LSFF 2019: English Pastoral: Better in Your Day

 

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. 81 minutes.

 

A panel will follow the screening with Marcy Saude, Simon McCallum (BFI Archive) and musician Elizabeth Bernholz (Gazelle Twin). 

 

Programme:

 

Roy Layzell, Forest Heritage, 1952, UK, 20 min

 

Peter Strickland, Box Hill, 2011, UK, 6  min

 

Graham Hurley, Looking for Rye, 1979, UK, 39 min

 

Marcy Saude, Catherine, 2018, UK, 11 min

 

Tash Tung, Glory, 2018, UK, 5 min