IN celebration of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transexual History Month 2012 (LGBT), Southampton Solent University presents Volver.

As part of its Equality and Diversity Film Programme, the University offers a series of classic and contemporary movies which explore what it means to be different in a diverse world.

The free cinema showings for everyone begin on Thursday with hit movie Volver, featuring Penelope Cruz entangled in the stories of three spontaneous, fun and fearless women bound by solidarity.

Pedro Almodóvar is arguably Spain’s most celebrated director, his films famed for their flamboyant characters, controversial themes and gaudy visual style.

The film begins at 5:30pm.

n MEEK’S Cutoff, next week’s movie from Winchester Film Society, reveals the reality of wagon trains heading west. They were gruelling, dirty, thirsty, burning and freezing ordeals. Attacks by Indians were not the greatest danger; accidents and disease were.

The focus is on the womenfolk as opposed to gun toting macho males. This innovative Western is more an experience than a story.

It’s brought to the screen at Everyman Cinema in Winchester on Tuesday.

For more details, visit winchesterfilmsociety.

co.uk.

n Yusuf is an only child who lives with his parents in an isolated mountain area in Bal (Honey), Wednesday’s film at Southampton University’s The Phoenix.

The young boy watches in admiration as his beekeeper father Yakup is suspended dangerously from the uppermost branches to gather honey.

Yusuf's stutter and anxieties escalate when his father must travel to a faraway forest on a risky mission and does not return.

The boy summons all of his courage and goes deep into the forest to search for his father. A journey into the unknown...

See thephoenix.org.uk.