The Fugard Theatre Bioscope is presenting a week of films starring Janet Suzman. This mini-film festival is a celebration of Suzman’s recent honour, when Queen Elizabeth II made her a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her service to drama.

The films started screening last night and the mini-festival will continue until Saturday.

Suzman will host an informal question and answer session on Saturday at The Fugard. She’s in South Africa to start rehearsing for Lara Foot’s Solomon and Marion, which will debut at the Baxter Theatre at the end of October.

That play sees two characters thrown together, each loaded with their own baggage and issues.

Until then, we can catch the 72-year-old actress/director in the film retrospective.

Fugard Theatre founder Eric Abraham said he could find no better words than those Athol Fugard used in his play Master Harold and The Boys, to describe Suzman as a woman of magnitude.

“She is one of those few actors who can hold an audience in the palm of her hand, even were she to only read the telephone directory,” said Abraham.

“Her contribution to South African and world drama is exceptional.

“From the masterful television film of Othello, which she directed during the apartheid period (with John Kani as Othello and Joanna Weinberg), to her riveting portrayals of Shakespeare characters on the London stage and roles in motion pictures and television for almost half a century, Janet is up there with the dramatic gods.”

The schedule for the week of celebratory films is:

Today, 8pm: In Nuns on the Run (1990), Suzman plays the Mother Superior at a nuns’ teacher training school where Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane hide out, pretending to be nuns.

Tomorrow, 8pm: Priest of Love (1981) details DH Lawrence’s stand against WWI and his stormy relationship with his wife Frieda, played by Suzman.

Thursday, September 29, 8pm: A Dry White Season (1980) is based on Andre P Brink’s book, and the film also stars Marlon Brando, Jurgen Prochnow, Donald Sutherland, Zakes Mokae, Susan Sarandon and Winston Ntshona.

Friday, September 30, 8pm: Displaying rare intelligent humour, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1972) gives us a couple (Suzman and Allan Bates) who use black comedy to cope with an almost brain dead daughter.

Saturday, October 1, 3pm: Dame Janet received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971). She played the doomed Tsarina, whose love for her son blinded her to the political ramifications of her actions. This particular film is just more than three hours long and the intermission will feature an informal Q&A with the lady herself.

8pm: And the Ship Sails On (1983) sees Suzman play Edmea Tetua in flashbacks. She’s an opera singer whose death in 1914 brings together all her friends on a ship to scatter her ashes at sea.

lTickets for the screenings are R40, while the Saturday 3pm show is R60. Book through the theatre’s box office at 021 461 4554 or Computicket.

lThe documentary The World according to Ion B screens tonight at 7pm at the Alliance Francaise, Bree Street. Directed by Alexander Nanau, the 90-minute documentary is in Romanian with English subtitles and chronicles the work of the artist – still collages created from magazine clippings. The screening is free and presented through a partnership between the Cape Winelands Film Festival and the Consulate General of Romania in Cape Town.

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