Hollywood director Kevin Macdonald swaps red carpet for Dartmouth Park film club
Hollywood film director Kevin Macdonald will be at one of the first Dartmouth Park Film Club events, a new club set up by the community. Picture: Nigel Sutton - Credit: Nigel Sutton
He’s used to glittering film premieres with Hollywood stars, red carpets and flowing champagne – but this week renowned film director Kevin Macdonald will instead be guest of honour at a free community film club.
The Dartmouth Park Film Club was set up last month to bring together like-minded individuals and to support Highgate Library, which in April saw its funding slashed by £100,000 to £60,000 a year.
That combination led The Last King of Scotland director Mr Macdonald to sign up as special guest at the society’s second-ever event tomorrow at 7pm.
Following a screening of one of his lesser-known films – 2013 dystopian teen romance How I Live Now – the Dartmouth Park father-of-three will answer questions from the audience in a Q&A session.
“I think it’s great to be able to find new uses for the library,” said the 48-year-old, whose films include State of Play, Touching the Void and Bob Marley documentary Marley. “Everyone in the community would miss it if it was gone.
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“Libraries aren’t used as much as they used to be for several reasons, such as technology, but I think that any kind of community building is really valuable in London, particularly with such a huge demand on space with people wanting to build flats everywhere.
“It’s great to be able to support the library in a small way, other than as a traditional place for books.”
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The not-for-profit club is held every month at the Chester Road library in Highgate Newtown.
It will screen films with a connection to Dartmouth Park, either made by a local filmmaker or shot in the area. It launched last month with a screening of cricket documentary Death of a Gentleman and a Q&A session with its filmmaker Sam Collins.
“There’s not much in Dartmouth Park socially so I think it’s a good thing to bring like-minded people together in the community,” said Mr Macdonald.
“I don’t think there are many parts of London with as many filmmakers as Dartmouth Park so we must have a much better quality of films than most areas. The writer of Borat lives opposite me, and the director of Suffragette lives near too.”
The club is free to attend, and asks people to pay what they think the evening is worth.