The Colour Room

Clarice Cliff is seventeen, working in a pottery in Stoke-on-Trent. The rules of the trade in 1920s England are clear: women paint, men design, and nobody steps out of line. Clarice does. She makes her own shapes at night, mixes her own colours, and Colley Shorter, the factory owner's son, sees her drawings. He gives her a workshop of her own. What comes out of it is unlike anything before: bright, coarse and cheerful. The sales staff tell her it cannot be sold. Claire McCarthy directs, with Phoebe Dynevor as Clarice Cliff and Matthew Goode as Colley Shorter. A hundred and eight minutes. Cliff went on to become one of the best-known designers in British ceramics, and her work is still collected.