The Fugard Announces Exciting Cinema Season Through the Start of 2017

The Fugard's resumes its exciting cinema season with the announcement of seven exciting presentations through the start of 2017. The season allows the best of world cinema and theatre productions to be enjoyed from the comfort of a seat at The Fugard Bioscope, with the promise of further similar screenings, as well as opera and ballet presentations, for the new year.

Daniel Galloway, the executive director of The Fugard Theatre, introduces the upcoming season:

We have compiled a star-studded line up to captivate and entertain our moviegoers. To round off 2016, we will be screening the National Theatre Live Encore Series and Oscar winners SON OF SAUL and IDA.

National Theatre Live is the National Theatre's groundbreaking project to broadcast world-class theatre to cinemas across the United Kingdom and internationally. IDA is produced by Eric Abraham, the owner and founding producer of the Fugard Theatre. The film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards. This was Abraham's second Academy Award after winning the golden statuette for his film KOYLA in 1996. Galloway continues:

Other films throughout the season provide the chance to see productions by world-class organisations such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera House and Salzburg Festival Opera. Watch out for announcements regarding our full programme for 2017. All of the films are screened in our state-of-the-art Bioscope, including a 7.1 dolby digital surround sound system and wall to wall high definition cinema screen. Tickets for the Bioscope are limited and sell out quickly so don't delay to book your seat.

The programme kicks off with the National Theatre Live Encore Series presentation of Richard Bean's ONE MAN, 2 GUVNORS on 30 October. This uproarious, runaway West End and Broadway hit features a Tony Award-winning performance from James Corden, the host of THE LATE LATE SHOW. Fired from his skiffle band, Francis Henshall becomes minder to Roscoe Crabbe, a small time East End hood, now in Brighton to collect money from his fiancée's dad. But Roscoe is really his sister Rachel posing as her own dead brother, who's been killed by her boyfriend Stanley Stubbers. Holed up at The Cricketers' Arms, the permanently ravenous Francis spots the chance of an extra meal ticket and takes a second job with one Stanley Stubbers, who is hiding from the police and waiting to be re-united with Rachel. To prevent discovery, Francis must keep his two guvnors apart.

On 6 November, A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE by the great Arthur Miller (also from the National Theatre Live Encore Series) will be screened. The Young Vic's production of Miller's tragic masterpiece won a trio of 2014 Olivier Awards including Best Revival, Best Actor (Mark Strong of THE IMITATION GAME and TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY) and Best Director for Ivo van Hove. Miller confronts the American dream in this dark and passionate tale. In Brooklyn, longshoreman Eddie Carbone welcomes his Sicilian cousins to the land of freedom. But when one of them falls for his beautiful niece, they discover that freedom comes at a price. Eddie's jealous mistrust exposes a deep, unspeakable secret - one that drives him to commit the ultimate betrayal.

Yet another National Theatre Live Encore Series presentation, FRANKENSTEIN, will be screened on 27 November. Adapted from the novel by Mary Shelley by Nick Dear and directed by Academy Award-winner Danny Boyle (TRAINSPOTTING, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, STEVE JOBS), this thrilling production of the famous gothic tale features Academy Award-nominee Benedict Cumberbatch (SHERLOCK, THE IMITATION GAME) and Jonny Lee Miller (ELEMENTARY, TRAINSPOTTING) alternating roles as Victor Frankenstein and his creation. The production was a sell-out hit at the National Theatre in 2011, and the broadcast has since become an international sensation, experienced by over half a million people in cinemas around the world. Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein's bewildered Creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the friendless Creature, increasingly desperate and vengeful, determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal.

Another chance to see Cumberbatch in action follows on 4 December, when a screening of William Shakespeare's HAMLET, the next National Theatre Live Encore Series showing, will take place. Produced by Sonia Friedman, HAMLET sees Cumberbatch taking on the title role in Shakespeare's great tragedy under the direction of Lyndsey Turner (POSH, CHIMERICA). The original 2015 broadcast was experienced by over half a million people worldwide. As a country arms itself for war, a family tears itself apart. Forced to avenge his father's death but paralysed by the task ahead, Hamlet rages against the impossibility of his predicament, threatening both his sanity and the security of the state.

On 11 December, SON OF SAUL - the winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards - will be screened. Set in October 1944 at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the film is the story of Saul Auslander, a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in the machinery of large-scale extermination.

While working in one of the crematoriums, Saul discovers the corpse of a boy he takes for his son. As the Sonderkommando plans a rebellion, Saul decides to carry out an impossible task: save the child's body from the flames, find a rabbi to recite the mourner's Kaddish and offer the boy a proper burial. Directed by László Nemes and co-written by Nemes and Clara Royer, SON OF SAUL was the second Hungarian film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

IDA, which will be screened on 18 December, is a black and white film directed by Pawel Pawlikowski and written by himself and Rebecca Lenkiewicz. IDA earned Pawlikowski an Academy Award and is the first Polish foreign language film to win the coveted prize. Accepting the award, Pawlikowski thanked Abraham and all those involved in the making and success of the film, saying:

We make a film about silence and withdrawing from the world and the need for contemplation - and here we are, at the epicentre of world noise and attention. Fantastic - life is full of surprises.

IDA stars Agata Kulesza, Dawid Ogrodnik and Agata Trzebuchowska. It is set in Poland in 1962, and is about a young woman on the verge of taking vows as a Catholic nun. Orphaned as an infant during the German occupation of World War ll, she must now meet her aunt. The former Communist state prosecutor and only surviving relative tells her that her parents were Jewish. The two women embark on a road trip into the Polish countryside to learn the fate of their family. Aside from winning numerous awards in Poland, IDA was selected as Best Film of 2014 by the European Film Academy and as Best Film Not in the English Language of 2014 by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

Speaking from Los Angeles, a delighted Abraham said:

It's wonderful when the underdog triumphs. A small short black and white film in Polish about two women who go on a road trip to learn about who they are and where they come from. Ida seems to have touched people across the barriers of language and culture in over thirty countries so far and restores my faith in the appetite for films that make us think and feel about the human condition. South Africa has so many such stories waiting to be told on film.

Starting off the new year, the National Theatre Live Encore Series presentation of THE DEEP BLUE SEA by Terence Rattigan will be screened on 8 January. Helen McCrory (MEDEA, THE LAST OF THE HAUSSMANS, PENNY DREADFUL) returns to the National Theatre in this devastating masterpiece, playing one of the greatest female roles in contemporary drama. Tom Burke (WAR AND PEACE, THE MUSKETEERS) also features in Carrie Cracknell's critically acclaimed production. Set in a flat in Ladbroke Grove, West London in 1952, Hester Collyer is found by her neighbours in the aftermath of a failed suicide attempt. The story of her tempestuous affair with a former RAF pilot and the breakdown of her marriage to a High Court judge begins to emerge. With it comes a portrait of need, loneliness and long-repressed passion; behind the fragile veneer of post-war civility burns a brutal sense of loss and longing.

Screenings take place at The Fugard Bioscope at 11am. Tickets cost R100 and can be booked online through Computicket, by phone on 0861 915 8000, or at any Shoprite Checkers outlet. Bookings can also be made at the Fugard Theatre box office on 021 461 4554.

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