ON Sunday afternoon, City Screen, York commemorates scientist Sir Barnes Wallis and his invention of the bouncing bomb, deployed 70 years ago during the Second World War.
In tandem with the York Festival of Ideas and the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, the re-opened cinema presents a special screening of Michael Anderson’s 1955 film The Dam Busters (U) to mark the 70th anniversary of the formation of the Royal Air Force’s 617 Squadron.
Richard Todd stars as Wing Commander Guy Gibson and Michael Redgrave as engineer and inventor Dr Barnes Wallis in the story of the 617 Squadron’s daring Dam Buster raids.
Utilising Wallis’s bouncing bomb, they breached the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams and wrought immense destruction in the industrial Ruhr Valley.
The Festival of Ideas exhibition Barnes Wallis: In Yorkshire And Beyond is running until June 23 at the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, in Fossgate, highlighting his invention of the Wellington bomber and the bouncing bomb and his work on developing airships and radio telescopes.
Tonight’s lecture by Peter Rix, from the Barnes Wallis Memorial Trust, will likewise draw attention to Dr Wallis’s significant inventions beyond the bouncing bomb in Barnes Wallis: His Life And Work at the hall at 6pm.
• THE Festival of Ideas’ LUMA Film Festival will run at the Theatre, Film and Television Building, University of York, on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 6pm.
The event will include presentations from industry professionals, including Greg Dyke, hands-on practical workshops in the university TV studios and screenings of student filmmaking.
The 50th Anniversary Student Film Competition Awards will be held in the same building on Sunday at 4pm.
School students were given the challenge of creating a three-minute film to reflect the Festival of Ideas’ North and South theme and the winning entries can be viewed at the LUMA festival.
On Saturday afternoon, same building, at 2.15pm, the director of the films Chicken Run and The Pirates! Band Of Misfits and co-founder of Aardman Animation will be in the spotlight in Cracking Animation: An Audience With Peter Lord.
He will be interviewed by Judith Buchanan about film production, the history of animation, winning an Oscar and his film plans for the future.
Tickets are free for each of these events at lumafilmfestival.com
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