Side Cinema
Calendar - For Murray
17th July 2008 ( 7:00PM – 9:00PM )
The Moon and the Sledgehammer
(Phillip Trevelyan, 1971, 65 mins)
An extraordinary documentary about a family living in a wood in Sussex - made by one of Murray's oldest friends, it explores a world between idiosyncrasy and dysfunction, the ancient and the modern, strange beasts and steam engines and fundamentalist wonder. It was obviously a different time, but when this was released it went out as a B feature to both Junior Bonner and Rentadick. It's particularly hard to imagine what the Rentadick audience made of this film, an idyll that gradually opens up on something rich, comic and disturbing. A film that people still talk about with a glow in their eyes, 20 years after they saw it. It has a cult following, which deserves to grow. Don't miss it.
One of Philip Trevelyan's earlier films, Ship Tyne Main documented a night in a pub on the Gateshead side of the Tyne and featured a young Tom and Connie Pickard, both of whom were central to the development of the poetry scene in Newcastle from the 1960s.