and one of the most important films of the 1980s.

It’s the hottest day of the year in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood of Brooklyn, and tensions are growing there, with the only local businesses being a Korean grocery and Sal’s Pizzeria. Mookie, Sal’s delivery boy, manages to always be at the center of the action.

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MON 04 NOV: LOCAL SHORT FILMS SCREENING

7:30pm -11pm
Free entrance
Upstairs function room
The Royal Hotel
Victoria St
Stromness

Join us at the West Side Hub for a mix of local short films and music.

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TUE 05 NOV: FILM QUIZ, SHORTS AND MUSIC

7:30pm -11pm
Free entrance
Upstairs function room
The Royal Hotel
Victoria St
Stromness

Join us at the West Side Hub for a mix of short films, music and a FILM QUIZ.

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WED 06 NOV: ORKNEY ARTS SOCIETY presents PROJECTIONS

7:30pm -11pm
£5/£4 OAS MEMBERS
Upstairs function room
The Royal Hotel
Victoria St
Stromness

Join us at the West Side Hub for an Orkney Arts Society talk (60 mins) followed by a mix of short films and music.

PROJECTIONS – A STROLL THROUGH THE RHYTHMS OF FILMMAKING with  MARK JENKINS

Local filmmaker and editor Mark Jenkins will discuss how rhythm and structure have such an influence on his filmmaking practice.

 

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THU 07 NOV: FREE SOLO (12A)

The FOURTH feature film in our FILM FOCUS series

Doors open 7:15 for a 7:45 start
£5 / £3 student and Young Scot card
Ratings Info infrequent strong language

 

Follow Alex Honnold as he becomes the first person to ever free solo climb Yosemite’s 3,000ft high El Capitan Wall. With no ropes or safety gear, he completed arguably the greatest feat in rock climbing history. From award-winning documentary filmmaker E. Chai Vasarhelyi and world-renowned photographer and mountaineer Jimmy Chin, comes FREE SOLO, a stunning, intimate and unflinching portrait of free soloist climber Alex Honnold, as he prepares to achieve his lifelong dream: climbing the face of the world’s most famous rock… the 3,200ft El Capitan in Yosemite National Park… without a rope.

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FRI 08 NOV: DIAMANTINO (15)

The FIFTH feature film in our FILM FOCUS series

Doors open 7:15 for a 7:45 start
£5 / £3 student and Young Scot card
Ratings Info very strong language, discriminatory terms, sexualised nudity

 

Diamantino casts a singularly surreal eye on an ambitious array of subjects, emerging with a cinematic experience as inscrutable as it is unforgettable.

Diamantino (Carloto Cotta), the world’s premiere soccer star, loses his special touch and ends his career in disgrace. Searching for a new purpose, he sets out on a delirious odyssey in which he must confront neo-fascism, the refugee crisis, genetic modification, and abuse at the hands of his evil twin sisters, all part of a deranged hunt for the source of genius.

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SAT 09 NOV: SURPRISE FAMILY FILM

The sixth feature film in our FILM FOCUS series

Doors open 1:30 for a 2PM start

We’re working with Young Film Programmers to bring you a surprise film – WHAT WILL IT BE?

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SAT 09 NOV: THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT (15)

25 YRS ANNIVERSARY SCREENING

The seventh and last feature film in our FILM FOCUS series

And we’re celebrating big time as it’s West Side’s 7th BIRTHDAY PARTY!

Join us for an after screening disco, with DJ West Side playing all the top disco tracks, so dress GLAM  and remember your dancing shoes.

and no need to BYO, we have the Strangely Delicious Bar

Late opening until 12PM! 

Doors open 7:15 for a 7:45 start
£5 / £3 student and Young Scot card
Ratings Info Contains strong language, sex references and threat

 

A cult classic that combines the sequined sensations of drag culture with the thrills and conflicts of an unlikely adventure on the road.

The usually menacing British actor Terence Stamp does a complete turnaround as Bernadette, an aging transsexual who tours the backwaters of Australia with her stage partners, Mitzi (Hugo Weaving) and Adam/Felicia (Guy Pearce). Their act, well-known in Sydney, involves wearing lots of makeup and gowns and lip-synching to records, but Bernadette is getting a bit tired of it all and is also haunted by the bizarre death of an old loved one. Nevertheless, when Mitzi and Felicia get an offer to perform in the remote town of Alice Springs at a casino, Bernadette decides to tag along. The threesome ventures into the outback with Priscilla, a lavender-colored school bus that doubles as dressing room and home on the road. Along the way, the act encounters any number of strange characters, as well as incidents of homophobia, while Bernadette becomes increasingly concerned about the path her life has taken.

 

This event is kindly supported by