KEIGHLEY Film Club has switched its September and October films and will this month be showing a biopic about Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen. Woman at War has been postponed until October because the club wanted to show Marianne and Leonard before its TV screening by the BBC this autumn.

Marianne and Leonard is a musical documentary following the famous couple to places such as Hydra, Greece, Canada and North America from the 60s up to recent times. In the 1960s wandering poet Leonard Cohen chanced upon the Greek island of Hydra where a bohemian community of expat artists and writers enjoyed a hedonistic lifestyle.

There he met Norwegian Marianne Ihlen and her son Axel, and fell in love. They moved in together and she became his source of inspiration for many of his famous songs such as ‘So Long Marianne’. Cohen had paternal feelings for Axel and wanted to act as a surrogate father but this was limited by the transatlantic lure for him to develop his career as a singer/songwriter.

The film provides a vivid illustration of the 1960s free love counter-culture that was a non-stop party until it ended. The community became a haven for non-conformity but all was not idyllic - few remained unscathed where broken marriages, addiction, suicides or insanity happened.

Cohen played famous Isle of Wight and Israel concerts before suffering depression, retreating to a Buddhist monastry and later re-emerging as a cult singer.

Marianne and Leonard will be screened at Keighley Picture House, North Street, on Sunday September 15 at 6pm. Doors open at 5.35pm.