Skip to content

A selection of films playing alongside the Supertoys exhibition. Each screening is preceded by a section from artists Dunne & Raby’s Evidence Dolls videos.

WALL E (U)

Sat 6 Dec, 4.00pm

(Mash Up Special Price: All tickets £3.00)

A romance in which a rusting, refuse-collecting robot falls in love with a sleek white probe – this is dystopian science-fiction in the guise of another Pixar family summer blockbuster. Few films of recent years have received such lavish praise. Already rightly considered a classic.

Dir. Andrew Stanton USA 2007 1h 38m

Double Bill

Artificial Intelligence: AI (12) & Transformers (12)

Sun 14 Dec, 2.30pm & 5.15pm

Spielberg’s sickly-sweet gloss and over-done references to Disney’s Pinocchio ultimately overwhelmed Kubrick’s project based on the Brian Aldiss short story. Nevertheless, this flawed film successfully articulates the theme of ultimate reality as a multi-layered one by using the language of hypertexts: religion, myths and dreams.

Dir. Steven Spielberg USA 2001 2h 26m

+

Based on the once-ubiquitous Hasbro plastic robot warriors that could disguise themselves as late 20th Century mechanical devices of wildly variant scale, this deafening, pneumatic blockbuster employs superb fetishistic special effects to sex up the autobots and deceptacons for a new generation.

Dir. Michael Bay USA 2007 2h 24m

Double Bill

Modern Times (U) & Sleeper (15)

Sun 28 Dec, 2.30pm & 4.30pm

A factory worker runs amok around the assembly line, is shipped off to an asylum and from there goes on to further hilarious accidents, as Chaplin sends up the machine age in this masterly slapstick, with a sober half-eye on the dehumanizing effects of modern, industrialised societies.

Dir. Charlie Chaplin USA 1936 1h 27m

+

A slapstick plot involving the overthrow of a totalitarian regime but mostly this is a hysterical platform for Allen to poke fun at the sexual revolution of the ’70s by forecasting its absurd and illogical conclusion: In the future, Orgasmatron machines take care of our needs better than people do.

Dir. Woody Allen USA 1973 1h 17m

Double Bill

Pinocchio (U) & Alice (PG)

Sat 3 Jan, 5.30pm & 7.30pm

A hugely influential, technically masterful and still magical Disney fairytale about the struggles of a wooden puppet blessed (or cursed?) by a Blue Fairy, who must prove himself honest, brave, and unselfish in order to become a Real boy, accompanied through skilfully rendered and surprisingly disturbing adventures by proto-sidekick Jiminy Cricket.

Dir. Hamilton Luske USA 1940 1h 28m

+

Inspired by Lewis Caroll’s story, Svankmajer creates a darker spell, opening with the warning “Now you will see a film for children. Perhaps.” Out of young Alice’s toys and things, Svankmajer, the master of animation, summons the wonderful and terrifying inhabitants of her rabbit hole dreams.

Dir. Jan Svankmajer Czechoslovakia 1988 1h 26m

Double Bill

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (15) & Blade Runner (15)

Sun 4 Jan, 2.30pm & 5.00pm

Year 2032: A cyborg detective investigates the case of a female robot created for sexual pleasure, who murdered her owner. Anime master Oshii’s highly accomplished, visually superb sci-fi noir thriller set in a future where the difference between humans and androids has become complicated.

Dir. Mamoru Oshii Japan 2004 1h 39m

+

Philip K Dick’s book in which replicants are inscribed with realistic memories inspired Ridley Scott’s benchmark sci-fi, impeccably styled, forecasting the menace of human obsolescence in a stagnating future Los Angeles.

Dir. Ridley Scott USA 1981 1h 57m

Double Bill

Child’s Play (15) & Dolls (18)

Thu 15 Jan, 6.45pm & 8.30pm

As the tag-line goes, ‘Andy Barclay has a new playmate who’s in no mood to play’. A cheerfully energetic horror film slicker and more clever than most, about Chucky, a rampaging malevolent doll which has been possessed by the mind and soul of a voodoo-expert Chicago mass murderer.

Dir. Tom Holland USA 1988 1h 27m

+

The movie that originated the doll-as-homicidal-maniac premise. A twisted fairy-tale from cult horror director, Stuart Gordon (The Re-animator), in which a house-full of creepy porcelain-faced Victorian style killers exact brutal, bloody justice on its visitors.

Dir. Stuart Gordon USA 1987 1h 17m

Metropolis (PG) With Live Score

Sun 18 Jan, 7.00pm

£6.00 / £5.00 concs

Fritz Lang’s gothic-futurist masterpiece extrapolated his own time and place forward into a fully-realised techno-society with hugely influential imagery and concepts. It prophesies a mechanoid ‘False Maria’, seductively created in human image, in this case that of an entrancing worker-activist leader, to stir up worker unrest in the service of the ruling elites.

Dir. Fritz Lang Germany 1927 1h 58m

With a specially commissioned new live soundtrack from kraut-pop duo Hook and the Twin.