Bill Douglas - Trilogy

6 February, 2014 - 20:30
KASKcinema, Ghent
screening

“Strangely enough, my trilogy is not about a dream world, but about the real landscape I had wanted so badly to escape from. But the making of these films could not be a cathartic exercise. There had to be a distance. I had to be objective so that the characters could come to life, so that the work could have shape.” - Bill Douglas

In the context of the research project “Figures of Dissent (Cinema of Politics, Politics of Cinema)” KASK / School of Arts, www.kask.be.

My Ain Folk

Bill Douglas
,
UK
,
1973
,
35mm
,
b&w
,
55'

My Childhood

Bill Douglas
,
UK
,
1972
,
35mm
,
b&w
,
46'

My Way Home

Bill Douglas
,
UK
,
1978
,
35mm
,
b&w
,
71'

Bill Douglas’s films My Childhood, My Ain Folk and My Way Home are three of the most compelling and critically acclaimed films about childhood ever made. The narrative is largely autobiographical, following Jamie (played with heart-breaking conviction by Stephen Archibald) as he grows up in a poverty-stricken mining village in post-war Scotland. In these brutal surroundings, and subject to hardship and rejection the boy learns to fend for himself. We see him grow from child to adolescent – angry and bewildered but playful creative and affectionate. But these films are not a depressing experience. Jamie is a survivor, bold and curious. The cinematography is beautiful, creating visual poetry from startling, bleak monochrome images. When Bill Douglas died in 1991, British cinema lost one of its most original, and neglected artists.