Top Six at the Flix

Bridport Arts Centre - 26 April 2pm

Seconds

‘Frankenheimer’s masterpiece grows in stature with each passing year due the relevant themes of existentialism, and freewill.’ rogerebert.com.

Bridport Arts Centre - 27 April 5pm

Letter From an Unknown Woman

‘Letter from an Unknown Woman is one of the greatest films of the ’40s, and therefore of all time.’ Michael Barrett, Pop Matters.

Bridport Arts Centre - 27 April 8pm

Emily

‘Its strength is in finding ways to provide a fuller portrait, sneaking in telling and evocative details here and there that merge the pure satisfaction of good drama with the more intellectual pleasure of watching a story avoid the usual traps.’ K Austin Collins, Rolling Stone.

Bridport Arts Centre - 28 April 2pm

A Raisin in the Sun

‘Based on Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play of the same name, David Petrie’s A Raisin in the Sun is at once a searing, affirming and defiant portrayal of race, poverty and frustrated aspiration in America.’ Christopher Machell.

Bridport Arts Centre - 29 April 8pm

She Said (15)

‘The film coolly conveys the awakeningfrom-denial horror that their investigation spreads through the film industry and I admire the way it takes the macho cliched nonsense out of journalism in movies: these are not boozy guys being adorable and chaotic, but smart, persistent people doggedly doing their job.’ Peter Bradshaw The Guardian.

Bridport Arts Centre - 30 April 5pm

Best of Enemies

‘Best of Enemies provides a rich, extraordinarily fascinating account that’s sure to have many viewers’ minds constantly shuttling between then and now, noting how different certain things about politics and media were in that distant era, yet marveling at how directly those archaic realities led to many of our own.’ rogerebert. com.

2pm with The Oak, The Ash and The Standing Stones, a show which celebrates and shares the legends and music of the English countryside.

They are an innovative group of musicians and performers, who between them play traditional folk instruments and a theremin, and combine beautiful vocal harmonies, looping and beatboxing,

The Oak, The Ash and The Standing Stones is a magical journey through the stories of England, Ireland and Wales, performed with energy, infectious fun and gentle humour.

They are touring throughout April, with dates across Bristol, Bath and Somerset, as well as performing at the Eat festivals across the region, including Taunton, Yeovil,

Other local dates are at Exeter’s Barnfield Theatre on 5th April, and Taunton Brewhouse on 12th April. Performances are generally during the day, sometimes twice, in the morning and afternoon. Check out their website for the full tour and more information—www.tidaltalescollective.com

World folk at the Marine LYME REGIS

THE April music programme at Lyme Regis’s Marine Theatre ranges from Ukrainian to Irish to traditional English, with some of Europe’s finest folk exponents, starting with a world-famous Ukrainian group, DakhaBrakha, on Saturday 15th April

With the eyes of the world on their brave homeland, as it goes into a second year of war with the Russian invaders, DakhaBrakha creates a transnational sound rooted in Ukrainian culture.

Accompanied by Indian, Arabic, African and Ukrainian instrumentation, the quartet from Kyiv captivate the audience with a world of unexpected new music, with an uncompromising vocal range and self-proclaimed ‘ethno-chaos.’

Veterans of two great folk super-groups, Knight and Spiers come to the Marine on Thursday 27th. Peter Knight, as part of Steeleye Span’s classic 1970s line-up, helped invent a brand of folk rock that is still influential today. John Spiers, a cofounder of the mighty Bellowhead, has had an equally profound impact on the landscape of traditional music over the past two decades.

Cara Dillon, who is at Lyme Regis on Friday 28th has been described as having “quite possibly the world’s most beautiful female voice” (Mojo). This extraordinary Irish singer, who lives in Somerset, has been captivating audiences and achieving exceptional acclaim for over 20 years.

Finding the meaning of success

NOTHING Happens (Twice), coming to Bridport Arts Centre on Friday 14th April, explores the meaning of success and why people like Mercè Ribot and Patricia Rodríguez keep trying for it.

Little Soldier’s comic play is described as “slapstick humour meets Beckett head-on in a quest for life’s meaning and purpose.” It is anarchic but touching, a deeply personal show that asks why, if making theatre is such hard work, we keep on doing it, even when things go from bad to worse?

It’s 2018 and Patricia and Mercè have three successful productions under their belts. But now, things have ground to a halt and after months of hard work trying to get their new show off the ground, they’ve hit rock bottom. In desperation, they accept a commercial contract to create a show promoting the Andalucían tourist board in the Westfield Shopping Centre in London. Dressed as flamingos, they try to entertain shoppers with the best that Andalucía can offer (despite neither of them having set foot in the region). After a deeply humiliating few days, they vow never to sink so low again.

Jump forward to 2020, the world has been turned upside down and Patricia and Mercè are once more wondering if they should carry on. They go back to an early conversation, when they dreamed of making a new version of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Unfortunately, the Beckett Estate imposes rigid restrictions on productions of the play, including a refusal to allow women to perform it. Not to be deterred, the two set to work…