Every Thursday, only movies in English will be shown. The cinema is located in front of Kyiv-Pechersk monastery on the premises of Master Klass Educational Corporation, where McGovern works.

“This cinema club is a combination of really great classic films, a big screen and English language. It’s for people who study English as well as for native speakers,” McGovern said. “The films that will be shown here are not normal, standard films. They are all special in some way. But you won’t find them in shops in Kyiv. It is hard to get them even in Britain.”

For the first screening, held last week, McGovern ordered a film from China: the black and white 1944 thriller “Double Indemnity” was impossible to find anywhere else. Twenty young people came to watch the movie – although the theater has room for two hundred viewers. There were technical problems when the DVD stopped playing several times. McGovern promised to turn to a company that specializes in showing films to help avoid such problems.

McGovern himself is a great film lover. At home in Ireland he has hundreds of DVDs and videos in a bookcase that occupies his entire wall. Moreover, he wrote his PhD thesis in Oxford University on Russian director Andrei Tarkovskiy. “One very good side of my job is that I can choose films and make everybody watch them,” he said, laughing. “To be serious, I watched a lot of films personally”.

“Double Indemnity” opened a series of film showings which will be dedicated to the Golden Age of American cinema from 1944-1950. Film-noir “Double Indemnity” went on screens with the tagline “It’s Love and Murder at First Sight!” starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, the best actress of that time.

The next film will be Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 mystery thriller “Spellbound” which won an Oscar for Best Music by composer Miklos Rozsa. The film tells the story of female psychiatrist Dr. Constance Peterson (Ingrid Bergman) who protects the identity of an amnesia patient accused of murder while attempting to recover his memory.

Another film will be Frank Capra’s 1946 family drama “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a traditional Christmas film shown every year in English-speaking countries. In this film, the angel Clarence helps a compassionate but despairingly frustrated businessman George Bailey (James Stewart) by showing what life would have been like if he never existed.

The last film in the series will be the 1947 romantic drama “Best Years of Our Lives” that won seven Oscars. It tells the stories of three World War II veterans who return home to small-town America to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed.

McGovern said that he also wants to show a series of British comedy films, admitting that British humor is very different from American. “For example, ‘The Belles of St. Trinian’s’ (1954) is about an English private school for girls. Girls are supposed to be well-behaved and civilized, especially in an English private school. Of course, the reality is quite different.”

Films based on Shakespeare’s plays will be shown in April, the month the writer was born, including  “Romeo and Juliet,” “Henry V,” “Richard III” and “Hamlet.”

“And then we’ll show something lighter, probably British thrillers or adventures, aviation and western war films.” According to McGovern, all these movies should be very useful. “One thing that always surprises me in Ukraine is how little people here know about the West.”

The movie club will hold screenings every Thursday until the summer. Entrance is free for the month of December, but after the New Year, a nominal fee will be charged to cover major expenses.

Master Klass isn’t the only educational organization demonstrating films in their original language to public audiences. The French Cultural Center screens French-language movies and entrance is free. Movies there are shown on the first Tuesday of every month and then are screened repeatedly at the Druzhba movie theaters on remaining Tuesdays. In December, viewers can catch the 1947 black and white fantasy drama “Beauty and the Beast” by Jean Cocteau and the 1997 musical comedy and drama “Same Old Song” by classic Alain Resnais.

Cinema Club in Master Klass (34 Mazepy, 244-9792, 280-8899).

7 p.m.

Dec. 4 “Spellbound”

Dec. 11 “It’s a Wonderful Life”

Dec. 18 “The Best Years of Our Lives”

info@MasterKlass.org

Update schedule at www.masterklass.org/ru/events/calendar/178.html

Free admission in December;

Cinema Club of the French Cultural Center (84 Honchara);

Druzhba (25 Khreshchatyk, 278-5900).

Dec. 9      “Belle et La Bete” (“Beauty and the Beast”)

Dec. 16 “On Conna?t la Chanson” (“Same Old Song”)

7:30 p.m.

Free admission

See schedule at http://www.ifu.com.ua/?lang=fr&s=7&p=s01 or call 529-2759.