Pomona Rewind

As Hollywood gets to grips with the portrayal of the struggle of women and African Americans for equality, the battle for the rights of those with disabilities has often been overlooked. Yet 61 million people in the US live with a disability, with the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention reporting in 2018 a quarter of the adult population have a form of disability. The most common disability, mobility affects one in seven adults in the US. Research has also shown that the next largest group are those with a cognitive disability followed by independent living, hearing, vision and self-care. The rights enjoyed by those with disabilities today were, like a lot of minorities, hard fought for and have been largely ignored. Nicole Newnham and James LeBrecht's Netflix acquired documentary 'Crip Camp' rectifies that situation, focusing on a group of young people whose activism had its roots in a summer camp in the Catskills in upstate New York. Camp Jened was a remarkable plac

Michael Govier and Will McCormack's 'If Anything Happens, I Love You' is a real gut punch of a short film and that's before ii even gets to its big reveal. A 12 minute Netflix animation about parents grieving the loss of a 10 year old daughter, it is a modest reflection on a heartbreaking scenario that many people unfortunately have experienced. Losing a child to sudden death or illness is a bitter blow for any family to absorb. It just goes against the natural order for someone to die so young. A young life taken in tragic circumstances is even harder to bear. At the start of Govier and McCormack's most black and white animation, a couple sit at the dinner table hunched over their meals in silence. The table is long - emphasising the distance that has developed between them. And above their heads, shadows of themselves act out rowing that has obviously has been taking place. The woman sadly toys with the meatballs on her plate. Eventually the husband gets up and le

The early 20th Century French author of 'Gigi,' Colette once observed how curious grief was. "One can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief," she observed. "But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer.. and everything collapses." Grief is unpredictable and those going through it need the time and the space to properly process it. It is an individual experience and it can linger for decades. American documentary filmmaker Anthony Giacchino has earned an Oscar nomination by turning to another ' Colette ' wrestling with grief. Colette Marin-Catherine is a 90 year old former member of the French Resistance. Her entire family opposed the Nazis from the moment they invaded France, with her scribbling down as a child in her village the registrations of lorries carrying occupying soldiers as t

  Great nature documentaries unlock mysteries about creatures most of us will never see in their natural habitats. David Attenborough has become something of an international treasure for the insights he has given us into the animal kingdom. Documentaries like Luc Jacquet's 2005 Academy Award winner 'March of the Penguins' have also rightly been celebrated. James Reed and Pippa Ehrlich's BAFTA winning feature documentary 'My Octopus Teacher' is, however, more than just a nature film. It's about a deep bond that develops between the South African cameraman and producer Craig Foster and a single octopus over the course of almost a year. It has all the wide eyed wonder of a great nature documentary. It has all the breathtaking visuals. But it may also have you reaching for a tissue to sob into as well. Narrated by Foster and using stunning underwater footage he and Roger Horrocks shot in a kelp forest in False Bay near Cape Town, it is a story about a man redis

Helen McCrory was never one of those actors whose characters went unnoticed. No matter how big the part, she burned bright onstage or onscreen and she always grabbed her audience's attention. Her sharp intelligence and formidable presence were her greatest assets and they saw her work on stage, film and television with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Richard Eyre, Lasse Hallstrom, Sam Mendes, Gillian Armstrong, Neil Jordan, Stephen Frears and Alan Rickman. She excelled in theatre in many classical roles. However she will be best remembered as Aunt Polly, the one character who would not be intimidated by the intelligence of Cillian Murphy's Brummie gangster Thomas Shelby in Steven Knight's stylish BBC1 series ' Peaky Blinders '. Born in Paddington in London in 1968, her father was a diplomat from Scotland and her mother was from Wales. Her father's work meant he was posted to the Cameroon, Tanzania, France, Norway and Madagascar and the family travelled with him. B