Can't Y'dance The Polka?

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Sat 4 November 2006 // 20:00

Social evening to mark the end of the Bristol Radical History Week.
Amidst the ale, rowdy chatter and sound of plots being hatched we bring you some great Sea Shanty acts and a late screening of Pontecorvo's
intelligent political thriller 'Queimada' (USA title Burn!).

All the way from Falmouth come 'Gunners Mate' with shanties as fresh as todays fish and salty as a bosuns beard. Also local performers 'The Harry Browns' who sing both traditional & contemporary songs, but with an emphasis on songs from the West Country.

BURN! / QUEIMADA introduced by Christina Heatherton

Pontecorvo's memorable sequel to Battle of Algiers sees Brando in finely ambiguous form as the drunken, cynical Sir William Walker, a British agent sent to the Caribbean island of Queimada in the mid-1800s to stir up a native rebellion against the Portuguese sugar monopoly; ten years later, he is forced to return there to destroy the leader he himself created, in order to open up trade with Britain. Falling between epic adventure and political allegory, the film is occasionally clumsily structured and poorly focused; but Pontecorvo, working from a script by Franco Solinas, provides a sharp, provocative analysis of colonialism, full of telling irony, bravura set pieces, and compelling imagery, while Brando's stiff-lipped performance, emphasising his character's confused mixture of dignity and deceit, intelligence and evil, determination and disillusion, never allows the allegory to dominate the human content. A flawed but fascinating film. (TimeOut)