Saturday 24 June, 6.30pm

Dungog Masked Ball 2017: Under the Sea (& On the Beach)

Get your crew together for some fancy dress seaside frolics at this year’s Dungog Masked Ball, the annual fun(d)raiser for Dungog Community College. Coral cays, manta rays, balmy days and sunrays. Towels, sunscream, surfies, shipwrecks, treasure chests, mermaid tails. Neck-to-knees & burqinis. Gills. Giant clams. Deep sea divers. Also squid. So get in the swim and gather your school! Tickets $89 from www.dungogcommunitycollege.org.au

 

Down Memory Lane – War/Drama
Sunday 25 June, 1.30 for 2pm

Zulu (1964)

Recognised as one of the greatest British war films, and for a long time the biggest UK box-office hit, Zulu details the epic Battle of Rorke’s Drift in 1879 between outnumbered British soldiers and Zulus in Natal Province, South Africa. Filmed on location in the spectacular Drakensberg Mountains, tales of Zulu’s filming are as dramatic as what is on the screen. The role of the young lieutenant was Michael Caine’s first big movie break, and propelled him to international stardom, and Richard Burton provides the narration. Considered to be largely historically accurate, Zulu is epic war drama at its cinematic best.

 

Drama
Saturday 1 July, 4pm

The Sense of an Ending (M)

Adapted from a brief but emotionally potent 2011 novel by Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending is a new British drama directed by Ritesh Batra and written by Nick Payne about a man who becomes haunted by his past and is presented with a mysterious legacy that causes him to re-think his current situation in life. Tony Webster (Jim Broadbent) leads a reclusive and quiet existence until long buried secrets from his past force him to face the flawed recollections of his younger self, the truth about his first love (Charlotte Rampling) and the devastating consequences of decisions made a lifetime ago.

 

Action/Adventure/Fantasy
Saturday 1 July, 7pm

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (PG)

Johnny Depp returns to the big screen as the iconic, swashbuckling anti-hero Jack Sparrow in the all-new Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. The rip-roaring adventure finds down-on-his-luck Captain Jack feeling the winds of ill-fortune blowing strongly his way, when deadly ghost sailors led by his old nemesis, the evil Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem), escape from the Devil’s Triangle, determined to kill every pirate at sea -including him. Jack’s only hope of survival lies in seeking out the legendary Trident of Poseidon, which bestows upon its possessor total control over the seas. But to find it, he must forge an uneasy alliance with a brilliant and beautiful astronomer and a headstrong young sailor in the British Navy. At the helm of the Dying Gull, his pitifully small and shabby ship, Captain Jack seeks to reverse his recent spate of ill fortune, and save his very life from the most formidable and malicious foe he has ever faced.
Starring Jonny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, and Javier Bardem, this fifth and final instalment of the Pirates series also features Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, David Wenham and Paul McCartney. Dead Men Tell No Tales was filmed at the Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast.

 

History/Drama
Saturday 8 July, 7pm

Viceroy’s House

The End of an Empire. The Birth of Two Nations. Viceroy’s House tells the true story of the final months of British rule in India.
Viceroy’s House was the home of the British rulers of India in Delhi. After 300 years, that rule was coming to an end. For 6 months in 1947, Lord Mountbatten, great grandson of Queen Victoria, assumed the post of the last Viceroy, charged with handing India back to its people. The story unfolds within that great House. Upstairs lived Mountbatten together with his wife and daughter; downstairs lived their 500 Hindu, Muslim and Sikh servants. As the political elite – Nehru, Jinnah and Gandhi – converged on the House to wrangle over the birth of independent India, conflict erupted. A decision was taken to divide the country and create a new Muslim homeland: Pakistan. It was a decision whose consequences reverberate to this day.
Viceroy’s House is a story that is deeply personal to the film’s director Gurinder Chadha, whose own family was caught up in the tragic events that unfolded as the Raj came to an end. Starring Gillian Anderson, and Hugh Bonneville as the Mountbattens, and also features Michael Gambon and Simon Callow.

 

Animation/Action/Adventure
Thursday 13 July, 11am
Saturday 15 July, 3pm

Despicable Me 3 (PG)

The team who brought you Despicable Me and the biggest animated hits of 2013 and 2015, Despicable Me 2 and Minions, returns to continue the adventures of Gru, Lucy, along with their adorable daughters—Margo, Edith and Agnes—and the Minions.
In Despicable Me 3, Gru (Steve Carell) faces off against Balthazar Bratt, a former child star who has grown up to become obsessed with the character that he played in the ’80s. Gru gets into some sibling rivalry when he meets his long-lost charming, cheerful, and more successful twin brother Dru, who wants to team up with him for one last criminal heist to steal the diamond that Bratt has stolen. Also featuring the voices of Kristen Wiig, Steve Coogan and Julie Andrews.

 

Drama/Mystery/Romance
Saturday 15 July, 7pm

My Cousin Rachel (M)

Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin star in writer-director Roger Michell’s (Notting Hill) adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s classic mystery, My Cousin Rachel.
A young Englishman (Claflin) plots revenge against his mysterious and beautiful cousin (Weisz), believing that she murdered his guardian. But his feelings become complicated as he finds himself falling under the beguiling spell of her charms. My Cousin Rachel co-stars Iain Glen (Game of Thrones) and Holliday Grainger.

 

Drama/Romance
Sunday 16 July, 7pm

Frantz (PG)

This month’s offering of the Dungog Film Society is Frantz.
Director François Ozon’s latest masterpiece is a hypnotic tale of love and remembrance. In a small German town in the wake of the First World War, Anna, a young woman mourning the death of her fiancé (Paula Beer, in a Venice award-winning performance), forms a bond with an unknown Frenchman (Pierre Niney) who has arrived to lay flowers on her beloved’s grave.
The arrival of this enigmatic Frenchman raises suspicions and ignites passions in Anna’s war-wounded home town, and as the mystery deepens, secrets long-buried in the past threaten to surface and change everything…

 

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