At September’s meet up Yeong Sang-ho’s Colony went down well and we thought it was better than some of the reviews would suggest. We plan to meet again on Thursday 1st October at 7.30 to discuss th…

At September’s meet up Yeong Sang-ho’s Colony went down well and we thought it was better than some of the reviews would suggest. We plan to meet again on Thursday 1st October at 7.30 to discuss this year’s LIFF programme which will be announced that day. You could also see one of three varied films Sense and Sensibility, Queen at Sea or Hope

We took a summer holiday break from FT in August but did enjoy The Dark Crystal on Yorkshire Day. We plan to meet up on September 3rd in the bar area from 8pm. As ever you can come along to chat about anything you’ve seen recently or see any of the great films screening that day. Two are new films from very interesting directors: Yeong Sang-ho’s Colony is an intense, but fun, blood-soaked horror; Pedro Almodovar’s Bitter Christmas explores meta-layers of story-telling. An alternative is the equally blood soaked and equally meta Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

Sunday 13th September from 2pmHyde Park Picture House As part of this years Heritage Open Days we'll be holding our Annual General Meeting at the Picture House on Sunday 13th September. There will be a free screening of John Grierson's seminal silent documentary Drifters at 2pm followed by refreshments and our AGM. There are more details about the Annual General Meeting including the agenda and associated documents on our AGM 2026 website page.  DriftersThe story of Britain's North Sea herring fisheries, filmed at Lerwick, in the Shetlands, Lowestoft and Yarmouth and in the North Sea…

Our sponsored screening for Yorkshire Day this year is the epic fantasy The Dark Crystal, Saturday 1st August 11am, which has a pre-screening puppet-making activity from 10.30am. The film’s connection with Yorkshire is its use of several famous landscapes in the county including Gordale Scar, Brimham Rocks and Ilkley Moor. As this is already a ‘Pay what you can’ screening there are no member ticket reductions this year. The screening is part of the No Strings On Me: Cinema’s Living Puppet season which also features Muppet Treasure Island, Pinocchio, The Neverending Story, Return To Oz, Team America and a number of puppet workshops.

My name is Jon Holmes and I'm a former Friends of HPPH member who lived in Headingley for 12 years, leaving in 2013 to continue pursuing a career in sports journalism. The Picture House was one of the most important places in my world - I loved our Film Club meetings and getting to chat about whatever movie we'd just seen that night. Before writing this, I looked up an old film blog I used to keep from 2010 to 2012. It mentions many of the HPPH screenings I saw around that time - from "A Single Man" to "Submarine", from "Laura" to "Lilting"...

Happily after a 'reel film' drought we have new newly released Rose of Nevada screening from a 35mm print this coming Saturday and Sunday. The film is directed by Mark Jenkins and produced by the BFI. This new release, like the director's previous film Bait (2019), was shot on 16mm and blown-up to 35mm. I was only able to see Bait in a digital transfer but it was a movie worth watching.  Rose of Nevada comes with a lot of recommendations from critics and personally from friends who have already seen it.

We very much enjoyed last month’s First Thursday with people stopping by to chat after Slow or before heading in to see The Blue Trail. There was an appreciation of Mark Jenkin's films and anticipation for Rose of Nevada (should we see it now or wait until the 35mm screenings on June 6th and 7th?) We will be meeting again on Thursday June 4th when you will have to make a difficult choice from a very varied selection. As part of the Cinema Africa strand there is the great opportunity to see the best…

We will be meeting again on Thursday May 7th when the Picture House is screening four very different but equally special films. You might enjoy a bit of early evening horror in Hokum or the much mo…

We will be meeting again on Thursday May 7th when the Picture House is screening four very different but equally special films. You might enjoy a bit of early evening horror in Hokum or the much more gentle 16mm Lithuanian film Slow which premiered at Sundance in 2023 and closed LIFF2023. You could also see Primavera which explores aspects of Vivialdi's life or the amazing Brazilian feature The Blue Trail which follows the adventures of 77year old Tereza as she challenges her society's expectations for older citizens. We aim to be in the bar between the early and later evening screenings from 7.45pm.

We very much enjoyed First Thursday on 5th February when Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice was the most popular choice of the evening. We will be meeting again on Thursday March 5th when we will aim to be in the bar between the early and later evening screenings from 7.30pm. Lots and lots of choice this month "Wuthering Heights", If I Had Legs I'd Kick You and Sirat and as ever you can just come along to chat about these or any films you've seen recently without necessarily seeing them on the night.

This British-born director who became an important international film-maker died in October last year, aged 90. He made a number of important films categorised as docudramas, though alternative documentaries would cover his varied work better. His distinctive approach was to present historic, contemporary or possible future events in a newsreel or TV style, highlighting both political narratives but also thee treatment of these by the media. His uncompromising approach did not fit with the dominant values of the mainstream media and his work was censored, banned or just difficult for audiences to access.

Our first event of our 2026 calendar will be First Thursday on 5th February. We will aim to meet in the bar around 7:30pm between the screenings of Nouvelle Vague at 17:40 and No Other Choice at 20:10 and some of us will stay to watch No Other Choice.

We hope you can join us on Thursday 4th December for our First Thursday meetup or Wednesday 17th for our Christmas screening of Tokyo Godfathers

This year's Festival runs from November 12th until December 6th, including two titles appearing in the Leeds International Film Festival. The complete programme is presented on the LPFF webpages. There are twelve events, both feature titles and documentaries, and art/activity events. Happily, several of the screenings are at the Hyde Park Picture House. These include two much anticipated new works from Palestinian and Arab film-makers. In the coming week there is a screening of Palestine 36 (2025); it is already sold out but there are further screenings of the feature in December.

The Leeds International Film Festival (LIFF2025) starts today with Richard Linklater's Blue Moon as one of the opening films at the Picture House. As well as the festival screenings, Bugonia and The Choral are also showing in the regular Picture House programme. Other festival highlights included the free breakfast screenings of Holiday and Roman Holiday, It Was Just An Accident, Die My Love, Rental Family, Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, Game + Q&A and the Night Of The Dead all-nighter returns. Four our First Thursday meetup we'll be getting together in the bar around 8pm after the screening of…

Showing as part of their reRun strand, the Picture House presents Wong Kar-wai’s esteemed masterpiece, In the Mood for Love. Set against a smoky, rain-soaked 1960s Hong Kong, the lives of neighbours Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen become quietly entwined after discovering a shared betrayal. What unfolds is a visually sublime, temporal meditation on desire, longing and human connection, and an aching love letter to a Hong Kong that no longer exists. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the film’s release. A quarter-century on, it is enduringly beloved and celebrated not only as a landmark in Asian cinema, but as one of the greatest films ever made.

Last Thursday I caught the showing of the lurid, controversial and oh so millennial work that is Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers as part of the Guilt-free Pleasures season at the Picture House. Having never seen the film in cinemas before, I was eager to revisit it in all of its neon-clad glory. The existing cult following of Spring Breakers has seen a revival in recent years thanks to the pop culture phenomenon that was Charli XCX’s BRAT - a conceptual dance album that echoes the film’s motifs of party culture - and the track Spring Breakers that appeared on its deluxe edition last summer.

Harrogate Film Society is looking back on 70 incredible years of its own history in a position where it now has its highest-ever membership.

Spoiler warning for Fire Walk With Me and Twin Peaks (TV Series) Enveloping totality: the scalding heat of violence tears open the moment. In simultaneity, violence is birthed and combusts, an eclipsed instant of creation and destruction. White-hot, flashing and brazen, shattering the present into fractals of unspooled being. In these still frames of bloodied frenzy, a scream speaks manifestation to the unutterable presence of evil.

Monday 8 September 7pmCommunity Space Upper Floor of Hyde Park Picture House Unfortunately there was not a quorum for our Annual General Meeting on the 10th of August so we will be holding a short Special General Meeting on Monday 8th September at 7pm to formally approve the recommendations made at the AGM. As per our constitution the quorum will be the number of people attending after 15 minutes rather than a set figure.

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Still showing this week (Tuesday 20:50, Wednesday 17:40 and Thursday 21:00) Danny and Michael Phillipppu strike again, rather than go more commercial, they instead lean further into the arthouse ho…

Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece about a doomed medieval knight who plays chess with Death is one of the great classics of world cinema. As the film arrives on 4K Blu-ray, we count up the reasons it’s sti...

After a successful Festive Screening of Perfect Days in December our next ‘First Thursday’ Film Club meet up is on February 6th after the 5:00pm screening of A Complete U…