We know things are bad, worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy… I want all of you to get up out of your chairs, I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, stick your head out and yell "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore".

- Peter Finch as Howard Beale in Network.

It is 40 years since United Broadcasting System’s (UBS) anchorman Howard Beale finally lost his rag and exhorted his audience not to take it anymore. Somehow his words still seem as resonant today, if not more so. Director Sidney Lumet and writer Paddy Chayefsky’s prophetic Network was released in the UK in 1977. It has lost none of its excoriating insights into the world of broadcasting, advertising and the manipulation of the media and the audience.

The 2017 edition of Cinema Rediscovered kicks off with a special anniversary screening of Network - introduced by award-winning journalist and broadcaster Samira Ahmed - as part of a season of films which look at how the media and journalism have been portrayed in Hollywood.

Including Orson Welles’ tale of power and corruption, and cinematic tour de force Citizen Kane (Sat 29 July, 20:20); Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (Fri 28 July, 18:00), with its no-holds-barred exposé exposé of the American media and public’s appetite for sensation; Gus Van Sant’s darkly hilarious satire To Die For (Fri 28 July, 15:30) starring Nicole Kidman as Suzanne Stone who’ll stop at nothing for a career on TV; Alexander MacKendrick’s caustic noir Sweet Smell of Success (Sat 29 July, 17:50) about the influence of the columnist; and the grandfather of Hollywood newspaper movies, Lewis Milestone’s The Front Page (Sat 29 July, 14:30), in a UK premiere of a new restoration by the Academy Film Archive and the Film Foundation from a print discovered in producer Howard Hughes’ personal collection.

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