Liverpool film chosen for Cannes Festival

Apr 29 2008 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

Liverpool-born film director Terence Davies _320

AWARD-WINNING Liverpudlian film director Terence Davies’s latest film – a documentary about his home city – has been selected for a prestigious Special Screening at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Of Time and the City is one of only two UK films to be shown as part of the festival’s Official Selection shown to judges next month.

The film was one of three Liverpool-based films, the other two were Salvage and Stardust, to win the Digital Departures micro-budgeted film initiative organised by North West Vision and Media and supported by the Liverpool Culture Company, the UK Film Council and the BBC.

“We are stunned by the news, it’s absolutely incredible, wonderful,” said Sol Papadopoulos, who, with Roy Boulter, produced the work under the umbrella of their Merseyside-based company Hurricane Films.

“Terence, Roy and I were all in the voice-over studio when the call from Cannes came through and we were bowled over. Terence just went white, he had to sit down. It’s magnificent news that this documentary will now be seen by some of the world’s leading film critics. And we’ll also be sharing the category with the new films from Woody Allen and Steven Spielberg.”

Terence Davies, who was born in Liverpool in 1945, is no stranger to Cannes or using his city and upbringing for subject matter.

Distant Voices, Still Lives, released in 1988, and The Long Day Closes, which came out four years later, were autobiographical films set in 1940s/50s Liverpool, the former winning the Cannes International Critics Award.

This latest film, which lasts 75 minutes, uses archive footage, photography and the sound of the city from his childhood days, a visual memoir of a time gone by before presenting his take on contemporary Liverpool as an exile coming home: he now lives on the Essex coast.

Mr Papadopoulos said he described this return as “like visiting a foreign city” but he was quickly overwhelm-ed by the new civic pride of a city in renaissance – in contrast to the one he left behind “on its knees” in the early 1970s. He said the new spirit of optimism is symbolically portrayed with foot-age of Liverpool filmed in the past six months with a climax set to Mahler’s Second Symphony exclaiming: “Rise again, yes rise again.”

Mr Papadopoulos added: “I think he was impressed with the changes that had gone on in his absence. Although he was depressed at the disappearance of some of the buildings he had once known and loved, overall I think he does miss the city quite a lot. It’s an emotional journey with evocative images that will burn in the memory.”

The film is expected to receive its UK premiere in Liverpool at a special Capital of Culture pres-entation in October or November.

mikechapple@dailypost.co.uk