May Day Film Event II: Free Cinema Documentaries About Free Thinkers

Monday 5 May Bank Holiday
4 - 6pm
The Theatre Royal Margate, Addington Street, Margate
£2.50 (ticket includes entry to both May Day Film Events)
To book call 01227 787 787

A programme of three classic rarely-screened documentaries about people doing their own thing, and engaging very closely with nature. Including Philip Trevelyan’s The Moon and The Sledgehammer, Alan Lomax’s Oss Oss Wee Oss and Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson’s Momma Don’t Allow.

Philip Trevelyan – The Moon and The Sledgehammer (1972)

‘Their lifestyle, expounded in fascinatingly wayward conversation which is allowed to make its own pace, embodies a weird cautionary logic about the miracles of modern technocracy.’
Time Out

The Pages live in a ramshackle house situated in six acres of woodland, which they own themselves, in the heart of the commuter-belt, 20 miles south of London. The trees cut the Pages off completely from the outside world, and isolated in their island-clearing, they let the 20th Century slowly pass them by.

Alan Lomax – Oss Oss Wee Oss (1953)

The May Day ‘Obby Oss’ (or hobby horse) tradition in Padstow has its origins in a spring fertility festival and is an annual custom that continues to this day. This celebration involving traditional song, dance and costume is a closely protected event and has rarely been filmed. The film was shot by Peter Kennedy, who from the 1950s has made hundreds of sound recordings, and later films, of regional folksongs, music, dancing, story telling, folklore events and customs around Britain and Ireland.

Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson – Momma Don’t Allow (1956)

‘These filmmakers employed a personal, dedicated form of film-making: unashamed of experimentation, proud of the medium’s status as art, excited by the potential of new technology and committed to capturing undiscovered pockets of British society’ Sight and Sound

A celebration of the free spirit of youth - particularly London’s working class jiving youth in the 1950s.


_{Image: Mr Page, 1972 © Philip Trevelyan}