ENGLISH PASTORAL: Better In Your Day
18:30 Mon 14 Jan 2019
Through the all-consuming filter of the 2016 referendum and its ongoing fallout, we look to the collective nostalgia of English Pastoral.
Through public information films, segments from rural TV magazine shows and privately funded nature documentaries spanning the ‘50s to the ‘70s, we’re shown a vision of England’s rolling green hills and chocolate box villages now consecrated as the idyll Brexiters yearn for.
By examining this past and present, using the archive to dissect the validity of this vision and realities of rural living, we ask questions of national identity, unpicking the remnants of imperialist thinking underpinning a national sentimentality.
Juxtaposed against newer work from Peter Strickland, Marcy Saude, Tash Tung and Gazelle Twin, a panel will follow the screening with Saude, Simon McCallum (BFI Archive) and musician Elizabeth Bernholz (Gazelle Twin).
ICA
SW1Y 5AH
Access
Please find all access information here, or drop a line to Helen MacKenzie at access@shortfilms.org.uk for more information or special requests.
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FOREST HERITAGE
Roy Layzell 20 mins (UK, 1952)
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BOX HILL
Peter Strickland 6 mins (UK, 2011)
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LOOKING FOR RYE
Graham Hurley 39 mins (UK, 1979)
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CATHERINE
Marcy Saude 11 mins (UK, 2018)
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GLORY
Tash Tung 5 mins (UK, 2018)