2017 Guests and Special Events
Greta Scacchi
Our principal guest for 2017 will be
Greta Scacchi, fresh from the West
End stage, in Kenneth Branagh's The
Entertainer. We will be screening a number of films
from her illustrious career and looking back at her
work which has included Heat and Dust, The Player,
The Falling and the acclaimed recent TV
adaptation of War and Peace.
Miss Scacchi will be presenting three of her most iconic films at the festival -
The Browning Version by Carlisle-born director Mike Figgis;
White Mischief, the marvellous ensemble piece in which she co-starred with Charles Dance and Joss Ackland
and; Robert Altman's The Player, surely one of the best films about Hollywood ever made.
Swallows and Amazons
Swallows and Amazons has been
the hit of the summer. Producer Nick
Barton and Visual Effects Supervisor,
Simon Hughes will be here to tell us
just how they did it.
Simon Hughes
Simon Hughes is a Visual
Effects Supervisor based at
Union VFX in London.
He began his career at Cinesite in
London in 1997 and has since worked at
a number of companies in both London
and Canada, and has supervised onset
around the UK, US, Canada and Africa.
He has recently worked on Bridget
Jones's Baby, Swallows and Amazons,
Everest, Suffragette, 71, Safe House
and has received a Visual Effects
Society award for his work on District 9.
Before the screening of Swallows and
Amazons, Simon's talk will give us brief
overview of the VFX industry and what
his role entails along with an insight into
how the visual effects were achieved
in the film, which was of course,
filmed right here on Derwentwater.
Nick Barton
Nick Barton is the producer of major
British films such as Calendar Girls,
Kinky Boots and most recently
Swallows and Amazons.
He started his film career making
advertising commercials in the 1970's
with acclaimed photographer Terence
Donovan. He then established Network
Television in the 1980's creating
major international documentary
films for the BBC, Channel 4,
and the Discovery Channel.
His entry into feature films came in
2000 when his new company, Harbour
Pictures, developed the extraordinary
true story of the Yorkshire WI ladies
with their famous nude calendar.
Calendar Girls became one of the most
successful British films in history...
Michael Curtiz Retrospective
2017 will see the 75th Anniversary of the
release of the sublime Casablanca. Director
Michael Curtiz will be the subject of a
number of screenings (including the rarely seen
The Breaking Point) and a talk by our
special guest Adam Feinstein.
Critical Acclaim
This year we are bringing 3 top critics, Matt Glasby, Karen Krizanovich and Ali Catterall to Keswick and asking them to choose their film of the year,
present it at KFF and we are asking you, the audience, to vote on their selection.
In the run up to the Festival and over the course of the weekend there will be an ongoing, online conversation about those choices.
For more information on the critics and their selections visit the Critics' Award page.
Matt Glasby
Matt Glasby (@mattglasby) is a film critic for Total Film and GQ among others, and a member of the London Critics' Circle.
His first book, The A-Z Of Great Film Directors, was published in 2015. His second, Choose Life, a study of 1990s British cinema, is out in 2017.
Favourite film: If....
Festival Choice: Son of Saul
Karen Krizanovich
Karen Krizanovich (@Krizanovich) is a journalist, writer, researcher, public speaker and broadcaster
and is the honorary secretary of the London Film Critics' Circle and a jury associate for the international
film critics' association. Her work has been published in The Times, The Sunday Times Style, Red, The Independent,
The Telegraph, The Guardian and Elle among many others. She has appeared on numerous TV shows, including Newsnight,
BBC1 Breakfast News, BBC2's The Review Show and STV's MovieJuice
Favourite film: Airplane!
Festival Choice: Arrival
Ali Catterall
Ali Catterall (@AliCatterall) is a film journalist based in London, who writes and has written for a
great many journals, some of which actually still exist, including The Guardian, Total Film, Q, Time Out
, and The Word. He is co-author of Your Face Here: British Cult Movies Since the Sixties - a former Book
of the Year for both the BBC and the Independent - and in 2011, hosted the Port Eliot Film Festival.
Favourite film: Theatre of Blood
Festival Choice: Raw
Keswick Peace and Human Rights Group
Our association with Keswick Peace and
Human Rights Group continues with
two special screenings in the Theatre
Studio with post-film discussions on the
topics raised. We Are Many is the story
of the mass protest against the Iraq
war and How the Rich Avoid Tax sees
actor Greg Wise expose the workings
of both tax planners and the HMRC.
Greg Wise will present the screening
and host a Q&A after the film.
Osprey Short Film Awards
Our annual celebration of local filmmaking. A selection of short films in
the running for one of our prestigious
Osprey Short film awards, including an
audience award voted for by you.
Remastered – An Exhibition
Each year at the Festival, students from
Carlisle College produce an exhibition
of movie posters, inspired by the
Festival programme and displayed on
the mezzanine floors of the Theatre by
the Lake. Please take some time out
to look at these stunning artworks.
This year's exhibition is
entitled Remastered:
There is a current trend for designers to
bypass the usual design-by-committee
approach of mainstream film promotion
and, influenced by the anarchic approach
of Communist-era Eastern European
artists who in many cases had no access
to the films they were promoting, create
visually bold images that stand in an
interestingly oblique relation to the film.
These works have been created as
alternative film posters for the films
in festival by Visual Communication
students from the UAL Foundation
Diploma in Art and Design at
Carlisle College of the Arts.