‘The ruined land: the land in ruins’, a programme of films curated by film curator Alice Butler in parallel to the Brian Maguire exhibition ‘La Grande Illusion’.
Join us for a screening of La Grande Illusion (1hr 53 minutes), 1937 by Jean Renoir.
With an introduction and post-screening Q+A with Film Curator Alice Butler.
La Grande Illusion takes place in a German fortress where two French aviators – aristocratic Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and working-class Breton lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin) – are held captive by monocled Captain von Rauffenstein (played by the silent film director Erich von Stroheim).
Himself an aviator during WWI, Renoir uses the prison as a microcosm to trace mutual sympathies between men of the same class. This humanistic conceit of bonds that tie people together regardless of their nationality or race ensured that Renoir’s film was banned in Germany and Italy during the Second World War, though it was acclaimed elsewhere as an anti-war classic. The prisoners’ rousing rendition of ‘La Marseillaise’ upon hearing of a French victory was later imitated in the Hollywood classic Casablanca (1942).
Renoir returned to the subject of prisoners-of-war for his late film Le Caporal épinglé (1962), starring Jean-Pierre Cassel. (description from BFI website)
This screening is in association with La Grande Illusion, the solo exhibition of work by artist Brian Maguire (3 October 2024 – 23 March 2025)
Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.
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All films in the series ‘The ruined land: the land in ruins’
Friday 18 October 2024, 1pm
Film Screening: La Grande Illusion (1hr 53 minutes), 1937; by Jean Renoir.
La Grande Illusion takes place in a German fortress where two French aviators – aristocratic Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and working-class Breton lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin) – are held captive by monocled Captain von Rauffenstein (played by the silent film director Erich von Stroheim). With an introduction by Film Curator Alice Butler. Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.
Friday 22 November 2024, 1pm
Film Screening: Foragers (64 mins), 2022; by Jumana Manna
‘Foragers’ depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel with wry humor and a meditative pace. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it moves between fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. With an introduction and post-screening Q+A with Film Curator Alice Butler. Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.Friday 10 January 2025, 1pm
Shouting at the Ground (21 mins), 2017; by Graeme Arnfield
In a peat bog in North West England a Spanish woman was murdered, her body buried and subsumed into the treacherously dense ecological matter. A matter which labours have extracted for centuries, selling this fertile material as fuel worldwide; a material which upon burning releases timeless carbon deposits into our increasingly precarious and damaged ecosphere. After laying dormant under the rich dark peat for an unknown amount of time a body returned to the surface but its identity had become dislocated; it has become entwined with the history of its material host. With an introduction and post-screening Q+A with Film Curator Alice Butler and Graeme Arnfield. Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.Friday 21 February 2025, 1pm
History of the Present (46 mins), 2023; by Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon
An experimental feminist opera-film about class and conflict, ‘History of the Present’ has been made collaboratively by Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, featuring new compositions by Annea Lockwood, libretto by Maria Fusco and improvisational vocal work by Héloïse Werner. This intersectional, intergenerational feminist work forefronts working-class women’s voices to ask: who has the right to speak, and in what way? With an introduction and post-screening Q+A with Film Curator Alice Butler, Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon (joining online). Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.
