Tickets: $12 Adults | $7 Students
English, 120 minutes
Margaret Thatcher’s iron-fisted rule over 1980s Britain prompted waves of political protest. Perhaps the most amazing response of all occurred with Welsh coal miners and London lesbians and gays found a common cause. Pride tells the story of that unlikely alliance; it was never obvious, but it sure looks like fun.
By 1984, new-wave music had taken over the clubs, Thatcher’s government was battling mining unions, and London’s queer communities were perfecting artful activism. Into this mix walks Mark (Ben Schnetzer, The Riot Club, The Book Thief). Out, proud, and always ready for a righteous battle, he can’t accept that any one form of oppression should outrank another. Overcoming the reluctance of his ragtag band of friends – who would mostly rather party than protest – he brings them together to form Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. But do the miners what this kind of support?
Pride is at its most outrageously funny when the LGSM activists crash into small -town South Wales in their brightly painted communal bus. Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake, Another Year) is wonderful here as the hard-working Welsh woman whose support group holds the community together, while Paddy Considine (The World’s End, Submarine) plays a forward-thinking union organizer and the inimitable Bill Nighy (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Love Actually) takes a subtle role as the local pub historian.
Their encounters with the misfits and rabble-rousers who make up the LGSM give Pride its comedy and its heart. Some in the mining village have to get over their homophobia. Some of the gay activists have to get over themselves. Pride shows how exciting it was to be young in the British eighties, and with its smart, nuanced understanding of the ongoing LGBTQ struggle, it affirms the power of movies to tell a transformational story.
A movie you can laugh along and dance to, and may well become the very first musical in London? West End to bring disco to the grim Welsh coal mines – Geoff Pevere, The Globe and Mail
For more information about this event please call us at 604-981-6335 also, discount flex passes available by phone.
