Madonna and Child

Robert Tucker is thirty now and a clerk in an office. After work, he goes back to the house he shares with his mother. One night, he tries to sneak out, but his mother hears him and comes down the stairs. He goes to a gay club, but the bouncers won’t let him in; then he has an encounter with a man in the public toilets. He goes to church one day and enters the confession booth, but does not confess his homosexuality. At home, he fantasizes that he is dying and brought before God for judgement.
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.
Script: Terence Davies
Cinematography: William Diver
Editing: Mick Audsley
Actors: Terry O’Sullivan (Tucker, middle-aged), Sheila Raynor (mother), Paul Barber (tattooist), John Meynall (priest), BrianWard (man in club)
Production: National Film School
Producers: Mike Maloney
Format: 35mm B&W
Production Country: UK
Production Year: 1980

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