PREVIEWS of two powerful new films, Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman on August 20 and Idris Elba's Yardie on August 23, will be followed by a live-via-satellite debate with the respective directors at City Screen, York.

Marketing manager Dave Taylor enthuses: "American filmmaker Spike Lee will discuss his Cannes prize-winner, BlacKkKlansman, in a special satellite Q&A after Monday's 6.15pm screening, while London lad Idris Elba will join us via satellite after Thursday's 6pm special preview of Yardie.

"Please note, that evening's audience will see a satellite performance from a surprise music act, as well as Elba's Q&A hosted by BBC Radio 1Xtra’s, Yasmin Evans."

From visionary Atlanta filmmaker Spike Lee comes the true story of an American hero, Ron Stallworth, the first African-American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police Department in the early 1970s, in BlacKkKlansman.

Determined to make a name for himself, Stallworth (John David Washington) bravely sets out on a dangerous mission to infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan. Teaming up with seasoned colleague Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), the young detective goes undercover to take down the extremist hate group from the inside.

Luther star Idris Elba steps behind the camera for his directorial debut with Yardie, adapted from Victor Headley’s 1992 cult novel about the world of Jamaican gangsters – known as "yardies" – who left the Caribbean island for Britain in the 1970s and '80s.

On a hot night in Jamaica in 1973, a young boy, Denis, proudly watches his older brother DJing at a party to broker a truce between warring gangs. Then shots ring out and his brother is dead. A decade later, Denis (Aml Ameen) is the right-hand man to gang boss King Fox, who sends him on a mission to London to test his loyalty. When the job goes wrong, Denis hides out with an old flame, only to discover that his brother’s killer may be in the same city.

Scripted by Brock Norman Brock and Martin Stellman, and made by the producers of This Is England and ’71, Yardie captures the rough’n’ready atmosphere of Hackney and Brixton in the 1980s. Adding to this feeling of authenticity as Elba fuses the hard-boiled gangster genre with a coming-of-age period piece, the film reverberates with the sounds of the era in a soul and reggae-infused soundtrack that blends a score by Tindersticks’ Dickon Hinchliffe with The Isley Brothers’ Work To Do and Grace Jones’s My Jamaican Guy.

Tickets for BlacKkKlansman and Yardie can be booked on City Screen's new box-office number, 0871 902 5747, in person at the Coney Street cinema or at picturehouses.com/york.

Charles Hutchinson