Celebrating its 35th Anniversary. Raise the Red Lantern is about nineteen-year-old Songlian, a promising student whose family has been destroyed by her father’s death, is forced to abandon her studies and marry into wealth, becoming the fourth and newest concubine of the aging, unseen Master Chen. Inside his walled estate, she discovers a household ruled by a merciless ritual: each night, red lanterns are lit outside the chambers of whichever wife the master chooses to visit, granting her privilege and status while the others are cast into cold irrelevance.  

“As visually striking as it is dramatically effective,” Zhang Yimou’s Academy Award-nominated and BAFTA Winner Raise the Red Lantern sumptuously captures 1920s China while “subtly exploring the politics of power and control” (Janet Maslin, The New York Times), your programmer can’t recommend it enough!

Our Wayback Wednesday series returns to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Rocky, the Oscar-winning sports drama that first introduced us to the Italian Stallion.

Rocky Balboa is a Philadelphia club fighter who seems to be going nowhere. But when a stroke of fate puts him in the ring with a world heavyweight champion, Rocky knows that it’s his one shot at the big time — a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go the distance and come out a winner!

£5 for Friends of the Forum members!