Rarely is the message of a film so powerful that it prompts a local MP to champion direct action before the screening of it, but Norman Baker’s recommendations to cut energy consumption were ringing in the ears of audiences as they watched the first Lewes screening of An Inconvenient Truth at the All Saint’s Centre. It returns on Saturday (4pm) to offer those that missed it the opportunity to see the hard-hitting fruits of the collaboration between Al Gore (the man who ‘used to be the next president of the USA’), and director David Guggenheim. The agenda is simple: in an era which is dominated by the politically charged potential threat of ‘terror', An Inconvenient Truth seeks to redirect attention to the immediate impact of climate change. If there is a danger of self-promotion, though, Gore’s understated style is credited for its avoidance, and by his possession of the sense to discern that the facts speak for themselves.

Sunday (4pm) sees the return of The Queen, a film which has had most critics clamouring to comment on Helen Mirren’s impressive shape-shifting abilities. It is also an interesting if not quite taboo-breaking film, set in the wake of Diana’s death that works hard to bring out the Queen’s humanity when faced with an angry, grief-stricken public.
The weekend matinee screenings (2pm) are taken up by 'Open Season', an animated family entertainment which sees a successful animal uprising assisted by a good deal of cross-species alliances, under the tag-line, ‘One fur all and all fur one’. It is a vision of proactive collectivism that would serve well as a model for dealing with climate change. Al Gore would be proud. ER