We’re pleased to announce our programme for September as part of the Independents Biennial and Scalarama Film Festival. We’ve got five films spread over two locations, with a focus on kick-ass women.
We conclude our four-week run at OUTPUT Gallery with Terrence Davis’s The Long Day Closes. The 1992 British film. Set in Liverpool in mid-1950s and concerns 11-year-old Bud and his loving mother and siblings. He lives a life rich in imagination, centred on family relationships, church, and the struggles of a shy boy at school. Music and snatches of movie dialogue allow him to enrich his narrow physical environment. “Together these fragments”, wrote Stephen Holden in the New York Times, “evoke a postwar England starved for beauty, fantasy and a place to escape. A beautiful, melancholy masterpiece.
Meanwhile at George Henry Lee’s building we have four films looking at strong females in cinema. Women on the Edge is a programme celebrating women on screen and iconic performances.
Gaslight: A mystery-thriller film, adapted from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play about Ingrid Bergman’s character whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing that she is going insane. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Screenplay; it also won the Academy Award for Best Actress and Best Production Design. The phrase gaslighting is now used to describe psychological abuse to manipulate somebody so they doubt their sanity.
Sunset Boulevard: Billy Wilder directs this story of a screenwriter who is hired to rework a faded silent film star’s script, only to find himself developing a dangerous relationship. A fantastic performance from Gloria Swanson is this story of obsession and Hollywood’s obsession with ageing women. Enjoy a little faded glamour is the faded glamour of George Henry Lee’s.
Thelma And Louise: Directed by Ridley Scott and written by Callie Khouri. It stars Geena Davis as Thelma and Susan Sarandon as Louise, two friends who embark on a road trip that goes very wrong. A landmark in feminist film. In 2016, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
Let’s Scare Jessica To Death: A recently institutionalized woman has bizarre experiences after moving into a supposedly haunted country farmhouse and fears she may be losing her sanity once again. Feminism meets the grindhouse in this 1970s American exploitation film. Is she still struggling with mental health, or is there something far grimmer at play?