OF TIME AND THE CITY A Terence Davies Film
Northwest Vision and Media & Digital Departures present in association with the Liverpool Culture Company, BBC Films and the UK Film Council A Hurricane Films Production.
Written and directed by Terence Davies Produced by Roy Boulter and Solon Papadopoulos UK 2008 / 72 mins / 12A
Release date: 31 October 2008
Opening Venues: London and nationwide
For further information please contact:
Sarah Harvey on 020 7703 2253 or email
Northwest Vision and Media presents in association with the Liverpool Culture Company, BBC Films and the UK Film Council
A Hurricane Films Production
OF TIME AND THE CITY
(UK 2008)
Written and directed by Terence Davies
72 mins / 12A
Release date: 31 October 2008
Opening Venues: London and nationwide (see Notes for Editors)
www.bfi.org.uk/releases
www.oftimeandthecity.com
Terence Davies’ cinematic ode to his native Liverpool took this year’s Cannes Film Festival by storm. Widely hailed as a masterpiece, Of Time and the City is released by the BFI in cinemas nationwide on 31 October.
Davies’ first film in almost a decade marks a spectacular return to the spotlight for the director who won international acclaim for his autobiographical classics Distant Voices, Still Lives (1998) and The Long Day Closes (1992). Made for a modest £250,000, it was produced by Merseyside company Hurricane Films as part of Digital Departures*, a competitive scheme devised by Northwest Vision and Media to support three new features in celebration of Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture.
From the outset, Davies was strongly inspired by Humphrey Jennings’ war-time classic Listen to Britain which he describes as ‘one of the great visual poems’, a 20-minute documentary which ‘captures the very nature, the very essence of being British’. Equally lyrical and emotive, Of Time and the City combines archival footage of Liverpool (plus some contemporary footage shot by Davies) with a rich selection of music (ranging from Peggy Lee to Mahler, Handel to The Hollies), voices, radio clips, and the director’s voice-over which interweaves literary quotation with personal reminiscence and waspish observation. ‘I wanted to make a blend of history and poetry to capture what it was like to be a Liverpudlian,’ says Davies, while also stressing that ‘the film’s not just about Liverpool, it’s about age and mortality … It’s just a different way of dealing with all those things which are important to me: the nature of time, the nature of mortality and the transience of life.’
The resulting film powerfully evokes the director’s youth in post-war Britain while reflecting on how Liverpool - and the world at large - have changed over the years. Intensely moving and wickedly funny by turns, Of Time and the City conjures up Davies’ oppressive Catholic upbringing (‘the years spent in useless prayer’); his struggle - as a gay adolescent at a time when homosexuality was still illegal - to repress his ‘dark desires’; and the joyous indulgence of his ‘rapacious appetite’ for the melodramas, musicals and westerns of glorious old Hollywood. On the wider stage, it also takes in the Royal Wedding of 1947, with its wanton display of extravagance in an era of rationing; the Korean War which claimed the lives of many young British servicemen; and the advent – entirely unwelcome to Davies - of rock and roll.
‘As we grow older, the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated of dead and living.’ Davies, here quoting his beloved T.S. Eliot, has created a near-miraculous blend of past and present in which Liverpool’s cobbled streets of terraced houses, its bustling docks and long-vanished picture palaces co-exist seamlessly with today’s glamorous night spots and spruced-up monuments of municipal magnificence. It is a film of emotion recollected - not often in tranquillity, but vividly and with a searing sense of loss. Conflicting feelings (tremendous tenderness, savage indignation) are expressed through the counterpointing of images, words and music: the crumbling facades of Georgian Liverpool are illuminated by the music of Mahler, and the anonymity of high-rise living transfigured by the warmth and wistfulness of Peggy Lee.
It seems remarkable that a film so shamelessly subjective and utterly specific should have struck such a deep chord with festival audiences from around the world, moving them to tears and laughter. But as Davies himself has commented: ‘If something is true, genuinely true, then it doesn’t matter where it’s from or where you come from.’ This haunting film, which instils in its audiences a craving for repeated viewing (and richly repays it), confirms Davies’ status as one of Britain’s greatest living filmmakers.
For further information please contact:
Sarah Harvey on 020 7703 2253 or email
NOTES TO EDITORS
Of Time and the City opens on 31 October at BFI Southbank, Curzon Soho, Gate Picturehouse, Renoir Cinema, Barbican Film, Screen on the Green, Phoenix East Finchley, Screen on the Hill, Richmond Filmhouse, Ritzy Picturehouse, Genesis Cinema Stepney, Cambridge Picturehouse, Watershed Bristol, Picturehouse at FACT Liverpool, Tyneside Cinema, Showroom Sheffield, Cornerhouse Manchester, Cameo Picturehouse Edinburgh, Glasgow Film TheatreNational Media Museum Bradford, Corn Exchange Newbury, Phoenix Oxford, , Queen’s Film Theatre Belfast, Lighthouse Cinema Dublin plus other venues tbc. www.bfi.org.uk/releases
Of Time and the City was previewed earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival and the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Its World Premiere takes place on Thursday 9 October at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. This special event is presented by the BFI, Northwest Vision and Media, and Liverpool Culture Company, in association with BBC Films, Hurricane Films and the UK Film Council.
*Digital Departures is a competitive scheme devised by Northwest Vision and Media with its partners Liverpool Culture Company, BBC Films and the UK Film Council.
There's more to discover about film and television through the BFI. Our world-renowned archive, cinemas, festivals, films, publications and learning resources are here to inspire you.
« Go back to headlines
