Of Time and the City

In this exquisite, evocative first-person film essay, commissioned by city of Liverpool, the great British director Terence Davies explores the lost Liverpool of his boyhood, the setting also of his masterful, much-admired autobiographical features Distance Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes (the latter also screens in this program). “Of Time and the City outshone the dramatic entries at this year’s [2008] Cannes Film Festival. Davies’s film purports to be about the director’s hometown of Liverpool, but it turns out to be much, much more. In fact, it is a poetic, heartfelt, and beautifully realized account of the filmmaker’s youth... . Reminiscent of Davies’s early films, Of Time and the City recalls the director as a boy as he struggles with poverty, Catholicism, the British monarchy, and his own sexuality while finding solace in cinema and music. It is an impeccably assembled scrapbook of archival footage, radio broadcasts, and pop and classical ditties, all served up with Davies’s intimate and impassioned narration. He claims the Liverpool of his youth — the 1950s and '60s — no longer exists. Luckily, immersing oneself in Of Time and the City is probably pretty close to strolling down Penny Lane at the dawn of the rock movement” (Martin Tsai, New York Sun). “As rich and exhilarating as anything Davies has done” (Geoff Andrew, Time Out). Colour, HDCAM. 77 mins.