We round off the season with a rather different kind of British film, from a very different time, and a very different director.  In what was a huge departure stylistically for Mike Leigh, Topsy-Turvy concerns the 15-month period in 1884 and 1885 leading up to the premiere of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado.  The film focuses on the creative conflict between playwright and composer, and their decision ultimately, to continue their partnership.

“Topsy-Turvy is Leigh’s only costume picture and only biopic—a far cry from the bittersweet, realistic films of contemporary working-class life for which he is known.  On the other hand, it is an examination of the creative process and the collaborative work involved in putting on a show that mirrors his own methods as a filmmaker.  “I’m not given to making films about filmmakers or artists,” Leigh said in 1999, when Topsy-Turvy was first released.  “But I decided that it would be good to make a film about what we do, what we all go through.” (Amy Taubin, The Criterion Channel)

📽️ Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails.

📽️ Films start 6.30 with a brief introduction from the curators.

📽️ Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5 per person to help keep the lights on.  Yearly tickets can be purchased on the door (£7.50 adult / £6.00 concessions).

📽️ If you buy tickets and are subsequently unable to attend, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can give your seat(s) to someone else.

Following the death from accidental asphyxiation of Ralph Gurney, 13th Earl of Gurney, Jack Gurney (O’Toole) becomes his successor.  Jack is a paranoid schizophrenic who thinks he is Jesus Christ, and shocks his family and friends with his talk of returning to the world to bring it love and charity, not to mention his penchant for breaking out into song and dance routines and sleeping upright on a cross.

Nearly 25 years ago, at the midway point between today and the film’s original release, Ian Christie anticipated The Ruling Class’ elevation to cult classic, opening a 2001 essay on the subject thus: “The Ruling Class may not be recognized as a neglected masterpiece—at least, not yet.” Noting that “both play and film appeared between the great Profumo-Keeler society sex scandal of 1963 … and the mysterious disappearance of Lord Lucan in 1973 … life, and indeed death, seemed to imitate art, even in its most caricatured form.”

The play could only have appeared in 1968, the pivotal moment the 60s dream began to curdle into violence, and anarchy seemed a palpable threat to the establishment, ready to push back with all its might.  “Allegory, fantasy, and phantasmagoria” are brought to the screen while “reinventing the great studio tradition of British ‘40s cinema, which produced such films as Lean’s Dickens adaptations and Powell and Pressburger’s melodramas.”  Christie again, who concludes “This will never be a film for purists, but its ripeness and excess, its alert self-parody and breadth of cultural reference, mark it out as one to be cherished—and also appreciated, as an avatar of the renewed interest in high-voltage performance that runs through much distinctive cinema of the '80s and '90s, from Russell and Gilliam to Greenaway and Jarman.  Above all, it’s a great, disturbing black comedy, and deservedly now a cult classic.” [Criterion, 2001]

PLEASE NOTE THIS FILM IS 2.5 HOURS LONG AND WILL LIKELY INCLUDE A BRIEF INTERVAL

📽️ Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails.

📽️ Films start 6.30 with a brief introduction from the curators.

📽️ Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5 per person to help keep the lights on.  Yearly tickets can be purchased on the door (£7.50 adult / £6.00 concessions).

📽️ If you buy tickets and are subsequently unable to attend, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can give your seat(s) to someone else.

Kubrick’s pitch-black 1964 satire continues to a have a frightening resonance today, echoing Marx’s phrase “first as a tragedy, then as a farce”, the implication being that history does not learn from its mistakes.  Famously starring Peter Sellers in three roles, “… arguably [his] finest hour on screen, with his bravura multi-personality performance, playing Mandrake and also the insidiously bland mandarin President Merkin Muffley, and, most egregiously of all, the ex-Nazi scientist inspired by the V-2 rocket scientist Wernher von Braun.” [Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, 2019]

It's also worth drawing your attention to production designer Ken Adam’s spectacular “war room” set which was so compelling it became a template in popular imagination for what a such a thing would look like.  When Ronald Reagan, as newly elected US president, was given a tour of the Pentagon by his chief of staff in 1981, he is said to have asked: “But where is the war room?”

“Mr President,” came the reply, “there isn’t one.” 

📽️ Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails.

📽️ Films start 6.30 with a brief introduction from the curators.

📽️ Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5 per person to help keep the lights on.  Yearly tickets can be purchased on the door (£7.50 adult / £6.00 concessions).

📽️ If you buy tickets and are subsequently unable to attend, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can give your seat(s) to someone else.

Appearing shortly after Harold Macmillan’s landslide Tory victory in the 1959 General Election, I’m All Right Jack offers up a pin-sharp satire of industrial relations in 50s Britain; its title - borrowed from Royal Navy slang (“fuck you, I’m all right, Jack!”) - suggesting the smug and complacent selfishness that many, not least of all the film’s creators John & Roy Boulting, felt had permeated the trade union movement.

Writing for The Criterion Channel in 2018, Michael Sragow says “I’m All Right Jack’s delicious comic setup shows workers and management maneuvering with an excruciating blend of bluntness and delicacy.  When Kite (Peter Sellers), the comedic core of the film, raises questions about an embarrassingly green employee, the company’s personnel director (Terry Thomas) offers to sack the man.  But Kite, after consulting with his committee, backs off: “We do not and cannot accept the principle that incompetence justifies dismissal,” he says.  “That is victimization.”  It’s a triumph of bad faith on all sides.  Letting no one off the hook, this movie lampoons unions and broadsides the self-interest of capital and management, the coarsening influence of tabloid media, and the dangers of class and race-based tribalism.”

📽️ Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails.

📽️ Films start 6.30 with a brief introduction from the curators.

📽️ Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5 per person to help keep the lights on.  Yearly tickets can be purchased on the door (£7.50 adult / £6.00 concessions).

📽️ If you buy tickets and are subsequently unable to attend, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can give your seat(s) to someone else.

In 1959, a decade on from The Third Man, Carol Reed’s partnership with Graham Greene was revived with Our Man in Havana.  Starring a memorable Alec Guinness as James Wormold, a floundering vacuum-cleaner salesman recruited as a spy by the British Secret Service in Cuba under the Batista regime.  Wormold invents agents from men he knows only by sight and sketches "plans" for a rocket-launching pad based on vacuum cleaner parts to increase his value to the service.  The fabrications are doubled down upon again when his cables are intercepted by the enemy and, taken at face value, play out with a comedic touch.

Writing for eyeforfilm.co.uk in 2015, reviewer Jeff Robson reckoned on a film that compared favourably with its predecessor, “richly rewarding while undoubtedly lighter in tone, shares many of the same themes and has the same literate worldliness ... And like The Third Man, it looks simply stunning.”

📽️ Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails.

📽️ Films start 6.30 with a brief introduction from the curators.

📽️ Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5 per person to help keep the lights on.  Yearly tickets can be purchased on the door (£7.50 adult / £6.00 concessions).

📽️ If you buy tickets and are subsequently unable to attend, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can give your seat(s) to someone else.

“The only film directed by the British stage and film star Clive Brook,” noted The New York Times writer Dave Kehr in 2013.  “[On Approval] opens as irreverently as a Warner Brothers cartoon, as an off-screen narrator interrupts a grainy clip of fighter planes attacking a battleship to sigh, “Oh, dear — is this another war picture?”  Given the film’s year of release — 1944 — the narrator (E. V. H. Emmett, the best-known voice in British newsreels) must have been articulating the thoughts of a great many members of the battle-weary audience, and the film soon moves back, with the aid of some more newsreel footage, to a point somewhere in the distant Victorian past, evoked with the usual nostalgia for simpler times.”

In this drawing-room farce – a second film adaptation of an original play by Frederick Lonsdale – the setting is switched from the 1920s to the 1890s, making the action all the more shocking for its time.  Beatrice Lillie and Googie Withers play two wealthy Victorian widows tentatively courted by two financially depleted  British aristocrats.  Clive Brook is George, the 10th Duke of Bristol,  an aging, upper class rogue.  Both he and his friend, Richard (Roland Culver) are in search of a wealthy woman to keep them in the comfort to which they hope to be reacquainted with, and when one of the dowagers suggests that Richard come away with her to her own Scottish island for a month to see if they are compatible, George wrangles himself on to the trip and the animosity unfolds with sharp-tongued jibes between the sexes.

📽️ Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails.

📽️ Films start 6.30 with a brief introduction from the curators.

📽️ Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5 per person to help keep the lights on.  Yearly tickets can be purchased on the door (£7.50 adult / £6.00 concessions).

📽️ If you buy tickets and are subsequently unable to attend, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can give your seat(s) to someone else.

Kent MOMI presents … HOT BRITAIN (a series of films appropriate to the season)

We promised you a season of 'Hot Britain' and in a literal sense things don't get much hotter than in our final 'mystery film', 'The Day the Earth Caught Fire'. Val Guest's 1961 science-fiction disaster flick is one of the classic apocalypse-themed films of its day.  Guest was a prolific filmmaker who began his career in the 1930s, but is best know for Hammer productions The Quatermass Experiment, Quatermass II, and of course The Day the Earth Caught Fire (Pax Films/ Val Guest Productions).

Shot in black-and-white CinemaScope, the film was partly made on location in London and Brighton, and used matte painting to create images of abandoned cities and desolate landscapes.

 Writing in The Observer in 2014, Philip French considered it “... one of British cinema’s liveliest nuclear angst pictures, which unfolds in flashback from a world filmed through a golden filter to suggest it’s about to ignite. This terminal crisis results from our planet being put out of kilter by simultaneous H-bomb tests on both sides of the iron curtain. The film is both an engaging period piece, because it views the grim news from the Fleet Street office of the Daily Express (where the hacks bash away at manual typewriters), and topical because it anticipates global warming.”

Look out for an uncredited Michael Caine, who appears briefly as a checkpoint cop.

📽️Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails. Films start 6.30 with a brief introduction from the curators.

📽️Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5 per person to help keep the lights on.  Yearly tickets can be purchased on the door (£7.50 adult / £6.00 concessions).

📽️If you buy tickets and are subsequently unable to attend, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can give your seat(s) to someone else.

Kent MOMI presents … HOT BRITAIN (a series of films appropriate to the season)

Shot on location on Lindisfarne off the coast of Northumberland, and now considered a masterwork, Cul-de-sac was only the second of Polanski’s English-language feature films exploring themes of horror, frustrated sexuality and alienation, here enacted when two injured gangsters take refuge in the remote island castle of a young British couple in the North of England, spurring a series of mind games and violent altercations. 

“It was a difficult shoot, with Polanski’s perfectionism bringing him into frequent conflict with producers, crew and cast alike.  He openly loathed Stander, disliked Dorléac's film-star airs and was taken aback when Pleasence turned up for the first day's shooting with a freshly-shaven head.  A virtuoso set-piece, a continuous eight-minute shot in which George and Richard run through various blackly comic parodies of relationship stages on the beach while Teresa swims nude in the background, was initially created out of expediency but ended up nearly killing his female lead, as the freezing water brought Dorléac close to hypothermia and the crew rebelled when he asked for a third take.  But this on-set tension gave Cul-de-sac its constant jolts of electricity, and it remains Polanski's most unclassifiable and unpredictable film” (Michael Brook, BFI). 

📽️Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails. Films start 6.30 with a brief introduction from the curators.

📽️Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5 per person to help keep the lights on.  Yearly tickets can be purchased on the door (£7.50 adult / £6.00 concessions).

📽️If you buy tickets and are subsequently unable to attend, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can give your seat(s) to someone else.

Kent MOMI presents … HOT BRITAIN (a series of films appropriate to the season)

Joseph Losey’s dark 1963 satire The Servant was the first of his three film collaborations with Harold Pinter, a taut psychological drama of the relationships between four central characters, exploring tensions relating to social class and sexuality.

 On its re-release in 2021, Peter Bradshaw reflected: “Gay sexuality is everywhere and nowhere in The Servant … It is a woman who seduces Tony, but it is a man (Barrett) who pulls the strings, effecting the seduction at one remove.  Pinter’s own elliptical, disquieting dialogue is able to hint, imply, suggest, seduce, repulse in precisely the way that gay men were forced to adopt in 1963, when homosexuality was still a criminal offence.  The Servant is like a nightmarish version of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster: the benign, discreet and all-knowing servant effectively controlling everything in the life of the feather-headed young man who is notionally in charge”.  A superbly sinister performance by Dirk Bogarde as Barrett, a disturbing self-evisceration by James Fox as Tony, pitch-perfect tartiness from Sarah Miles, and a career best from Wendy Craig as Tony’s frustrated upper-crust fiancée.  

📽️Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails. Films start 6.30 with a brief introduction from the curators.

📽️Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5 per person to help keep the lights on.  Yearly tickets can be purchased on the door (£7.50 adult / £6.00 concessions).

📽️If you buy tickets and are subsequently unable to attend, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can give your seat(s) to someone else.

Kent MOMI presents … HOT BRITAIN (a series of films appropriate to the season)

Considered “unfilmable” when Kubrick acquired the rights around the time of its U.S. publication, Kubrick and producer James B. Harris were compelled to tone down the paedophilic elements that were central to Nabokov’s narrative.  The sheer unlikelihood of a Lolita movie being made near-contemporaneously with the novel’s publication was worked into the advertising campaign, with the poster trumpeting “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?”.

In a piece celebrating the film’s 60th anniversary in 2022, film critic Jesse Hassenger wrote: “Though it keeps much of Lolita’s pain offscreen, it doesn’t exactly use her slightly raised age (14) to excuse Humbert’s fixation, nor does it feel like a powder-keg provocation ahead of its time.  Kubrick prefers to flirt with bad taste by recasting sections of the movie as a dark comedy acting as a point of contrast that make its sadder moments all the starker.  Sixty years on, Lolita remains a curio – one with the strange, unnerving power of a half-repressed memory.”  Stand-out and manic performances by Peter Sellers, James Mason, Shelley Winters and Sue Lyon, as the ‘nymphet’”.

📽️Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails.  Films start 6.30 with a brief introduction from the curators.

📽️Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5 per person to help us keep the lights on.  Yearly tickets can be purchased on the door (£7.50 adult / £6.00 concessions).

📽️If you buy tickets and are subsequently unable to attend, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can give your seat(s) to someone else.

Kent MOMI presents … HOT BRITAIN (a series of films appropriate to the season!)

It’s worth recalling the original impact of Jack Clayton’s trailblazing 1959 film, reflected in its six Academy Award nominations.  It won two: for Simone Signoret’s dazzlingly charismatic performance, and for Neil Paterson’s screen adaptation of John Braine’s of-the-moment 1957 best-seller.  (Hermione Baddeley’s nomination for Best Supporting Actress was achieved off the back of her 2 minutes and 19 seconds of screen-time – the shortest ever performance to win an Oscar nomination.  Also look out also for a coquettish young secretary played by Prunella Scales).

“Room at the Top gave us Laurence Harvey as Joe Lampton, the smouldering, ambitious young working-class Yorkshireman with a chip on his shoulder and a burning desire to get on, and get laid … a drama of class conflict and male frustration in a world where nice girls wouldn’t or if they did pregnancy was shatteringly immediate. … a pungent time capsule for postwar Britain where nasty snobbish remarks could be exchanged at the Rotary club.” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian).

Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails. Film starts 6.30 with a brief introduction. Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5pp to help us keep the lights on. Yearly tickets can be purchased on the door (£7.50 adult / £6.00 concessions).

Kent MOMI presents … HOT BRITAIN (a series of films appropriate to the season)

Ken Russell’s powerful adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s novel, released at the end of 1969, cemented his reputation as a director.  According to Mark Kermode: “In any other country, Russell would have been feted as the illustrious maestro who made D.H. Lawrence come alive”. 

Writing in 2019, American filmmaker Joe Talbot appraised the film thus: “Women in Love […] seems to condemn England and its hypocrisies, while also presenting it as an enchanting on screen world overflowing with spirited characters, fabulously anachronistic costumes, breath-taking locales, and joyfully choreographed dance sequences.  It’s critical of a time and place that it also depicts as alluring.  Alan Bates plays a thinly veiled stand-in for D.H. Lawrence, spouting proto-hippie philosophy about free love—which gives you some idea of why the book was so perfect to revisit in the sixties.  Oliver Reed’s character receives the same complex treatment that England does—he’s both a tightly wound capitalist who’s cringe-inducingly cruel to his workforce and a deeply tormented soul…”

Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails. Films start 6.30 with a brief introduction from the curators. Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5pp to help keep the lights on.  Yearly tickets can be purchased on the door (£7.50 adult / £6.00 concessions).

Kent MOMI is pleased to present a unique home-cinema evening with BFI curator Rosie Rowan Taylor, featuring authentic 1920s and ’30s 9.5mm equipment, and a full (mystery!) programme of films as originally projected in this famous amateur format.  This was an incredibly important format, which enabled the transposition of the magic of cinema into private homes several generations before the age of video.  

Rosie Rowan Taylor is a Curator of Fiction Film at the BFI National Archive, and a doctoral researcher at Bristol University, writing on Documenting the History and Culture of the Private Collecting of 9.5mm Film in Britain.  A graduate of the world-leading Selznick School of Film Preservation in Rochester, New York, she was also the co-founder of the important “Southwest Silents” organisation, and a steering group member of “Cinema Rediscovered”, Watershed Bristol.  Rosie's passions include silent Westerns and British cinema, as well (of course!) as 9.5mm film and the wacky world of film collectors.

Kent MOMI is delighted not only to be hosting unique artist-performer Robert Poulter, a true friend of the museum, but to be hosting him in his creative adaptation of comic genius Douglas Jerrold's rousing stunner of a Victorian play, 🅑🅛🅐🅒🅚-🅔🅨🅔🅓 🅢🅤🅢🅐🅝 - set (where else?) in what Dickens called "villainous", but his friend Jerrold also found "delightful", Deal.

Doors 4.30pm with bar service available 30 minutes before and after performance; garden open after performance. Please note there are two performances at 2.30pm, and at 5pm.

For tickets please visit dealmusicandarts.com/events/black-eyed-susan-5/

Part of the 🅳🅴🅰🅻 🅼🆄🆂🅸🅲 & 🅰🆁🆃🆂 🅵🅴🆂🆃🅸🆅🅰🅻 2025

Full programme can be found here dealmusicandarts.com/festival

Kent MOMI is delighted not only to be hosting unique artist-performer Robert Poulter, a true friend of the museum, but to be hosting him in his creative adaptation of comic genius Douglas Jerrold's rousing stunner of a Victorian play, 🅑🅛🅐🅒🅚-🅔🅨🅔🅓 🅢🅤🅢🅐🅝 - set (where else?) in what Dickens called "villainous", but his friend Jerrold also found "delightful", Deal.

Doors 2pm with bar service available 30 minutes before and after performance; garden open after performance. Please note there are two performances at 2.30pm, and at 5pm.

For tickets please visit dealmusicandarts.com/events/black-eyed-susan/

Part of the Deal Music & Arts Festival 2025.

Full programme can be found here dealmusicandarts.com/festival

It is 10 years since Kent MOMI curators David and Joss gave up their international career as itinerant magic lanternists and became respectable museum curators.

But they have been tempted out of retirement in support of Deal Festival -- and for love of the lantern. The performance will include many lantern-slide MOVING IMAGES (yes, there was movement on screen long before the movies), enforced audience participation (!), lots of sea-going and sea-shore activity, and recitation (by Joss) of the tear-jerking ballad of Crazy Jane, by the Victorian master of that suspect form, George R. Sims.

For tickets please visit dealmusicandarts.com/events/magic-lantern-performance/

Part of the 🅳🅴🅰🅻 🅼🆄🆂🅸🅲 & 🅰🆁🆃🆂 🅵🅴🆂🆃🅸🆅🅰🅻 2025

Full programme can be found here dealmusicandarts.com/festival

A two-hour workshop for adults discovering pre-cinema Victorian entertainments. Kent MOMI is home to over 100 magic lanterns (invented c.1659) and 20,000+ lantern slides of all types -- early panoramic phantasmagoria, hand-painted, photographic, transfer, toy, and moving.

Projected, in the Victorian era of the oxy-hydrogen gas light, the larger slides threw images 30 foot wide on the screen, in colour, and with stunning detail.

Come and see the slides close up, handle them (with care!), learn about their history, how they were used, what we know (and don't know) about the stories and showman's repartee that accompanied them, and the various eras of lantern performance, from the times of the lowly, lone itinerant lanternist to the late-19th-century "optical pantomimes" of the Royal Polytechnic Institution and the musical Temperance shows of the early 20th century.

For tickets please visit dealmusicandarts.com/events/magic-lantern-workshop/

Part of the 🅳🅴🅰🅻 🅼🆄🆂🅸🅲 & 🅰🆁🆃🆂 🅵🅴🆂🆃🅸🆅🅰🅻 2025.

Full programme can be found here dealmusicandarts.com/festival

Out of the Past: ‘Women of Desire, Myth, and Power’

Kent MOMI presents a lineup of unforgettable women—rebels, lovers, warriors, and icons—who challenge expectations, redefine power, and rewrite their own myths. From sultry femme fatales to cross-dressing queens, these films celebrate the electrifying presence of women who refuse to be tamed.

Marlene Dietrich steps onto the screen in a tuxedo, tips her hat, and dares the world to look away. As a cabaret singer in a foreign land, she defies convention, seducing both men and women with her charm and using desire as both a weapon and a shield in this intoxicating tale of love, longing, and power.

Director Josef von Sternberg famously spotted Marlene Dietrich at a Berlin revue, soon after she gained fame for her ambiguous role in the musical Es liegt in der Luft, where she sang provocative lesbian duets with Margo Lion. Sternberg was captivated by her androgynous magnetism and the way she turned heads with her sultry, suggestive performances. He brought that energy to Morocco, shaping Dietrich's Hollywood debut around her ability to blur gender lines and seduce at will. [Running time 1h 32min]

Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails. Film starts 6.30 with a brief introduction from Dr. Natasha. Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5pp to help keep the lights on!

Out of the Past: ‘Women of Desire, Myth, and Power’

Kent MOMI presents a lineup of unforgettable women—rebels, lovers, warriors, and icons—who challenge expectations, redefine power, and rewrite their own myths. From sultry femme fatales to cross-dressing queens, these films celebrate the electrifying presence of women who refuse to be tamed.

Known as the ultimate screen siren after Gilda (1946), Rita Hayworth stunned audiences when she dyed her iconic red hair platinum, cut it short and took on this darker, more ambiguous role.

Directed by then-husband Orson Welles (just as their marriage was beginning to fall apart), the film, where nothing is what it seems, twists through a surreal web of betrayal, class, desire, and disillusionment, culminating in the still-influential hall-of-mirrors scene—one of the most striking visual metaphors for the fractured identities and illusions women are forced to embody. The Lady from Shanghai doesn't just feature a femme fatale—it deconstructs her, turning her into something far more enigmatic. With its moody cinematography and legendary finale, this noir classic is a mesmerizing portrait of a woman as both fantasy and nightmare. [Running time 1hr 32min]

Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails. Film starts 6.30 with a brief introduction from Dr. Natasha. Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation of £5pp to help keep the lights on.

Out of the Past: ‘Women of Desire, Myth, and Power’

Kent MOMI presents a lineup of unforgettable women—rebels, lovers, warriors, and icons—who challenge expectations, redefine power, and rewrite their own myths. From sultry femme fatales to cross-dressing queens, these films celebrate the electrifying presence of women who refuse to be tamed.

Jean Harlow takes on Hollywood—and wins. Playing a glamorous actress hounded by the press, greedy managers, and men who want to control her, Harlow shines in this fast-paced satire that exposes the tension between a woman's public persona and private desires.

The role was famously inspired by the life of Clara Bow, the original "It Girl" who rose to stardom in the 1920s only to be consumed by the same industry that created her. Harlow captures that energy with both biting humour and emotional resonance, delivering a performance that parodies her own sex-symbol status while exposing the grind behind the glamour. Harlow's screen persona—sexy, brassy, and unexpectedly tender—embodied a new kind of feminine power in Depression-era America: one that demanded to be seen, heard, and paid. Bombshell is more than just a backstage comedy; it's a sharp and still-relevant exploration of the price women pay for being icons. [Running time 1hr 51min]

Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails. Film starts 6.30 with a brief introduction from Dr. Natasha. Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation £5pp to help keep the lights on.

Out of the Past: ‘Women of Desire, Myth, and Power’

Kent MOMI presents a lineup of unforgettable women—rebels, lovers, warriors, and icons—who challenge expectations, redefine power, and rewrite their own myths. From sultry femme fatales to cross-dressing queens, these films celebrate the electrifying presence of women who refuse to be tamed.

Jean Harlow takes on Hollywood—and wins. Playing a glamorous actress hounded by the press, greedy managers, and men who want to control her, Harlow shines in this fast-paced satire that exposes the tension between a woman's public persona and private desires.

The role was famously inspired by the life of Clara Bow, the original "It Girl" who rose to stardom in the 1920s only to be consumed by the same industry that created her. Harlow captures that energy with both biting humour and emotional resonance, delivering a performance that parodies her own sex-symbol status while exposing the grind behind the glamour. Harlow's screen persona—sexy, brassy, and unexpectedly tender—embodied a new kind of feminine power in Depression-era America: one that demanded to be seen, heard, and paid. Bombshell is more than just a backstage comedy; it's a sharp and still-relevant exploration of the price women pay for being icons. [Running time 1h 36min]

Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails. Film starts 6.30 with a brief introduction from Dr. Natasha. Entry is free with a yearly ticket, although we suggest a small donation £5pp to help keep the lights on.

Out of the Past: ‘Women of Desire, Myth, and Power’

Kent MOMI presents a lineup of unforgettable women—rebels, lovers, warriors, and icons—who challenge expectations, redefine power, and rewrite their own myths. From sultry femme fatales to cross-dressing queens, these films celebrate the electrifying presence of women who refuse to be tamed.

Greta Garbo commands the screen as Sweden's legendary queen, a ruler torn between duty and passion. Often read as queer-coded, this lush historical drama explores power, passion, and the intoxicating freedom of living on one's own terms.

Raised as a monarch rather than as a woman, Christina resists marriage and duty, until her fateful encounter—while dressed as a man—with a Spanish ambassador (John Gilbert) threatens the throne with its most dangerous adversary: love. In the final, haunting close-up Garbo’s timeless face, still and unreadable, is a blank page onto which the audience projects their own longing. [Running time 1h 39min]

Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails. Film starts 6.30 with a brief introduction from Dr. Natasha.

Out of the Past: ‘Women of Desire, Myth, and Power’

Kent MOMI presents a lineup of unforgettable women—rebels, lovers, warriors, and icons—who challenge expectations, redefine power, and rewrite their own myths. From sultry femme fatales to cross-dressing queens, these films celebrate the electrifying presence of women who refuse to be tamed.

Sex symbol of her time and a masterful actress, Polish star Pola Negri leads an all-out comedic rebellion as Rischka, a fearless female bandit in Lubitsch's most whimsical and visually extravagant German film. With its surreal set designs and absurd humour, this silent-era gem is a wild ride through a world where a woman with a pistol and a wicked grin holds all the power.

Already one of Germany's biggest silent film stars, Negri was a favourite of director Ernst Lubitsch, with whom she made several films. Her extraordinary ability to switch between comic and tragic genres and bold, modern appeal made her an icon of 1920s European cinema and Die Bergkatze showcases her at her most exuberant. But this film also marks the end of an era—just one year later, Negri would leave Germany to launch a dazzling Hollywood career, becoming one of the first European actresses to leap to American stardom. [Running time 1h 25min]

Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails. Film starts 6.30 with a brief introduction from Dr. Natasha.

Out of the Past: ‘Women of Desire, Myth, and Power’

Kent MOMI presents a lineup of unforgettable women—rebels, lovers, warriors, and icons—who challenge expectations, redefine power, and rewrite their own myths. From sultry femme fatales to cross-dressing queens, these films celebrate the electrifying presence of women who refuse to be tamed.

Director Josef von Sternberg famously spotted Marlene Dietrich at a Berlin revue, soon after she gained fame for her ambiguous role in the musical Es liegt in der Luft, where she sang provocative lesbian duets with Margo Lion. Sternberg was captivated by her androgynous magnetism and the way she turned heads with her sultry, suggestive performances. He brought that energy to Morocco, shaping Dietrich's Hollywood debut around her ability to blur gender lines and seduce at will. [Running time 1hr 32min]

Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails. Film starts 6.30 with a brief introduction from Dr. Natasha.

“Out of the Past” is an ongoing screening series foregrounding the history and prehistory of the film medium, historical genres (swashbucklers, slapstick, romance, etc), and cinema’s engagements with history, literature and theatre.

Keaton’s 1926 The General is deservedly well known. But his remarkable historical imagination first took flight in this charming and unexpected comedy, set during the very early (and visibly uncomfortable) years of the railroad. This short feature will be preceded by one of Keaton’s greatest short films, The Boat (1921) – another single location masterpiece. [Running time: 1h 14m]

Kent MOMI is pleased to announce a new eight-week programme of screenings at the museum. The screenings, collectively entitled CINEMA OF DESIRE will run every Friday evening from 16th August to 4th October.  See below for the intoxicating details!

WEEK EIGHT Friday 4th October

Pandora's Box / Die Büchse der Pandora (G.W.Pabst, Germany, 1929)

Introduced by Natasha. Running time: 133 minutes.

A season of films about desire cannot do without Louise Brooks. Her iconic black bob and dancer's body epitomized the ideal of a modern woman and a style icon in the 1920s like no one else.  As part of our eight weeks of screenings, we are showcasing Pandora's Box, a masterpiece of German silent cinema and the first of two films that the German director G.W.Pabst and Louise Brooks would make together.

Pabst's film was based on very popular at that time plays by Frank Wedekind, about a seductive young woman named Lulu, who is both immoral and waif-like innocent, and whose uninhibited nature brings ruin to herself and her many lovers. For this role, Pabst wanted an actress who was not acting but – the most challenging task! - could just be herself before the camera. He dreamt of casting Brooks – herself a free spirit and a real jazz girl - from the moment he saw her in Howard Hawks's A Girl in Every Port (1928).

The film faced wide criticism and censorship upon its initial release due to its bold exploration of sexuality and female desire. Despite this, Louise Brooks's subtle yet sexually charged portrayal remains one of the most modern performances of the silent era..

To reserve places, please hit the button, below, or email info@kentmomi.org

First come, first served with a limited capacity of 30 places.

Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails by Dr. Natasha.

Films commence 6.30pm sharp.

Screenings are FREE to Kent MOMI yearly ticket holders, but a £5 donation is suggested, to help us keep the lights on. Museum tickets can be bought at the door, and are valid for a year.

Kent MOMI is pleased to announce a new eight-week programme of screenings at the museum. The screenings, collectively entitled CINEMA OF DESIRE will run every Friday evening from 16th August to 4th October.  See below for the intoxicating details!

WEEK SEVEN Friday 27th September

Angst essen Seele auf [Ali: Fear Eats the Soul]

Introduced by Natasha. Running time: 93 minutes

Our next screening celebrates the 50th anniversary of what is probably Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s most influential work, an unconventional love story that combines sharp social analysis with emotional intensity: Fear Eats the Soul (1974).

One evening in Munich, an elderly cleaning lady named Emmi (Brigitte Mira) seeks shelter from a rainstorm in a bar frequented by immigrants.  To her surprise, the jukebox plays a 1920s Schlager, and Ali, a handsome Moroccan migrant worker (El Hedi ben Salem), asks her to dance ... They unexpectedly fall in love and get married, to the shock of their families, friends and colleagues.  However, this brave, tender and fragile romance soon faces the harsh realities of racism and ageism.

Around 1971, when he was already a cinephile and prolific filmmaker, Fassbinder discovered Douglas Sirk, a German émigré known for infusing classy Hollywood melodramas with hard-hitting criticism.  Fear Eats the Soul harnesses the same emotional power to reveal the fascist thinking still underlying German culture: indeed, it was conceived as an interpretation of Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955).  The film also reflects Fassbinder’s tumultuous romantic relationship with the actor who plays Ali – El Hedi ben Salem, a Moroccan immigrant who met Fassbinder in 1971 at a gay swimming pool in Paris.

This direct and courageous love story was urgent and important in 1974 and remains so in 2024. 

To reserve places, please hit the button, below, or email info@kentmomi.org

First come, first served with a limited capacity of 30 places.

Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails by Dr. Natasha.

Films commence 6.30pm sharp.

Screenings are FREE to Kent MOMI yearly ticket holders, but a £5 donation is suggested, to help us keep the lights on. Museum tickets can be bought at the door, and are valid for a year.

Kent MOMI is pleased to announce a new eight-week programme of screenings at the museum. The screenings, collectively entitled CINEMA OF DESIRE will run every Friday evening from 16th August to 4th October.  See below for the intoxicating details!

WEEK SEVEN Friday 20th September

La Piscine

Introduced by Natasha. Running time: 122 minutes

Picture, for a second, Romy Schneider, Alain Delon, Jane Birkin, and Maurice Ronet in revealing swimwear, bronzed bodies basking in the lazy St. Tropez sun and reflected in the shimmering waters of a villa’s swimming pool … No, this isn't a daydream – it's La Piscine, by Jacques Deray, the fourth most popular movie at the French box office in 1969.  The story revolves around a former ménage à trois that becomes a ménage à quatre, with deadly consequences.

La Piscine was resurrected from the depths of time, restored, and re-released in 2021.  Critics have since praised it as an “icily erotic” and “superbly controlled thriller”, “a master class in the subgenre”.

The film reunited the 1960s on-and-off-screen “dream couple” Alain Delon and Romy Schneider after their dramatic break-up and Schneider’s marriage to German director Harry Meyen.  Delon reportedly insisted that the filmmaker Jacques Deray cast Schneider in th efilm, and their troubled shared history and intense emotional connection give the film its raw authenticity.  “I wanted constantly to go towards the gaze”, Deray confessed.  “I was lucky to have Delon, Romy Schneider or Ronet in front of my lens”.  Add dreamy music by Michel Legrand (and a film-themed summer cocktail by Dr. Natasha), and you get the Indian Summer night of your dreams! 

To reserve places, please hit the button, below, or email info@kentmomi.org

First come, first served with a limited capacity of 30 places.

Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails by Dr. Natasha.

Films commence 6.30pm sharp.

Screenings are FREE to Kent MOMI yearly ticket holders, but a £5 donation is suggested, to help us keep the lights on. Museum tickets can be bought at the door, and are valid for a year.