LEICESTER¹S new state of the art film and digital media centre is set to open its doors to the public with a day of free activities showcasing what it has to offer.
Phoenix Square, in the city¹s Cultural Quarter, will open its doors to the public on Thursday, November 19, with a day-long open house event.
From 2pm, visitors will be able to explore the venue for themselves, experiencing 3D show reels in the two full-size cinemas, the screen room, the De Montfort University Cube a unique immersive exhibition area and the Screen Lounge café bar.
At 4pm, a breathtaking outdoor projection and a spectacular light show featuring local youngsters will thrill visitors.
A dramatic free evening event will start at 6.30pm, and will continue an audio-visual exhibition, VJs and live electronic music.
Visitors will also be able to wind back the clock almost 2,000 years and experience an interactive virtual tour of Roman Leicester, or opt for the lifestyle exhibition showcasing Phoenix Square¹s business and living facilities.
As a special opening offer, there¹ll be 10 per cent off the cost of all food and drinks in the Screen Lounge café.
Leicester City Council¹s cabinet member for culture and leisure, Councillor Andy Connelly, said: ³This will be a great opportunity for people to find out about the spectacular range of facilities and entertainment that Phoenix Square has to offer.
³The exterior of this impressive building has become a familiar site on Leicester¹s skyline, so this is the chance for people to find out what is on offer inside.²
Creative director at Phoenix Square, Tom Holley, added: ³We¹re very excited about our future, and our new building, and we¹d like to invite people to come and join us in celebrating our opening.²
Last week, Phoenix Square revealed details of its first-ever season of entertainment, which includes a feast of independent and 3D cinema and digital art. A full-colour brochure with details of all forthcoming events is available from Phoenix Square, as well as local libraries, museums and the Tourist Information Centre.
For details of the opening event, contact Phoenix Square on 0116 242 2801.
Phoenix Square¹s website, highlighting details of all events and attractions, will be launched on Monday, November 16, at www.phoenix.org.uk
In addition, the Box Office will open its doors to take bookings from Thursday, November 19. To contact the Box Office call 0116 242 2800.
Phoenix Square is a unique combination of the arts, workspaces and city living the result of a dynamic partnership between Leicester City Council, Blueprint, East Midlands Development Agency, De Montfort University and Phoenix Arts, with additional support from the European Regional Development Fund, EM-Media and Arts Council England through National Lottery Funds.
(end)
For press enquiries only contact Christian Dezelu in the Press Office on 0116 252 6081, or email christian.dezelu@leicester.gov.uk
Monday, 9 November 2009
Monday, 2 November 2009
Our first programme brochure is out now! We'll be taking bookings shortly
The brochure is out!
PHOENIX SQUARE Film & Digital Media
OPENS Thursday 19th November
Monday, 26 October 2009
On the homeward stretch now London Film Festival
The Times/BFI 53rd London Film Festival comes to an end on Thursday 29th October. You could argue that there's far too many titles but being spoilt for choice is a delicious pleasure, especially in bothersome Britain. Here's a few sentences on some movies I caught during week 2.
AN EDUCATION: A lively adaptation of journalist Lynn Barber's memoir about being a promising 16-year old schoolgirl in middle-class Twickenham in 1961 who gets grandly seduced by a guy maybe twice her age is definitely a class act. Exquisitely faithful to its period the movie oozes acting talent - Emma Thompson, Alfred Molina, and Hollywood heart-throb Peter Sarsgaard sporting a pretty convincing British accent - as O-levels get the heave-ho when our heroine is whisked off for a romantic weekend in Paris. But does it end happily? You'll just have to see it to find out!
UP IN THE AIR: Probably the best acting job George Clooney has turned in for a long time, this diamond-sharp satirical rom-com about a man whose job is to fire people on behalf of companies that haven't the guts to do it themselves, sees the ever debonair Clooney flying all over the USA and revelling in the experience of having no ties, romantic or family-wise, with other people. But then he has great sex with another high-flyer and the undercarriage starts to come down under his perfect little lifestyle. Very funny and surprisingly un-Hollywood when it comes in to land, this is grown-up popular cinema at its best.
KICKS: Two Liverpool teenagers, Nicole and Jasmine, lead a pretty dull life where the only highpoint is hanging around the Anfield gates looking out for their favourite midfield player, the gorgeous, rich, and inevitably egotistical Lee Cassidy. But as luck would have it the two girls find themselves in a position that comprehensively beats Lee literally to a standstill. Attractivly shot and played with gusto this is a nicely barbed comment on celebrity culture though a bigger budget might have added depth to some of the 'Scouse cliches.
VALHALLA RISING: Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn made the gruelling Pusher films plus one of 2008's best movies, Bronson, before embarking on this weird hybrid Viking epic that plays like a mash-up between Werner Horzog and Akira Kurosawa. Shot entirely in Scotland and starring Mads Mikkelsen (the villian from Casino Royale) as One-Eye, a mute brute whose violence is so nasty everyone thinks he's been "brought up from Hell", there's lots of moody, broody shots of the astonishing landscapes, bouts of ultra-blood-letting, and huge dollops of spiritual philosophising, that don't all quite sit together. But its vision is undeniable.
BRIGHT STAR: Alongside the new 3D version of A Christmas Carol, Jane (The Piano) Campion's lastest foray into the female centred period picture, Bright Star will open the new Phoenix Square cinema programme on 19th November. The film itself portrays the two-year romance between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawn, the daughter of his next-door neighbor when he lived in Hamstead in 1819. Bautifully captured through the changing seasons, the on-off affair never quite get through the bedroom door but there are enough heaving bosoms and anguished cries to make this one of the most impressive pictures of the year. As a love story it resolutely does not seek out your tears but there were few dry eyes at the screening I attended.
METROPIA: Worst film so far. A dreary, washed-out animated sci-fi movie from Sweden, Denmark, and Norway (and with its unrelenting coldness you can really feel it) about - you guessed it! - a world of soul-less government spying on downtrodden proles and the efforts of one man who fights back. Metropia has moments of visual thematic brilliance but not enough by a long chalk to sustain interest in its mere 80mins running time. Didn't help either that the screening took place in what might be the worst cinema in London, the Vue 9, where crap sightlines and the backs of people's heads really were invented by Big Brother.
AN EDUCATION: A lively adaptation of journalist Lynn Barber's memoir about being a promising 16-year old schoolgirl in middle-class Twickenham in 1961 who gets grandly seduced by a guy maybe twice her age is definitely a class act. Exquisitely faithful to its period the movie oozes acting talent - Emma Thompson, Alfred Molina, and Hollywood heart-throb Peter Sarsgaard sporting a pretty convincing British accent - as O-levels get the heave-ho when our heroine is whisked off for a romantic weekend in Paris. But does it end happily? You'll just have to see it to find out!
UP IN THE AIR: Probably the best acting job George Clooney has turned in for a long time, this diamond-sharp satirical rom-com about a man whose job is to fire people on behalf of companies that haven't the guts to do it themselves, sees the ever debonair Clooney flying all over the USA and revelling in the experience of having no ties, romantic or family-wise, with other people. But then he has great sex with another high-flyer and the undercarriage starts to come down under his perfect little lifestyle. Very funny and surprisingly un-Hollywood when it comes in to land, this is grown-up popular cinema at its best.
KICKS: Two Liverpool teenagers, Nicole and Jasmine, lead a pretty dull life where the only highpoint is hanging around the Anfield gates looking out for their favourite midfield player, the gorgeous, rich, and inevitably egotistical Lee Cassidy. But as luck would have it the two girls find themselves in a position that comprehensively beats Lee literally to a standstill. Attractivly shot and played with gusto this is a nicely barbed comment on celebrity culture though a bigger budget might have added depth to some of the 'Scouse cliches.
VALHALLA RISING: Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn made the gruelling Pusher films plus one of 2008's best movies, Bronson, before embarking on this weird hybrid Viking epic that plays like a mash-up between Werner Horzog and Akira Kurosawa. Shot entirely in Scotland and starring Mads Mikkelsen (the villian from Casino Royale) as One-Eye, a mute brute whose violence is so nasty everyone thinks he's been "brought up from Hell", there's lots of moody, broody shots of the astonishing landscapes, bouts of ultra-blood-letting, and huge dollops of spiritual philosophising, that don't all quite sit together. But its vision is undeniable.
BRIGHT STAR: Alongside the new 3D version of A Christmas Carol, Jane (The Piano) Campion's lastest foray into the female centred period picture, Bright Star will open the new Phoenix Square cinema programme on 19th November. The film itself portrays the two-year romance between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawn, the daughter of his next-door neighbor when he lived in Hamstead in 1819. Bautifully captured through the changing seasons, the on-off affair never quite get through the bedroom door but there are enough heaving bosoms and anguished cries to make this one of the most impressive pictures of the year. As a love story it resolutely does not seek out your tears but there were few dry eyes at the screening I attended.
METROPIA: Worst film so far. A dreary, washed-out animated sci-fi movie from Sweden, Denmark, and Norway (and with its unrelenting coldness you can really feel it) about - you guessed it! - a world of soul-less government spying on downtrodden proles and the efforts of one man who fights back. Metropia has moments of visual thematic brilliance but not enough by a long chalk to sustain interest in its mere 80mins running time. Didn't help either that the screening took place in what might be the worst cinema in London, the Vue 9, where crap sightlines and the backs of people's heads really were invented by Big Brother.
Monday, 19 October 2009
More Film Reporting for the London Film Festival
Alan our Film Programmer is staying true to his word.. see below!
PAPER HEART: A semi-fake "documentary" about the efforts of kooky comedienne and actress Charlyne Yi (good in Knocked Up) to find out if ther's such a thing as love and whether she can have some, there just weren't enough funny bits to justify its cute though over-smart concept. Credibility gets strained when Yi meets real-life Hollywood actor Michael Cera (the geeky boyfriend in Juno) who maybe/may-not she falls in love with. Has Marmite all over it.
THE ROAD: An almost biblical adapation of Cormac McCarthy's haunting novel about the end of civilisation and its brutal aftermath, John (The Assissination of Jesse James) Hillcoat's direction is as faultless as the acting (by Viggo Mortensen especially) which totally carries you along with its tale of a father and his 12-year-old son walking through an annihilated USA towards the sea. En route they fight off hunger, a lot of doomy SFX, and remarkably scary cannibals. You never find out what took the world out but surviving the Armageddon of The Road proves a profoundly rewarding watch.
ENTER THE VOID: French bad-boy Gasper Noe (Seul Conta Tout, Irreversible) turned up in person at the start of his latest assult on the senses (sonic, visual, and moral) and described his nearly 3 hour hallucinatory death epic as "Long and painful on your eyes. Enjoy the trip”. With more CGI than Avatar and a trillion times more sex (top of which was a "vagina-cam" shot of an ejaculating penis; which on a screen the size of Centre Court was pretty gobsmacking!) you can't deny Noe's genius for technique, but anyone looking for simple things like a story or characters you might care about for more than 2 minutes, should probably look elsewhere. Best film ever made though if you're incredibly and hopelessly stoned.
WHITE MATERIAL: The always excellent Claire Denis surprises yet again with an utterly contemporary portrait of a family of washed up French colonials getting their comeuppence when a coup breaks out in their tropical African country and life, dreams, history, everything, becomes very cheap indeed. A mesmerising performance (as always) from Isabelle Huppert as the mother fighting hard to keep everyone going when in fact they're all just falling down around her, is matched by some genuinely chilling scenes of drugged-up 10-year-old with machetes and Christophe Lambert (remember him from The Highlander movies?) looking older than a dried up coffe-bean. A must-see brilliant piece of cinema.
PAPER HEART: A semi-fake "documentary" about the efforts of kooky comedienne and actress Charlyne Yi (good in Knocked Up) to find out if ther's such a thing as love and whether she can have some, there just weren't enough funny bits to justify its cute though over-smart concept. Credibility gets strained when Yi meets real-life Hollywood actor Michael Cera (the geeky boyfriend in Juno) who maybe/may-not she falls in love with. Has Marmite all over it.
THE ROAD: An almost biblical adapation of Cormac McCarthy's haunting novel about the end of civilisation and its brutal aftermath, John (The Assissination of Jesse James) Hillcoat's direction is as faultless as the acting (by Viggo Mortensen especially) which totally carries you along with its tale of a father and his 12-year-old son walking through an annihilated USA towards the sea. En route they fight off hunger, a lot of doomy SFX, and remarkably scary cannibals. You never find out what took the world out but surviving the Armageddon of The Road proves a profoundly rewarding watch.
ENTER THE VOID: French bad-boy Gasper Noe (Seul Conta Tout, Irreversible) turned up in person at the start of his latest assult on the senses (sonic, visual, and moral) and described his nearly 3 hour hallucinatory death epic as "Long and painful on your eyes. Enjoy the trip”. With more CGI than Avatar and a trillion times more sex (top of which was a "vagina-cam" shot of an ejaculating penis; which on a screen the size of Centre Court was pretty gobsmacking!) you can't deny Noe's genius for technique, but anyone looking for simple things like a story or characters you might care about for more than 2 minutes, should probably look elsewhere. Best film ever made though if you're incredibly and hopelessly stoned.
WHITE MATERIAL: The always excellent Claire Denis surprises yet again with an utterly contemporary portrait of a family of washed up French colonials getting their comeuppence when a coup breaks out in their tropical African country and life, dreams, history, everything, becomes very cheap indeed. A mesmerising performance (as always) from Isabelle Huppert as the mother fighting hard to keep everyone going when in fact they're all just falling down around her, is matched by some genuinely chilling scenes of drugged-up 10-year-old with machetes and Christophe Lambert (remember him from The Highlander movies?) looking older than a dried up coffe-bean. A must-see brilliant piece of cinema.
Phoenix Square Film & Digital Media Appoints Creative Director
Phoenix Square Film & Digital Media is proud to announce the appointment of Tom Holley as its Creative Director. Tom Holley is a highly experienced Creative Director with a proven ability to deliver an inspiring vision for Phoenix Square as we enter the next phase of our development and deliver a vibrant programme embracing the best of world cinema, digital arts, electronic arts, and the creative application of new and emerging technologies in collaboration with De Montfort University.
Tom has previously posts include Creative Director at The Media Centre (Huddersfield), Head of New Media at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Head of Digital Projects at Eyestorm (London), and Lead Designer at BBC Online (London). Tom has worked with hundreds of international artists, film-makers, musicians, and designers including John Maeda, Greyworld, Susan Hiller, Richard Wilson, Mike Leigh, Damien Hirst and Pan Sonic.
He holds two MAs - in Fine Art (Slade School of Art, UCL) and Design for Interactive Media (Middlesex University) and has been a Senior Research Fellow. He has been an invited evaluator for numerous organisations including NESTA and ISEA.
Phoenix Square is home to apartments, creative industry, cinema, exhibitions, media production and a cafe bar it opens to the public on Thursday 19th November.
Tom Holley Creative Director Quote:
I am delighted to take up this appointment at such an exciting time in the development of Phoenix Square and I look forward to shaping and delivering a world-class programme of events and activities across all aspects of our programme in the coming months. I am convinced that Phoenix Square will become a leading centre for creative and cultural production of national and international significance.
Ted Cassidy Chair of Phoenix Square Film & Digital Media:
Tom Holley is a truly valuable asset to Phoenix Square. His deep knowledge of the digital arts sector and his passion for learning will add a rich and exciting element to the creative aspect of the venue.
Tom has previously posts include Creative Director at The Media Centre (Huddersfield), Head of New Media at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Head of Digital Projects at Eyestorm (London), and Lead Designer at BBC Online (London). Tom has worked with hundreds of international artists, film-makers, musicians, and designers including John Maeda, Greyworld, Susan Hiller, Richard Wilson, Mike Leigh, Damien Hirst and Pan Sonic.
He holds two MAs - in Fine Art (Slade School of Art, UCL) and Design for Interactive Media (Middlesex University) and has been a Senior Research Fellow. He has been an invited evaluator for numerous organisations including NESTA and ISEA.
Phoenix Square is home to apartments, creative industry, cinema, exhibitions, media production and a cafe bar it opens to the public on Thursday 19th November.
Tom Holley Creative Director Quote:
I am delighted to take up this appointment at such an exciting time in the development of Phoenix Square and I look forward to shaping and delivering a world-class programme of events and activities across all aspects of our programme in the coming months. I am convinced that Phoenix Square will become a leading centre for creative and cultural production of national and international significance.
Ted Cassidy Chair of Phoenix Square Film & Digital Media:
Tom Holley is a truly valuable asset to Phoenix Square. His deep knowledge of the digital arts sector and his passion for learning will add a rich and exciting element to the creative aspect of the venue.
Thursday, 15 October 2009
So far at the London Film Festival
Not yet a week in and here's a quick run-down on some of the better (and worse) movies that Phoenix Square's intrepid film programmer has seen at the 53rd London Film Festival.
SHE, A CHINESE. A co-production between local funding outfit EM-media and Screen Yorkshire, this is an extremely hybrid tale of a slacker girl from contemporary rural China who blows the stash of her dead gangster boyfriend on a ticket to London. But when she gets there all the usual miserable urban stuff happens (exploitation, sex, more exploitation, more sex, ultimately pregnancy) until she gets knocked-up and the picture ends. While the film stays in grungy, Nowheresville Chine the movie is terrific. As soon as it gets to Blighty...nuff said.
LA DANSE. Absorbing if very long documentary about the Paris ballet from king of the genre Frederick Wiseman. As with all Wiseman's work when you finally emerge from this immersive experience you feel as if part of your life actually took place in the environment. Remarkably intimate, and if your into ballet, an absolutely must-see experience.
A SINGLE MAN. Forget Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, this meticulous recreation of a day in the life of a gay ex-pat English teacher living in LA in the late 1960s is awe-inspiring. Shot in too-die-for wide-screen and featuring a succession of simply knock-out scenes that focus on this distant, intelligent, elegant, but also tragic single man left few dry eyes at the screening I attended. If it has a fault, it's almost too beautiful.
44 INCH CHEST. A self-indulgent romp for a gang of the UK's finest character actors - Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, Ian McShane - this four-letter heavy chamber piece concerns the efforts of a group of aging Sarf London mobsters to follow the wishes of one of their members who has been royally cuckolded by a sexy French waiter. Foul mouthed, ill-conceived, and even at an hour and a half too f**king long.
SAMSON & DELILAH. Proof positive that Australia can do miserablism with the best of them, this well-intentioned, well-made, and distinctly honest tale of a couple of teenage Aboriginals drawn together by random events, spares no-one in its depiction of the cruelty of white Australian society and the depths that basically "good" people can sink to before help - and that's self-help - gets them back on the hard road to a better life. Great music.
HADEWIJCH. The latest bulletin from the extraordinary imagination of Bruno Dumont examines the consequences of a Jesus-obsessed 19-year old girl-child who starts by being booted out of a convent because she's "too religious" and ends up planting Muslim bombs on the Paris Metro. A meditation on faith and the extremely bizarre places it can take you permeates this rigorous, exquisitely cinematic, experience. Virtually impossible to imagine a modern British film that could contain so may layers of meaning in a contemporary setting: Ken Loach/Mike Leigh plus genuine mysticism! This particular reviewer's best film so far.
And more to come folks....
SHE, A CHINESE. A co-production between local funding outfit EM-media and Screen Yorkshire, this is an extremely hybrid tale of a slacker girl from contemporary rural China who blows the stash of her dead gangster boyfriend on a ticket to London. But when she gets there all the usual miserable urban stuff happens (exploitation, sex, more exploitation, more sex, ultimately pregnancy) until she gets knocked-up and the picture ends. While the film stays in grungy, Nowheresville Chine the movie is terrific. As soon as it gets to Blighty...nuff said.
LA DANSE. Absorbing if very long documentary about the Paris ballet from king of the genre Frederick Wiseman. As with all Wiseman's work when you finally emerge from this immersive experience you feel as if part of your life actually took place in the environment. Remarkably intimate, and if your into ballet, an absolutely must-see experience.
A SINGLE MAN. Forget Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, this meticulous recreation of a day in the life of a gay ex-pat English teacher living in LA in the late 1960s is awe-inspiring. Shot in too-die-for wide-screen and featuring a succession of simply knock-out scenes that focus on this distant, intelligent, elegant, but also tragic single man left few dry eyes at the screening I attended. If it has a fault, it's almost too beautiful.
44 INCH CHEST. A self-indulgent romp for a gang of the UK's finest character actors - Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, Ian McShane - this four-letter heavy chamber piece concerns the efforts of a group of aging Sarf London mobsters to follow the wishes of one of their members who has been royally cuckolded by a sexy French waiter. Foul mouthed, ill-conceived, and even at an hour and a half too f**king long.
SAMSON & DELILAH. Proof positive that Australia can do miserablism with the best of them, this well-intentioned, well-made, and distinctly honest tale of a couple of teenage Aboriginals drawn together by random events, spares no-one in its depiction of the cruelty of white Australian society and the depths that basically "good" people can sink to before help - and that's self-help - gets them back on the hard road to a better life. Great music.
HADEWIJCH. The latest bulletin from the extraordinary imagination of Bruno Dumont examines the consequences of a Jesus-obsessed 19-year old girl-child who starts by being booted out of a convent because she's "too religious" and ends up planting Muslim bombs on the Paris Metro. A meditation on faith and the extremely bizarre places it can take you permeates this rigorous, exquisitely cinematic, experience. Virtually impossible to imagine a modern British film that could contain so may layers of meaning in a contemporary setting: Ken Loach/Mike Leigh plus genuine mysticism! This particular reviewer's best film so far.
And more to come folks....
Friday, 4 September 2009
PHOENIX SQUARE: Jobs for Operations & Customer Service
We are seeking to employ candidates with expert customer service skills to fill the operational posts within Phoenix Square - Film & Digital Media.
Assistant Operations Managers - £8.78 per hour
Box Office Assistants - £6.52 per hour
Casual Front of House Assistants - £6.19 per hour
Closing date: Wednesday 16th September
For more information and to apply please contact Lotte Coleman via lotte.coleman@phoenix.org.uk or 0116 224 7700
Assistant Operations Managers - £8.78 per hour
Box Office Assistants - £6.52 per hour
Casual Front of House Assistants - £6.19 per hour
Closing date: Wednesday 16th September
For more information and to apply please contact Lotte Coleman via lotte.coleman@phoenix.org.uk or 0116 224 7700
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