Distant Voices, Still Lives

In his feature-length debut, Terence Davies lyrically portrays a working class family in Liverpool during the 1940s and 50s through a series of short everyday episodes. The film is based on the director’s own childhood memories and is divided into two parts: Distant Voices focuses on the wedding of Eileen, the oldest of the family’s three children, the funeral of their father, and the memories these two events call to mind, including the bombing of Liverpool during World War II. The memories continue in Still Lives and culminate in the wedding of Tony, the family’s son. The film is packed with music as the characters sing the songs of the period at family get-togethers and nights down the local pub; as they sing of sadness and of joy.
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.
Script: Terence Davies
Cinematography: William Diver
Editing: William Diver
Actors: Freda Dowie (mother), Pete Postlethwaite (father), AngelaWalsh (Eileen), DeanWilliams (Tony), Lorraine Ashbourne (Maisie), Frances Dell (Margie), Roy Ford (uncle Ted)
Production: British Film Institute
Producers: Jennifer Howarth
Co-production: Channel 4, ZDF
Art Direction: Miki Van Zwanenberg, Jocelyn James, Carine Adler
Costumes: Monika Howe
Format: 35mm Color
Production Country: UK
Production Year: 1988
Duration: 85

Terence Davies

He was born in Liverpool in 1945. He began his career under the auspices of the British Film Institute with a first short already showing autobiographical traits, Children. At the National Film School he made Madonna and Child, continued in his third short, Death and Transfiguration. These three works were brought together in what was to constitute The Terence Davies. Distant Voices, Still Lives, a masterpiece on post-war Britain, was his international revelation, winning among others the FIPRESCI Award at Cannes IFF, the Golden Leopard at the Locarno FF and the Critics’ Awards at both Los Angeles and Toronto. With The Neon Bible, Davies gave his career something of a new direction on adapting a novel by writer John Kennedy Toole and shooting the movie in the USA. His most recent film Of Time and the City, which was premiered in Cannes IFF 2008, reveals amasterly use of archivematerial in constructing an emotional and critical discourse on urban evolution in Liverpool over the last 50 years.

Filmography

1976-1983 The Terence Davies Trilogy:
Children(1976), Madonna and Child(1980), Death and Transfiguration(1983)
1988 Distant Voices, Still Lives
1992 The Long Day Closes
1995 The Neon Bible
2000 The House of Mirth
2008 Of Time and the City