Maxine Peake (appearing in person at Mostly British) kills as they say in the comedy trade, playing the title character with unflinching boldness and grit that absolutely mesmerizes. As a female standup comic trying to make it in the northern working men’s clubs of the 70s, she confronts the unrelenting sexism and violence surrounding working class women in Northern England. Through a collage of flashbacks, we learn how resilience was knocked into her by an abusive father, husband, and broken alcoholic mother. Funny Cow stands a vibrant, firebrand dressed in red with corkscrew blonde hair and bright red lips, using comedy as her lifeline, amid a dreary, harsh, grimy cityscape. She has a fur coat and fancy sports car for comfort but they can’t erase the deep hurt in her soul. This film makes us uncomfortable. We may not laugh but we will think. Remember Archie Rice in The Entertainer – he was “dead behind the eyes”. Funny Cow calls herself “a monster behind the eyes”.  But no, she is just trying to survive and we applaud her for it. Miss Peake and board member Tony Broadbent will introduce the film and participate in a Q & A following the screening.  

2017 UK (92 mins)

GUEST OF HONOR:  MAXINE PEAKE
English actress Maxine Peake will join us at the festival with two of her new films, which she will introduce and participate in a Q & A following the screenings. She stars in “Peterloo,” as the mother of a young British conscript in this story of the infamous 1819 massacre at Peterloo. In “Funny Cow” she plays a female comic attempting in the 1970s to find a place in England’s comedy circuit. The Guardian wrote of her performance “Peake rises magnificently to the challenge of the role, her face flickering between a practical smile and a silent scream.” She is a regular on the Hulu show “The Bisexual” and is known in the UK for lead roles in the TV series “Dinnerladies” and “Shameless.” She has also appeared in “Black Mirror” and the movie “The Theory of Everything.” Her stage work includes the title characters in “Hamlet” and “Miss Julie” and as Blanche in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” a performance The Guardian described as “exquisite” and “breathtaking.”

Breezing onto the big screen like a small-screen observational comedy, complete with a deadpan voiceover, longtime collaborators director Jamie Thraves and actor Aiden Gillen’s (“Game of Thrones,” “The Wire”) latest is a not-exactly-documentary-not-really-fiction film– a low-fi, freewheeling, meta-riff on fame with Gillen playing an iteration of himself, an actor named Aidan who lives alone with a dog, struggles to connect with his (real-life) teenage daughter, and has mixed feelings about fame. He has a bad back, can’t sleep, and is playing a serial killer – the element which eventually lifts this good-natured Dublin-set charmer into pure fiction. One hopes. With a dark underpinning that repeatedly bubbles to the surface, a solid sense of humor, and a rollicking lens on the absurd, this is a uniquely entertaining film. Ireland 2017 (75 minutes)

Due to technical difficulties at the Vogue Theater, Black ’47 will be played at the Balboa Theater (3630 Balboa Street, San Francisco) on Sunday, February 17 at 7:30 PM.

Irish filmmaker Lance Daly takes on the Great Famine and its worst year, 1847, resulting in a powerful revenge tale the Guardian calls “harrowingly effective.” Australian actor James Frecheville ( “Animal Kingdom”) gives a coldly terrifying performance as an Irishman who deserts from the British army and returns to his homeland to discover the truth about how his family has been tyrannized and allowed to die in squalor and misery. He is pursued by disgraced English soldier-turned-policeman (Hugo Weaving), a drawlingly arrogant officer (Freddie Fox), and a tracker-guide (Stephen Rea from “The Crying Game”). The superb cast is rounded out by Jim Broadbent as an evil absentee landlord. This viscerally tough, insightful film contains lively historical detail concerning the exploitation of Irish Catholics, including a riveting scene showing “Souperism,” wherein evangelical Protestants offered a meal to poor, starving Catholics in exchange for conversion. A huge hit in Ireland, the film benefits from the majesty of cinematographer Declan Quinn’s wide vistas. Irish 2018 (100 minutes)

Called Ireland’s “most maverick moviemaker” by The Irish Times, Director Liam O Mochain’s third feature is an omnibus film, comprising seven interconnecting tales, each inspired by a true story, with the director himself at the center as a likable loser working the Lost & Found at an Irish country rail station. An older man begs for train fare to Dublin. A cranky pub owner with wild ideas keeps refurbishing his unpopular pub. A marriage proposal at an airport goes hideously wrong. On her deathbed, an old woman recalls valuables left behind when fleeing the war, inspiring her grandson into an unlikely treasure hunt. One ambitious “bridezilla” is determined to keep her booking at a wedding venue, even though she no longer has a willing groom…or does she? The breezy vignettes weave these characters and others into and out of each other’s lives bringing deeper meaning and ingenuity to the movie’s title. A truly independent film filled with humor and humanity, this low-key charmer will leave your heart warmed and your spirit lifted. 

Ireland 2017 (92 minutes)

Please observe the film’s new date and time:

Anna Paquin, whose mercurial career has gone from Oscar winner for “The Piano” to TV star of “True Blood” and “Game of Thrones,” appears in this sweet unexpected love story as a physician named Jean who returns to her hometown where she maintains bee colonies in her backyard. When one of her patients is evicted she invites him and his sister to stay with her, and a romance slowly sparks between the two women. Based on a novel by noted British actress Fiona Shaw, the movie is, in the words of the Toronto International Film Festival where it showed, “a story of courage in the face of terrifying intolerance. Love comes in myriad forms here: romantic love and the vocational love that a caregiver feels for her community—even when the community turns on her. Beautiful to look at, suspenseful, sexy and deeply touching, this film from director Annabel Jankel reminds us that opening our hearts to the possibility of love can be reward enough.” UK 2018 (106 minutes)

Please observe the film’s new date and time:

Warring stepbrothers compete for the affections of a worldly Irish singer on the road from Shetland to Glasgow in a fearlessly funny, bold and beautiful drama with tremendous energy and personality. Lushly photographed, sexy, cool, anarchic and honest, with a trio of charismatic young actors at the center, Welsh-born writer-director-punk musician Philip John’s first feature is a simply drawn, but intricately thought out right-of-passage film that recalls the quirky nuance of Bill Forsyth and the rock-n-roll charge of Danny Boyle. Winner Best Film Newport Beach Film Festival.

UK/Ireland 2016 (93 minutes)

Sponsored by Bruce Lymbum

Gemma Atherton (“Made in Dagenham”) brings her fierce intelligence to this story of a depressed housewife in a London suburb who is suffocating in her quiet life. The film captures the monotony of suburbia where the wife’s only rewards appear to be good behavior from her children and an encouraging word from her self-absorbed husband, chillingly played by Dominic Cooper (“Mamma Mia!). But no one in her house seems to acknowledge her plight, or to care. She tries making a bold move to reclaim her life, but not in the way one might expect. The situation is relatable and both leads are at the top of their game.

UK 2018 115 minutes

Michael Caine invites you to come celebrate the 1960s—the Decade that Changed the World. Freedom from tradition and convention was the hallmark of a social revolution. A pop culture awakening impacted everything from art, music, and clothing, to morality and religion. This documentary is a vivid and often times very funny narrative love letter  about the UK’s postwar outpouring of working-class  creativity and Caine’s own, very personal journey through 1960s Swinging London. Loaded with rare archival film footage from the era and with voiceover interviews with Paul McCartney, Twiggy, Marianne Faithfull, David Bailey, Roger Daltrey and Mary Quant. Also heard from are Lulu, Twiggy, Joan Collins, Sandie Shaw and David Putnam, all accompanied by a truly wondrous soundtrack of the times: The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks, The Who, The Animals, et al. Great fun. Not to be missed. 2018 (85 minutes) “Looking for Lennon” and “My Generation” introduced by Tony  Broadbent, author of the guidebook ‘”From Be-Bop-a-Lula’ to “Beatlemania’ – The  Beatles Early Years in Liverpool, Hamburg and London.”

To understand The Beatles—and what made John Lennon the man he was—you have to understand Liverpool, the city that gave birth to Lennon and The Fab Four. Director Roger Appleton’s documentary is a Liverpool focused retrospective on the early life and times—and traumatic events—that went to shape Lennon’s complex personality and influence his later songs and music. It reveals—with painful candor—how Lennon was an “outsider” from birth and how it impacted his schooldays and teenage years. And how it ultimately drove him to form his first group, The Quarrymen, then led to his early embrace of rock ‘n’ roll and his meeting with fellow rock ‘n’ roll mad Paul McCartney. Friends and contemporaries give new and very telling details about…the man we’ve known for all these years. Introduced by Tony Broadbent, author of the guidebook “’From Be-Bop-a-Lula’ to ‘Beatlemania’- The Beatles Early years in Liverpool. Hamburg and London

UK  2018 93 minutes