University Film series: "The Long Day Closes," Oct. 16

Tuesday, Oct 16, Ayres 106, 7:30 pm

The Long Day Closes (UK, 1992) 82 min. Directed by Terence Davies. Introduced by Sarah Pike, Religious Studies.

The Long Day Closes is set in Liverpool in the mid-1950s and focuses on the concerns of a dreamy and lonely 11-year-old boy named Bud. With cinema as his main source of solace, he haunts the local movie-house. All the while, his family looms large in our peripheral vision as do the menacing bullies of his school, but Bud is the center of attention both from the camera's angle and from his doting family. With a gray background, the film fuses clips and audio from classic movies into Bud's dreary childhood and brings it to life. New York Times critic Stephen Holden calls the film “a phantasmagoric cinematic poem . . . beautifully photographed and edited” that “wants above all to reimagine the world as experienced through the eyes and ears of a sensitive boy on the verge of puberty."