Each week Cinema Curator, Mark Cosgrove, reflects on this week’s Watershed’s cinema programme and performance of individual titles over the weekend before looking ahead to what’s coming up.
A break last week whilst at Berlin Film Festival, where films like Wang Quan’an’s Öndög, Mark Jenkins’ homegrown Bait and Wang Xiaoshuai’s So Long, My Son were the highlights – but more on that later.
Back in holdover/opening weekend figures it was great to see Lee Chang-dong’s Burning continue to do well at the UK box-office. We kept it on for a third week and could have easily done a fourth if we had had the space.
However there is still a lot of competition for space with Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk opening brilliantly and holding well in its second weekend and A Private War doing fantastic opening weekend business at Watershed – much better that I was anticipating.
All making this weekend coming tricky as I try to keep all of these whilst opening Capernaum, Old Boys and Teddy Prendergrass!
Acknowledgement should be given for the Japan Foundation Touring Programme. We have been a partner on this for a few years now and the films – all relatively unknown in the UK – continue to attract strong audiences for single shows.
Mark Cosgrove
Watershed Cinema Curator
Film Hub South West Chair