Scalarama Brighton

Across Brighton, Tuesday, September 1, to Wednesday, September 30

“SCALARAMA is people with a passion for cinema who want to put on their own films regardless of where the money comes from.”

So says Rob Wilbraham, communications manager for the team of four curators behind this year’s Scalarama Brighton.

Inspired by the varied programme at London’s Scala cinema in King’s Cross, Scalarama is creating pop-up cinemas and unique programmes at venues across the country – from Liverpool to Leeds, Inverness to Bristol.

The Brighton edition launches on Tuesday and features several major programme strands:

Shirley Clarke

THIS retrospective of Shirley Clarke’s films launches with a screening of the first commercial film to be shot in Harlem The Cool World (no cert, Fabrica, Duke Street, Tues, Sept 1, 7.30pm, £8/£6).

Programmed by fan Sophie Brown, the screening will also feature a rare short film by the New York-based cult film-maker who died of a stroke in 1997 and an after-party hosted by the Stay Sick DJs.

Also appearing are Clarke’s controversial but critically acclaimed 1961 feature debut The Connection (no cert, Emporium, London Road, Thurs, Sept 24, 8pm, £6) based on Jack Gelber’s play about a group of junkie jazz musicians waiting for their next fix; Portrait Of Jason (no cert, Duke’s At Komedia, Gardner Street, Sat, Sept 12, 4pm, £10/£9) created in 12 hours in Clarke’s Chelsea Hotel apartment about a New York houseboy who wanted to be a cabaret star; and Clarke’s final feature Ornette Coleman: Made In America (no cert, Duke’s At Komedia, Sun, Sept 13, 4pm, £10/£9) documenting three decades in the jazz legend’s life.

Go Wilde!

A MEMBER of the Oscar Wilde Foundation, programmer Alexia Lazou has teamed up with George Street’s unique cabaret restaurant Bom-Banes for a series of Wilde’s greatest celluloid moments.

Opening with the 1945 version of The Picture Of Dorien Gray (15, Wed, Sept 2, food from 7pm, £5.55), the strand also features Stephen Fry as the great aesthete in the 1997 biopic Wilde (15, Wed, Sept 16, 7pm, £5.55); Rupert Everett in the 1999 version of An Ideal Husband (PG, Wed, Sept 23, 7pm, £5.55); and the classic 1952 take on The Importance Of Being Earnest (U, Wed, Sept 30, 7pm, £5.55) starring Dame Edith Evans as the formidable Mrs Bracknell.

Look out for a matinee screening of 1960’s The Trials Of Oscar Wilde (U, Sun, Sept 20, 2pm, £5.55) which marks the 120th anniversary year of Wilde’s imprisonment.

Classic horror

UNABLE to get the rights for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, German director FW Murnau created his own carbon copy of the story in 1922’s Nosferatu (PG, Duke Of York’s Picturehouse, Preston Circus, Tues, Sept 22, 9pm, £12/£11).

This screening, which coincides with the Duke Of York’s 105th birthday, features a live harp score by Elizabeth-Jane Baldry.

Programmer Michael McDermott has matched this up with Werner Herzog’s 1979 update of the German cinema classic starring Klaus Kinski as the titular Nosferatu (15, Fabrica, Duke Street, Tues, Sept 15, 8pm, £5/£4).

And there’s more German horror with The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari (U, Fabrica, Thurs, Sept 10, 7.30pm, £8/£6) with a live soundtrack by Partial Facsimile.

Plus Drill Folly and Miles Brown provide a live soundtrack to surreal French masterpiece The Seashell And The Clergyman (no cert, Fabrica, Thurs, Sept 17, 7.30pm, £8/£6) before the closing circus-set 1989 nightmare from Alejandro Jodrowsky, Santa Sangre (18, Duke Of York’s Picturehouse, Wed, Sept 30, 9pm, £10/£8).

Also on

BRIGHTON’S experimental filmmaker William Friese-Greene is celebrated in The Magic Box (U, Brighton Media Centre, Middle Street, Mon, Sept 7, 7pm, £5).

Idris Elba stars in the tale of an apparently miracle birth Second Coming (15, Redroaster, St James’s Street, Wed, Sept 2, 8pm, £4).

The music and art of West Berlin in the 1980s is celebrated in Mark Reeder’s B-Movie: Lust And Sound In West Berlin 1979-1989 (18, Duke Of York’s Picturehouse, Sun, Sept 27, 6.30pm, £10/£8)

And the LGBT festival Eyes Wide Open returns with 2004 Cannes Jury Prize-winner Tropical Malady (12A, Duke Of York’s Picturehouse, Mon, Sept 14, 9pm, £7/£6), and 1996’s The Watermelon Woman (18, Duke’s At Komedia, Sat, Sept 26, 4pm, £10/£9) about a 20-something black lesbian videostore clerk trying to make a movie about an obscure 1930s actress.

Various times and prices, visit www.scalarama.com