Welcome to the 2009-10 season.

All shows start at 7.30pm on Fridays in the Bishop Greaves Theatre, Bishop Grosseteste University College, Longdales Road, Lincoln. In addition there are two film showing which are showing at the School of Architecture, University of Lincoln as part of the Lincoln Academy's season of events. Admission to these two films is free.

François Truffaut’s first feature, The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups), is also his most personal. Told through the eyes of Truffaut’s life-long cinematic counterpart, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), The 400 Blows sensitively re-creates the trials of Truffaut’s own difficult childhood, unsentimentally portraying aloof parents, oppressive teachers, petty crime, and a friendship that would last a lifetime. The film marks Truffaut’s passage from leading critic of the French New Wave to his emergence as one of Europe’s most brilliant auteurs.

It’s the look and feel of The 400 Blows, the way it was shot and edited, that makes it so powerful. We see all sorts of film trickery in today’s cinema – directors like Tony Scott have made a veritable cottage industry out of off angles and odd splices – but when Truffaut did it, it was new. And it wasn’t trickery. It was going out on a limb. It was pushing the envelope where it had never been pushed. The 400 Blows is where it all really began; this is the grandmother of all tracking shots and slow pans. This is the where Hitchcock’s eminent style met the gritty reality of everyday life. This is handheld. This is location shooting. Jump cuts. Improvisation. Everything we consider new about film began here in 1959.

Venue maps

Bishop Greaves Theatre (Opens a new window)

University of Lincoln (PDF)