Ellen Cheshire

Working from home (no commuting) and no access to cinemas has meant that in this reclaimed time I have been continuing my #52FilmsByWomen...

With limited access to cinemas, I'm still having fun discovering new films and revisiting old favourites at home. Back in June 2020 I...

On 28 June 2020 I started a new viewing project: #1930to2020. Each day I’d watch at least one film from that day’s year. Over the past...

Based on Rudyard Kipling’s stories about Mowgli, the man cub. The Jungle Book was the last full length feature film to be produced under...

After twenty years of Walt Disney’s personal requests to the author the Mary Poppins stories P L Travers finally gave in and agreed that...

What a thrill and honour it was to have been asked by Robin Write, Editor in Chief of Filmotomy, if I'd be on the Jury for this year's...

Continuing my #52FilmsByWomen pledge that I started in 2015. This is now my 6th ‘year’, year being such a loose term as I have watched...

Peter Pan, based on the play by James M Barrie, about a boy who is reluctant to grow up, would seem an ideal project for Walt Disney, a...

The Secret People (1952) Cast: Valentina Cortese (Maria Brentano), Audrey Hepburn (Nora), Serge Reggiani (Louis), Michael Allan (Rodd),...

I am always looking for new ways to accessing my film collection, and selecting what to choose online, so on 28 June 2020 I started a new...

Following on from May's #30DayFilmChallenge where I enjoyed revisiting films in my collection which I'd not watched in some time, in June I gave myself another film watching challenge #AlphabetFilm. In June each day I would watch films beginning with a letter of the alphabet, to make it doubly-fun/challenging one of them was to be a directed by a woman. Finding films directed by chaps in my collection was easy, for those directed by women many where new to me. Between 1 -

Well the good news is that each 'year' it is getting easier to find films directed by women, on the down side they still only represent a...

On the 1st May I spotted this #30DayFilmChallenge on twitter and thought that it would be fun challenge to both choose the films, and watch them. It seemed particularly apt given that my 50th birthday fell in May, so I was already pondering my first half century as film fan - read my blog on 50 films from the last 50 years . Day 1 The first film I remember watching was seeing at the cinema, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) produced by Walt Disney, at the Muswell Hill

I've been doing a #30DayFilmChallenge, and day 20 is a 'Film that changed your life'. It was a tough one as I couldn't initially recall a...

Well I’ve reached a milestone – the big 5-0. And what would any self-respecting film fan do to commemorate this? Make a list, of course!...

One of my fave podcasts, The Cinematologists , recently celebrated its 100th episode. I've been a fan from the outset enjoying both the episodes built around a single film, and the bonus episodes. All episodes feature an intro with hosts Dr Dario Llinares (@dariodoublel) & Dr Neil Fox (@drneilfox) enjoying a wide-ranging catch-up of recent films watched, as well as conversations around the nature of podcasts, film study etc. I was delighted when they asked me to introduce a

Jane Campion photo by By New Zealand Government, Office of the Governor-General - https://gg.govt.nz/file/12859, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91235992 On Jane Campion's birthday, I thought I'd take some time-out to trace my history and fascination with her extraordinary body of work. I first saw The Piano (1993) in screen one of the Barbican Cinema when it was first released. I was working there at the time, and so had been looking at the striki

3 Years ago on the 23 April 2017, I was present at an historic event. After 30 years, director David Leland was reunited with Emily Lloyd, who had starred in his 1987 film Wish You Were Here , based on their early life on infamous British madam, Cynthia Payne. Cynthia Payne was born in Bognor Regis, but the film was largely shot in Worthing (with some scenes shot in Bognor), which is why I had been researching and writing about it for an HLF funded book for Worthing WOW, Elec

In celebration of International Women's Day, I've set myself the challenge to pick one film a year, directed by a woman since 2000....

In 1990 Gérard Depardieu, the darling of the French cinema for 20 or so years, became an international star with the release of Cyrano de...