In addition to cinema exhibition, Filmhouse also distributes films throughout the UK. If you would like to book a Filmhouse title for your cinema please contact [email protected] or phone 0131 228 6382.
Current Filmhouse releases:
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch
Directors: Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky and Nicholas de Pencier Exposing the earth’s fractured state, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch offers a cinematic meditation on the way human activity has reshaped the earth. This stunning follow up to Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013), witnesses a critical moment in geological history, and lays bare the gashes, wounds and irreparable marks of industrialisation and extraction, revealing how our mania for conquest has created a global epidemic. Our human presence is no silent entity. The dawn of Anthropocene is illustrated in our plastic imprints in the sediment; in the delicate creations of enlightened craftsmen, etched into marble surfaces and ivory tusks; in the unnatural depths tunnelled through rock by masterminds of human design. Revealing obscure sites of human destruction, this timely documentary portrays the processes dominating and repurposing the earth for the material gains of humanity.
1945
Director: Ferenc Török Released: 12 October 2018 When two black clad men arrive at a country railway station, a classic western set up appears to be unfolding. But it’s 1945 in Soviet-occupied Hungary in the immediate aftermath of World War II, and by their appearance the men are Orthodox Jews. As the two men make their way to town and word of their arrival spreads, there’s a growing panic amongst some of the more prominent townsfolk - especially town clerk, István, whose son’s wedding is later that day… With its monochrome splendour and striking soundtrack, morally compromised townspeople and its tick-tock narrative, 1945 recalls nothing more than Fred Zinnemann’s taut and masterful High Noon. Download Teacher's Pack with information about 1945 HERE
Marlina the Murderer in 4 Acts
Director: Mouly Surya Released: 13 April 2018 Provocative and darkly comic, Mouly Surya’s third feature is a deftly crafted and wholly uncompromising feminist Western.
In the windswept uplands of the Indonesian island of Sumba stands a remote and rustic homestead. The widow Marlina lives there with the embalmed corpse of her as-yet-unburied husband. When a local gang leader visits and announces that his crew will arrive that night to steal Marlina’s livestock, and gang rape her “if they have time”, Marlina must take drastic action to protect her self and safeguard her livelihood. The next morning, she packs up a severed head and sets out for town to face the consequences of her sternly efficient act of self-preservation…
Atomic
Director: Mark Cousins Released: 21 October 2016
With images of protest marches, Cold War confrontation, Chernobyl and Fukushima, Mark Cousins’ impressionistic film is a kaleidoscope of the appalling destructive power of the atomic bomb, and also the beauty and benefits of x-rays and MRI scans. In the era of the new £18 billion Hinkley Point power plant, the warning of the film is as relevant as ever. The atomic world is beautiful but, soon after discovering its power, human beings used it in murderous and dangerous ways.
Mogwai’s compelling soundtrack to the film perfectly encapsulates the nightmare of the nuclear age, but also its dreamlike beauty.
My Name is Salt
Director: Farida Pacha Released: 13 Mar 2015 A strikingly beautiful portrayal of an extraordinary world, Farida Pacha's mesmerising documentary transforms back-breaking labor into something transcendent. Every year, just after the monsoon season has finished, thousands of families travel to a bleak desert in Gujarat, India, where they will stay for the next eight months and extract salt from the earth, using the same painstaking, manual techniques as generations before them. Director Farida Pacha and cinematographer Lutz Konermann spent a season with one of these families, observing the very particular rhythms of their lives and crafting an exquisite, lyrical film in the process.
The Robber
NO LONGER IN DISTRIBUTION BY FILMHOUSE Director: Benjamin Heisenberg Released: 21 March 2014 A tense, kinetic thriller based on Martin Prinz's novel about real-life 80s Austrian criminal sensation 'Pump-gun Ronnie' (named after his weapon of choice and his Reagan mask). Doing a bank job immediately on his release from prison, it's clear Johann Rettenberger's stint in jail hasn't had the effect the authorities had hoped for. A chance encounter with Erika, an old family friend who works at the job centre he is forced to attend as a condition of his parole, hints at possible redemption...
Either Way
NO LONGER IN DISTRIBUTION BY FILMHOUSE Director: Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson Released: 4 December 2013 Finn and Alfred are employees of the Icelandic Road Administration in the 1980s, spending days painting yellow lines on a rural highway with only each other for company. Finn is older and (seemingly) wiser than skirt-chasing Alfred, for whom sex is constantly on the brain. The two men barely tolerate each other at first, but ultimately share their deepest questions and possible answers about life and love. Sigurdsson uses the isolated countryside of northern Iceland to highlight the nuances of Finn and Alfred's colourful dialogue and behaviour, their Sisyphean work a perfect metaphor for the difficulties of human connection.
¡Vivan Las Antipodas!
NO LONGER IN DISTRIBUTION BY FILMHOUSE Director: Victor Kossakovsky Released: 22 November 2013 Antipodes are places diametrically opposite one another on the earth's surface. Because most of the planet is covered by oceans, antipodes with dry land on both sides are fairly rare. In this audacious, contemplative, stunningly beautiful work, master documentarist Victor Kossakovsky takes us to four antipodal pairs, and, in doing so, changes the way we see our world. Kossakovsky's extraordinarily fluid camerawork glides, swoops, somersaults, spins and flips between locations, and we begin to notice the things that join the places and people rather than what separates them. A dazzling and ultimately moving meditation on our planet.
The Stoker
NO LONGER IN DISTRIBUTION BY FILMHOUSE Director: Alexey Balabanov Released: 17 May 2013 Set in the mid 1990s outside St Petersburg, The Stoker tells the story of an ethnic Yakut, Major Skryabin, a shell-shocked veteran of the Afghan-Soviet War, who works as a stoker. Living in the incinerator room, the Major shovels coal all day, and fills his spare time writing a novel about a Russian criminal sent into exile in Yakutia in the XIX century, whilst turning a blind eye to his former military comrade-turned-hitman, the Sergeant, who arrives to dispose of bodies. But even our compliant stoker has his limits...