When the club screened Behind the Candelabra in 2013, an account of life with Liberace by his ‘assistant’ its director Steven Soderbergh had already announced his intention to stop making feature films and go on a “sabbatical”. Whilst promoting Side Effects which starred Jude Law his then-final feature film from earlier that year, he had made a number of announcements initially stating he would retire and that he had a five-year plan that would see him transitioning away from making cinematic films around the time of his fiftieth birthday. The announcement had shocked many and he gave a much-publicised speech at the San Francisco International Film Festival that year detailing the obstacles facing filmmakers in corporate Hollywood environment of the time.

By the end of 2013 he’d softened that stance and in fact the sabbatical didn’t last that long though in that time he worked and experimented in other areas, incidentally Behind the Candelabra was actually a US tv project that received a cinematic release over here. There was television work, both producing and directing, an Off-Broadway play, and intriguingly a series of alternative cuts of films uploaded onto his website, there was a mash-up of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Gus Van Sant’s 1998 shot-by-shot remake, a cut of Michael Cimino’s 1980 Western Heaven’s Gate, a black-and-white version of Raiders of the Lost and a re-cut version of Kubrick’s 2001. He stated that his re-editing of classic films was an exercise in educational formal analysis and artistic experimentation. Rather than trying to “improve” masterpieces, he stripped away the iconic cinematic elements to dissect, understand, and draw attention to the mechanics of filmmaking.

He returned to feature films three years later and appears to have found a way of working that shields himself from the influence of the major studios and the risk-averse studio executives of Hollywood which was at the core of his speech in San Francisco. Even then he was pinning his hopes on the digital revolution as a way to retain control and as someone who had always experimented with formats and technology, and who works as his own cinematographer and editor under the pseudonyms Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard, he appears to have benefitted from the move to digital, so much so that he’s been known to send out a rough cut of a completed film by the end of the last shooting day. That process enabled him to have two films released last year and The Christophers this.

One of the themes of tonight’s film is legacy and he’s been asked about that as he’s done the rounds recently: “Honestly, if you were to say, ‘You get to pick between your influence being the way that you work or the work itself,’ I wouldn’t hesitate to go, ‘Please be influenced by the way that I work.’ I would be happier if they took the methodology as opposed to the result.”

Ever at the cutting edge of technology, he recently entered the AI debate and has received some criticism for using it in a forthcoming documentary on John Lennon, ‘I’m just not threatened by it. I’m only scared of things I don’t understand’, he said. ‘I needed surrealistic imagery that was impossible to shoot. Ten years ago, I would have needed to engage a visual effects house at an unbelievable cost to come up with this stuff.’

‘You show me a new tool. I want to get my hands on it and see what’s going on.’

Philippa Lowthorpe moved to Bristol to make documentaries for the BBC back in the early 90s and by the end of the decade she was directing her own dramas, her first being Eight Hours from Paris (1997) in which real people played themselves alongside professional actors. That was followed by The Other Boleyn Girl (2003), and Beau Brummell: This Charming Man (2006) before moving into features with an adaptation of Swallows and Amazons. She returned to TV last year with Prisoner 95, a drama based on Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment in Iran.

She was brought on board tonight’s film after the producers watched some of her work and she instantly connected with the story: I am so drawn to telling real people’s stories, I think it’s because I started off in documentaries and then made a lot of dramas based on real life, and I keep getting drawn back to that. I find it so fascinating, trying to find those universal truths which really come into our hearts in a really poetic way.

Visually she made a deliberate choice to make the film, ‘feel real and authentic’. Lowthorpe said that ‘Neither of us [that’s Lowthorpe and the DoP] wanted it to feel clean. We wanted it to be so you could smell the earth, feel the wind in your hair and for it to have that texture.’

“Logistically it was very, very challenging to film this movie with all those hawks. We had to have different hawks to do different things,” said Lowthorpe, ‘Most natural history is filmed in extreme slow motion so you can observe the creature, but Charlotte Bruus Christensen [the DoP] and I wanted to have a much more visceral feel to our shots. We wanted the camera work to be rougher, and we liked the imperfections.’

It was important to Lowthorpe to create something that felt “truthful, raw and vivid”. Lowthorpe adds, “I want the audience to feel like they are there with Helen, whether in her front room or out on a hunt. Nothing can get in the way of us relating to and feeling what Helen is going through”.

Audiences have seemingly related to what Helen Macdonald experienced and Lowthorpe has had some heartfelt conversations with viewers: Claire’s portrayal of Helen’s grief, recovery and ultimately hope, through the crazy training of a goshawk, seems to really speak to people. Maybe because – as Helen says – H is for Hawk is ultimately about love.

Of the audience for the Film Night, four in ten provided written feedback. Of those that did respond, a few individuals gave a mid-range score of 3. The rest of the responses were split almost between the top scores of 4 and 5, with the 5 scores being in the majority.

Those giving it a mid-range score did remark on the quality of the film’s photography but were not won emotionally over by the principals involved. Comments included, “A well made film of 2 unsympathetic characters – one bird + one human.” and “Such selfish grief. I hope she let the bird go.”

Those giving it a higher 4 score also noted the quality of the cinematography and had a more positive feeling for the lead human character and her engagement with the death of her father as played by Claire Foy. The supporting human cast was also noted as very much adding to the dramatic reality of the film. Comments were, “An insight into grief and parent/child love and shared interests” and “Captures the spirit of the book. Claire Foy’s performance calm yet measured. Handling the hawk was a performance in itself.”

Those giving it a top 5 score had felt fully involved with the film and the drama as played out both for the inner life of the central character as shown on the screen and for their clear personal involvement with the goshawk. Comments were, “Absolutely stunning movie. Beautifully photographed with a very moving score. Felt very involved with this film throughout.” and “A truly amazing story about a passion between two beings. Claire Foy mastered falconry to perfection!”

All-in-all a film that resonated with its audience.