Tyneside Cinema Blog

As the sublime new biopic Tish proves beyond all doubt, Tish Murtha is one of the forgotten heroes of late-twentieth-century photography. Murtha herself was a prodigal talent from the ruins of post-industrial Tyneside, whose pictures discovered the fun and pathos in an otherwise gloomy setting – her black-and-white photos lit-up by the sense of mischief, moodiness and defiance evident in the poses of her mostly youthful subjects.

In celebration of Tyneside Cinema’s new season ‘Dream Logic’, Reel Recommendations has decided to offer a historic journey through a century of cinema (starting later than the earliest origins of the medium, beginning instead in 1910 and travelling through to 2020) in pursuit of a fevered map of filmic dreams and dreamy films. Imagine yourself striding through the oneiric ages: a cinematic sleepwalker, dreaming with eyes wide open.

In celebration of Tyneside Cinema’s new season ‘Dream Logic’, Reel Recommendations has decided to offer a historic journey through a century of cinema (starting later than the earliest origins of the medium, beginning instead in 1910 and travelling through to 2020) in pursuit of a fevered map of filmic dreams and dreamy films. Imagine yourself striding through the oneiric ages: a cinematic sleepwalker, dreaming with eyes wide open.

You move into the auditorium and take your seat, the room darkens and the functional versions of reality you carry every day like a chain of weights, the kind you never find the time to question let alone leave behind, begin to recede – you become light. Overhead a projected beam illuminates the screen and the film begins. It is a ritual that parallels our nocturnal drift into the unconscious: we close our eyes – into the darkness of the auditorium – and, gradually losing consciousness, are ushered into the space of dreams: the film begins.

In February, our team attended the Berlin Film Festival to look for the best new films to bring to Tyneside Cinema audiences later this year. Here, our Head of Film Andrew Simpson runs through his five highlights from the 2023 line-up.