Saturday Night (1996)

It’s Saturday night in Leeds – time to escape the workaday week.

Ian’s an ex-con with a fistful of Es. Jackie’s a hostess with a dinner party to feed. Lola’s a drag queen out for the night. Mike’s a singing millionaire in trousers too tight.

Just another ordinary Saturday evening? Or one to remember?

With narration in verse by poet Simon Armitage, we go in search of the heart of Saturday night through the lives of assorted revellers, ravers, rogues and cross-dressers.

"Brian Hill’s atmospheric film is a mesmerising trip through four disparate and unconnected lives. The narration, in verse, by poet Simon Armitage brings pertinent comment but no judgement on their choice of activities, yet stops well short of becoming art for art’s sake.”
Josephine Monroe, Time Out.

"For those of us who relish the arty documentary as a legitimate and refreshingly different form, Brian Hill’s impressionist portrait of Leeds on a Saturday night was quite a treat. Filmed in striking black and white, underlined with an effectively simple verse narration by Simon Armitage, atmospheric in its way of feeding the particular into the general, the programme managed a hypnotic hold.”
Seán Day-Lewis, The Daily Telegraph.