A part of British film history, Kevin Brownlow comes to GalleryFilm for the screening of his masterpiece ‘Winstanley’.
“The heart-rending story of the visionary Winstanley’s beautiful dream overturned’
“Arguably the most convincingly authentic historical film ever made in Britain”
Monday 14 December at Dulwich Picture Gallery 7.15 for 7.45pm
Ticket price includes wine and food kindly supplied by our sponsors Le Chandlier.
Synopsis:
It’s England in 1649 and Cromwell now rules the country which begins to recover after the disruption of four years of strife occasioned by the Civil War. However, the spirit of revolution lives on in a group of poor settlers who, known as True Levellers or Diggers, and fired by their religious beliefs, decide to set up a self-sufficient commune on common land at St. George’s Hill, Surrey. Led by Gerrard Winstanley, soldier, political activist and religious reformer, the film chronicles the commune’s eventual destruction at the hands of an alarmed establishment who, despite all they had fought for, rear up in horror at the ideas it embodied, the notion that people could live freely on land, cultivating it for the common good as equals.
“Kevin Brownlow with co-director Andrew Mollo made Winstanley in 1975 on a shoestring – at weekends, over a year, with devoted amateurs. This black-and-white localised epic of English nature is a radiant, tragic, low-key masterpiece of aspiration, decency and defeat, pungent with smoke, wood, heath, wind and rain. Miles Halliwell as Winstanley, a wise, inspiring innocent who sees a chance for the common people to escape generations of oppression, is uncannily intelligent and observant. He is the core of this unique, magically detailed English movie about a mysterious, alien past – a lost world at a crossroads.”
Philip Horne – The Telegraph. Rating: * * * * *
“Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo, made only two films, It Happened Here (1966) and Winstanley (1975). These are at last enjoying wider recognition as outstanding and important films. Brownlow, a first rank film historian, restorer of silent films and director of many documentaries about the medium, and Mollo, historical consultant on such iconic masterpieces as Dr Zhivago and Downfall, used mainly amateur actors to create both films on tiny budgets working at weekend and driven by a perfectionism for historical accuracy and a fascination with the subject matter”.
Screenonline.
Come and join us for this very special evening
Kevin Brownlow himself will be at the screening to introduce the film and take questions from the audience.
- Ticket price of £8 (£6 for Friends) includes wine and canapés kindly donated by Chandelier of Lordship Lane.
- Free raffle with a DVD of It Happened Here as the prize.
- Film notes and Q&A session with the director Kevin Brownlow
- DVD sales table (bring your unwanted ones and let us sell them to support the Gallery
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One Comment
Kevin Brownlow is the world expert on American silent films. You’d never know it from meeting him. He is a shy and modest man, but there is nothing he doesn’t know about the early era of film making. He has collected forgotten masterpieces and scraps of old films and put them together, and asked Carl Davies to write the music – the most famous of these is Napolean, directed by Abel Gance in the 1920s – it now runs for about 8 hours! (am I exaggerating?) Kevin has made several series of TV documentaries about people like Charlie Chaplin, and written books about the silent era. We are very honoured that he came and gave a talk at the gallery. I know all this because years ago I used to work for him….