Putting on the Ritz – fizz on ice, canapes on order – for our glam Great Gatsby members’ only social tonight!

Tonight we have a full house for our free screeing of ‘The Great Gatsby’ (J Clayton, 1974) with Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Bruce Dern and Karen Black – full of 70s glamour and recreating F Scott Fitzgerald’s masterly and iconic novel. A special black tie event for members’ to dress up in suitable vintage glamour style, we’re going to have some fun tonight ‘old sport’!

First we’re enjoying fizz and canapés – plus a quick film quiz to help the evening go with a swing – and a preview of our Autumn programme and 1st Birthday film festival 26-29 September.

We’re even showing Baz Luhrmann’s spectacular ‘The Great Gatsby’ with Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan and Isla Fisher (with music by Jay Z) as one of our free films on Saturday 28 September.

Unfairly lukewarm reviews didn’t appreciate the scale of the glamour and bravura production design in this year’s version, with some great sequences reminiscent of  Luhrmann’s ambitious ‘Moulin Rouge’. Also, although Leonardo DiCaprio might not have lived up to Redford’s WASP ideal, he is arguably actually much closer to Fitzgerald’s writing, as the narrator Nick Carraway describes him as a ‘ redneck’ and DiCaprio appropriately rarely looks completely comfortable with the trappings of his ‘new money’. So come and see it and you can compare the two films for yourself.

We’re delighted so many of you like FILMBOX – it is proof positive that films are better on the big screen with an audience. Experiencing the collective emotions of an audience in response to a wide range of films is hard to beat and our ‘social cinema’ has to be better than staying at home! We’ve been shortlisted (out of 4) for a national annual award – Best New Film Society – by the British Federation of Film Societies – http://www.bffs.org.uk. We’re in great company as the opposiition is tough! The winners will be announced at the British Film Institute http://bfi.org.uk on the South Bank London, on Sunday 22 September – fingers crossed and wish us luck. A HUGE thank you to all our helpers and patrons who have made our first year SO successul.