"Bronson" - special charity screening in Cambridge

Since the Willow Walker folded, a lot has been happening behind the scenes to re-establish a written-word service for homeless and vulnerably housed people in Cambridge and the people who serve them.

This culminated earlier in the year with the formation of Flack, a company registered as a social enterprise which aims to launch its first issue next spring. Their patron, Tom Hardy, is coming to the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse on Sunday 9 May to answer questions after a special screeening of his controversial film
Bronson in aid of the charity. I don't think I can do better than give you the press release, with hyperlinks and pics.




Hollywood star Tom Hardy will be coming to Cambridge on Sunday, May 9 for a special screening of his film Bronson. The showing, in the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse at 1pm, will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the actor.

The screening is to support the newly-formed charity Flack, which was set up to replace and expand the services to homeless/vulnerably housed people and the agencies who serve them by the magazine Willow Walker. The first editor of the Willow Walker, named after a Cambridge hostel run by English Churches Housing Group, was Alexander Masters, whose book Stuart: A Life Backwards was turned into a film starring Hardy.

The editor of Flack, which hopes to launch its new magazine in Spring 2011, is Kirsten Lavers, whose tenure at the Willow Walker as Alexander Masters’ successor saw the formation of a business called Cambridge Link-Up, run by present and formerly homeless people, and Street Voices, whose double CD Both Sides of the Tracks was released in March 2009 to critical acclaim.

Tom Hardy, patron of Flack, has successfully battled an alcohol and crack addiction he acquired after the box-office failure of Star Trek Nemesis, in which he played Praetor Shinzon, an evil clone of Captain Jean Luc Picard; the film was released at the same time as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the James Bond film Die another Day and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Bronson is the story of prisoner Charles Bronson, who changed his name from Michael Peterson to give him a harder image as a bare-knuckle fighter in London. First arrested in 1974 for armed robbery, he has spent just four months as a free man since, and is still imprisoned. He has been called "the most violent prisoner in Britain", and has been moved 120 times. Hardy famously did 2500 press-ups a day for five weeks before filming started to bulk up for the role. His other films include Black Hawk Down, Minotaur and RocknRolla, while he has also starred in TV productions such as Band of Brothers, Wuthering Heights and The Virgin Queen.