Reviews & previews of Films, TV shows and Radio programs.
At a time when thousands of Iraqi anti-government protesters have clashed with security forces in Baghdad demanding jobs and better services, with more than 300 people killed since 1 October, it is appropriate to hear the story of someone who tried to stop the Iraq War of 2003 which devastated the country. 'Official Secrets' is based on the true story of a young whistleblower at the GCHQ survei...
This new docudrama explores the life of the mystic Saint Faustina - the first saint of the New Millennium. It describes the apparitions she experienced and the Divine Mercy devotion she introduced to the world.
Born Helen Kowalska in 1905, she joined the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy as Sister Mary Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament, in Warsaw in 1925. In 1928, she took ...
This film is a companion piece to the last Ken Loach film 'I, Daniel Blake'. Like that film, 'Sorry We Missed You' is also set in the north-east. At the public premiere of the film at the Tyneside Cinema on 23 October, at the question and answer session, the director Ken Loach and screenplay writer Paul Laverty, stated that the idea of the film came from their research for 'I, Daniel Blake'. Fo...
A heartbreaking film about the sexual abuse of children by one Catholic priest in France, and the patient efforts of his victims to seek justice. The canon of films on this subject from countries around the world continues to grow. Earlier this year there was the documentary 'Tell No One' by Polish director Tomasz Sekielski. Now we have 'By the Grace of God' - a soberly-told docudrama from Fre...
The Biggest Little Farm is a documentary following two California dreamers - filmmaker John Chester, his wife Molly, a professional cook and their beloved blue-eyed mongrel dog Todd, who decide to leave their rented flat in the city and set up an organic farm on a burnt-out stretch of land north of Los Angeles. The surrounding land is an ugly industrial moonscape either with miles of derelict b...
Signs of Life (SOL) held their fifth networking lunch on Monday at the Cardinal View in the St Vincent's Centre, Victoria, with an exclusive screening of the HBO documentary Top Ten Monks, introduced by Fr Karl Wallner OCist.
Few monasteries these days have more than a hundred monks, with vocations booming. Fewer still ordain more priests than most dioceses. And hardly any can boast of ha...
This Sunday, 15 September, at 1.15pm, BBC1 Songs of Praise comes from Lourdes.
The Reverend Kate Bottley hosts the programme and tells the story of the shrine which is visited by around six million people a year. She accompanies a pilgrim from Leeds diocese and experiences the baths. She also meets Dr Alessandro Franciscis from the International Medical Committee of Lourdes, who assess p...
When a letter arrives informing Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) that the King and Queen are coming to visit Downton Abbey, everyone upstairs and downstairs is thrown into a frenzy of silver polishing and dress alterations in preparation for their arrival. The staff get very put out when they learn that the Royals are bringing their own cook and their own staff to take charge. But they come up w...
Do you ever find yourself in a cathedral wishing you could get a closer look at some of those features high above? A series of new drone videos offers stunning birds eye views of the beautiful stained glass windows and soaring arches of Arundel Cathedral in West Sussex.
Arundel resident Bryden Isbister, a software consultant, who has produced the cathedral website for many years, came up ...
Summer is a time for a bit of binge TV viewing, especially on an unseasonal wet and windy evening! Well, what better than a series set in the lush lands of Italy's Tuscany and 15th century Florence. I am referring to 'Medici: The Magnificent', currently streaming on Netflix and the second in the Medici series. For eight hour-long episodes it focuses on Lorenzo de Medici and his siblings.
...
'Extraordinary', 'transcendent', 'spine-tingling'. This is just some of the praise from reviewers of Amazing Grace, the film of Aretha Franklin's 1972 recording of what became the best-selling live Gospel album of all time. Intimately filmed in a small church before a local congregation and brought to our screens just as it was recorded almost fifty years ago, why has this film provoked such a ...
A filmmaker from Quebec, Canada, lain Vézina, has received Special Recognition for his documentary THE SISTERS OF NAGASAKI about a group of Catholic nuns who survived the Atomic bomb dropped over Nagasaki, 74 years ago.
The film was given the award at the Ninth th International Uranium Film Festival held in the cinema of Rio de Janeiro's prestigious Modern Art Museum.
The Festival...
We are reminded in Matthew 6:1-4 that we should not trumpet our righteousness in front of others. The Neil Armstrong emerging from this eponymous documentary is the personification of humility and integrity, refusing to claim ownership of his remarkable adventure fifty years ago this month. At every opportunity, he shared the credit for the first Moon landing with the 400,000 people involved in...
BBC Television turns its attention to the work of the National Churches Trust in 'One Day that Changed My Life' on Monday 8 July 2019 as it follows the story of the church of St Mary and the Host of Heaven in Cheveley in Cambridgeshire as it seeks funding from the Trust to install an accessible toilet and a modern kitchenette.
The Grade I listed church of St Mary and the Host of Heaven wa...
