All eyes are on Blue Jean as momentum builds over writer-director Georgia Oakley's first feature ahead of the British Academy Film Awards.
The eighties-set drama is one of the five BAFTA nominees in the category of 'outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer' and it lands former Newcastle University student Oakley and producer Hélène Sifre in the spotlight in the build-up to the February 19 awards ceremony. On the morning of Tuesday, January 31 there is to be an exclusive preview screening of the film at Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle, the city at the heart of where filming took place.
An invited audience will be among the first in the country to see Blue Jean which is set in the region in 1988 during the time of Margaret Thatcher's government and the notorious new and stigmatising Section 28 clause in law which banned promotion of homosexuality in schools. The Jean of the title is a lesbian PE teacher who effectively leads a double life to keep her sexuality secret.
