Museum of the Moving Image to Host Terence Davies Retrospective, 5/7-22

Over the last four decades, the British filmmaker Terence Davies has produced a deeply personal body of work that explores the longing inspired by movie fantasy and the intermingling of memory and history. Coinciding with the U.S. theatrical release of his latest film, Sunset Song, based on the classic Scottish novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbons, about a farming family caught in the aftermath of World War I, Museum of the Moving Image will present a complete retrospective, to date, of the films of Terence Davies from May 7 through 22, 2016. Davies will appear in person at the Museum on two occasions: on May 8 with The Long Day Closes and on May 10 with a preview screening of Sunset Song, accompanied by the film's star Agyness Deyn.

With the exception of Sunset Song (DCP) and The Neon Bible (16mm), all of the films in the retrospective will be shown in 35mm, with some prints imported from the British Film Institute. The films include The Terence Davies Trilogy (comprised of his three short films Children (1976), Madonna and Child (1980), Death and Transfiguration (1983)); Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), the film that brought him into the international spotlight; The Long Day Closes (1992), which along with the earlier works, grew out of Davies's memories of growing up in working-class Liverpool in the 1950s; The Neon Bible (1995), Davies's first American-set movie, starring Gena Rowlands, based on the celebrated novel by John KENNEDY Toole; The House of Mirth (2000), an exquisite and devastating adaption of the Edith Wharton novel, starring Gillian Anderson; the documentary Of Time and the City (2008), an intimate essay film, rich with archival images, about Liverpool; and The Deep Blue Sea (2011), featuring a powerful performance by Rachel Weisz, opposite Tom Hiddleston, in an adaptation of the Terence Rattigan play (The film was voted Best of 2012 by Reverse Shot).

Sunset Song, a Magnolia Pictures release, opens in theaters on May 13.

SCHEDULE FOR 'TERENCE DAVIES' MAY 7-22, 2016
All screenings take place at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue in Astoria, New York. Unless otherwise noted, tickets are $12 adults ($9 seniors and students / $7 youth 3-17) and free for Museum members at the Film Lover and Kids Premium levels and above. Advance tickets are available online at movingimage.us. Ticket purchase may be applied toward same-day admission to the Museum's galleries.

Advance tickets and schedule are available online.

All films directed by Terence Davies.

The Terence Davies Trilogy
SATURDAY, MAY 7, 3:00 P.M.
SUNDAY, MAY 8, 4:15 P.M.
1983, 101 mins. 35mm. With Robin Hooper, Valerie Lilley, Terry O'Sullivan, Sheila Raynor, Wilfrid Brambell. Comprised of three films (Children, Madonna and Child, Death and Transfiguration) made over seven years (in drama school, film school, and after graduation), this trilogy marks Davies's emergence as one of the great British directors of his generation. The films chart the life and death of Robert Tucker, brought up, like Davies, in a Catholic working-class home in Liverpool. Robert is bullied at school and has a violent father who dies while the boy is still young. He is left to live alone with his mother. As an adult, he struggles with his homosexuality, and his feelings of guilt and shame are sharpened by his Catholicism. Davies already shows precision in his handling of sounds and images and in bringing an extraordinary intensity of emotion to the screen.

Distant Voices, Still Lives
SUNDAY, MAY 8, 2:30 P.M.
SATURDAY, MAY 14, 12:30 P.M.
1988, 85 mins. 35mm. With Freda Dowie, Pete Postlethwaite. Davies became the hero of contemporary British cinema when this masterpiece premiered to acclaim in Cannes. This autobiographical story of a working-class family in 1950s Liverpool, which takes place before and after the death of its abusive patriarch (Pete Postlethwaite, in his breakthrough), is a hauntingly emotional, exquisitely designed, and, in its fragmented chronology, a narratively unconventional take on the cinematic memory piece. In a Time Out poll of film industry experts, Distant Voices, Still Lives was named the third greatest British film.

The Long Day Closes
With Terence Davies in person (May 8 show only)
SUNDAY, MAY 8, 7:00 P.M.
SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2:30 P.M.
1992, 85 mins. 35mm. With Marjorie Yates, Leigh McCormack. Davies described this radiant finale to his cycle of autobiographical childhood films as "the story of a paradise that's already being lost and will only survive as a memory." Suffused with both enchantment and melancholy, The Long Day Closes takes the perspective of a quiet, lonely boy growing up in Liverpool in the 1950s. After the death of his brutal father, eleven-year-old Bud enjoys long summer days with his family and countless trips to the cinema. Rather than employ a straightforward narrative, Davies jumps in and out of time, swoops into fantasies and fears, summons memories and dreams. A singular filmic tapestry, The Long Day Closes is an evocative movie- and music-besotted portrait of the artist as a young man. The conversation will be moderated by Michael Koresky, author of Terence Davies (2014, University of Illinois Press).
TICKETS (FOR MAY 8 ONLY): $15 ($11.25 for Museum members at the Film Lover and Premium levels / free for Silver Screen and above). Tickets for May 15 are $12 / $9 seniors and students / Free for Museum members at th Film Lover and Premium levels and above.

PREVIEW SCREENING
Sunset Song
With Terence Davies and Agyness Deyn in Person
TUESDAY, MAY 10, 7:00 P.M.
2015, 135 mins. DCP. With Agyness Deyn, Peter Mullan, Kevin Guthrie. An adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's classic 1932 Scottish novel, Sunset Song is at once a quintessentially Davies meditation on family and the past, and his most pictorially ravishing work. The Guthrie family cowers in obedient fear of its brooding patriarch (Peter Mullan). His daughter Chris (Agyness Deyn), a beautiful and intelligent young woman impatient with the coarseness of her village, is stirred by the arrival of handsome young Ewan Tavendale (Kevin Guthrie). He brings happiness into her life, only for it to be disrupted by World War I. Sunset Song is an unforgettable epic of resilience. The conversation will be moderated by Michael Koresky, author of Terence Davies (2014, University of Illinois Press).
TICKETS: $20 ($15 Museum members at the Film Lover and Premium levels /Free for Silver Screen members and above.)

The Neon Bible
SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2:30 P.M.
SUNDAY, MAY 15, 4:45 P.M.
1995, 91 mins. 16mm. With Gena Rowlands, Jake Bell, Jacob Tierney, Denis Leary. Based on John KENNEDY Toole's celebrated Depression-era novel, The Neon Bible is Davies's first American film, yet still fully of a piece with his nostalgia-suffused filmography. David is a young man growing up in a small Southern Bible Belt town in the 1940s. When his aunt Mae (Rowlands) a former club singer, comes to stay in the threadbare home he shares with his parents, she soon becomes his sole companion. This vibrant woman, with her theatrical past, bestows a previously unknown glamour and excitement to David's world. The charismatic Gena Rowlands brings a perfectly calibrated star quality to Davies's heartfelt film, coloring a young man's everyday struggles with bright brushstrokes of hope and joy.

Of Time and the City
SATURDAY, MAY 14, 4:30 P.M.
SUNDAY, MAY 15, 7:00 P.M.
2008, 74 mins. 35mm. Commissioned for the Liverpool City of Culture celebrations in 2008, and Davies's first film after an eight-year hiatus, this is his first documentary, an archival-rich yet typically personal rumination on place and time. Autobiographical elements are fused with evocative, inescapably haunting images (still and moving) of Liverpool as it changed and mutated over Davies's life. A typically eclectic soundtrack uses The Spinners, The Hollies, Peggy Lee, and John Tavener to build unexpected connections between images filmed decades apart, while Davies's recitations from T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" provides a poignant thread throughout. "A deeply personal piece of art that never descends into the confessional or the therapeutic, and a work of social and literary criticism that never lectures or hectors, but rather, with melancholy, tenderness and wit, manages to sing." -A.O. Scott, The New York Times.

The House of Mirth
FRIDAY, MAY 13, 7:00 P.M.
SUNDAY, MAY 22, 4:00 P.M.
2000, 135 mins. 35mm. With Gillian Anderson, Eric Stoltz, Anthony LaPaglia, Laura Linney. In a career-high performance, Gillian Anderson stars in this stunning adaptation of Edith Wharton's tragic novel, a love story set against a backdrop of wealth and social hypocrisy in turn-of-the-century New York. Lily Bart (Anderson) is a ravishing socialite at the height of her success. Conforming to social expectations she begins to seek a wealthy husband but her quest comes to a scandalous end when she is falsely accused of having an affair with a married man. A social and psychological horror story in period piece clothing, The House of Mirth is brilliantly performed, gorgeously produced, and unshakeably moving.

The Deep Blue Sea
SATURDAY, MAY 21, 2:30 P.M.
SUNDAY, MAY 22, 6:45 P.M.
2011, 98 mins. 35mm. With Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston. In this lush, meticulous, and deeply moving adaptation of a Terence Rattigan play, Rachel Weisz plays Hester Collyer, a woman who abandons her passionless marriage to a wealthy barrister, entering a torrid affair with a troubled former Royal Air Force pilot, the consequences of which plunge her life into ruin. Davies's collaboration with cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister infuses post-war London with a twilight nostalgic reverie, and in a performance that earned the Best Actress award from the New York Film Critics Circle, Weisz brings to the character of Hester an unmatched luminosity, magnetism, and emotional rawness.