Onwards and Outwards: The Alcohol Years + Q&A with director Carol Morley

"This film is compulsive, experimentation with the documentary form is still possible”  The Independent on Sunday
“Nails the zeitgeist better than countless documentaries about Joy Division, The Stone Roses and The Fall” Evening Standard
“Is this documentary at all? Not in any conventional sense perhaps, but it’s powerful, original and somehow, amongst the grime, poetic” The Times
“Expansive, guided by a potent craft and a poetic, poignant heart” Uncut

This screening features a Q&A with the director Carol Morley, who also presents her new book, 7 Miles Out from Blink Publishing. It is hosted by Kate Muir, chief film critic at The Times.

Carol Morley returns to Manchester, where in the early 1980s, five years of her life were lost in an alcoholic blur. The Alcohol Years is a poetic retrieval of that time, in which rediscovered friends and acquaintances recount tales of her drunken and promiscuous behavior. In Morley’s search for her lost self, conflicting memories and viewpoints weave in and out, revealing a portrait of the city, its pop culture, and the people who lived it.

Featuring Tony Wilson, Dave Haslam, Pete Shelley, Vini Reilly and Stella Grundy

The Alcohol Years, dir. Carol Morley, 2000, 50 mins.

7 Miles Out

A devastating autobiographical novel. In 1977, Carol Morley (fictionalised as ‘Ann’) was eleven years old and living in Stockport when her dad drove her to school one morning then drove home and killed himself. Trapped in a house with her emotionally distant mother, Ann starts drinking at twelve, drops out of school at 16, and spends her teen trying to explore her emerging sexuality as well as coming to terms with her dad’s death. In a Manchester of the hedonistic 1980s, Ann finds the perfect playground for her self-destruction and promiscuity, hiding behind heavy drinking and drugs, ambitionless and empty, trying to come to terms with why her father wanted to end his life. Told mainly from Ann’s (Carol’s) perspective, this story reveals the the often devastating consequences of family secrets, the lies we tell each other and ourselves, and a young woman’s struggle to find a place she belongs, finally finding a place at Central St Martins in London to study fine art and film and achieving international acclaim. Though names and some events have been changed, this is Carol’s compelling and inspirational true story.

Season Multi-Buy Offer: 
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Onwards and Outwards is a nationwide programme of screenings, talks, and events, which aims to establish a dialogue around the conditions of production that women face when attempting to use the moving image as a means of expression.

Join in the conversation on social media with #OnwardsOutwards

Onwards and Outwards is made possible with support from the BFI, awarding funds from The National Lottery.