“This groundbreaking study of the life of troubled playwright Andrea Dunbar merges documentary and performance to mesmerising effect.” – THE GUARDIAN about The Arbor (2010)

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The Arbor (2010, Dir. Clio Barnard, 93 mins, English, UK, format: blurray)

This is a film made in a very particular way: director Clio Barnard went to Bradford to meet the relatives and friends of a British playwright who died 30 years ago aged 29, Andrea Dunbar. She interviewed these people, and then she got actors to lip-synch to the audio recordings - and this is what we see on screen.

The film particularly concentrates on Andrea Dunbar's daughter, Lorraine, the eldest of 3 children that Andrea Dunbar had with different fathers. Lorraine lost her mum when she was 10, and went into drug-abuse and also spent some time in jail.

Bits of Andrea Dunbar's autobiographical plays are also acted out by actors on the estate where she grew up.

This is a very unusual of making a film, and as Peter Bradshaw from THE GUARDIAN said: "The effect is eerie and compelling: it merges the texture of fact and fiction."

Barnard’s debut feature achieves a sense of both distance and intimacy by re-enacting the past in a wholly unique way. Courting the fine line between fact and fiction, the film is an aesthetic and intellectual triumph as well as an emotionally staggering portrait of life in despair.

REVIEWS

"This groundbreaking study of the life of troubled playwright Andrea Dunbar merges documentary and performance to mesmerising effect" - THE GUARDIAN

"A work of considerable interest, it has affinities with the films of Terence Davies, Ken Loach and, of course, Alan Clarke, especially his TV version of Jim Cartwright's 1987 Royal Court play The Road." - THE OBSERVER

"It’s all very crafty, suggestive and enthralling. Best of all, Barnard’s strange method manages to be both questioning and coherent: the very fabric of the film admits that Barnard can only offer us versions of ‘the truth’, but those versions are still convincing and often staggeringly moving." - TIME OUT (5 star review)

"The Arbor, by Clio Barnard, is a remarkable film: conceptually acute, brilliantly realised, impossibly sad." - THE TELEGRAPH

“[The Arbor is an] exemplar of fact-fiction hybrid filmmaking… Barnard's boldest intervention in the bio-doc is having actors lip-synch the words of the actual interviewees – a deliberate distancing device that nonetheless draws viewers in closer.” – VILLAGE VOICE

TRAILER

Watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyNqRdM0Y4g

+ Short Film: The Girl Chewing Gum (1976, Dir. John Smith, 12 mins, English, UK, format: 16mm)

British filmmaker John Smith’s extremely witty short has reached almost mythical heights with regard to avant-garde filmmaking. Presenting a view of a busy London street, The Girl Chewing Gum features an unseen narrator who struggles increasingly to keep up with on-screen events. An essay on authorial control, Smith’s mischievous film dissects narrative convention to reveal the artifice that mainstream cinema seeks to hide.

Reviews

“Smith takes the piss out of mainstream auteurist ego, but provides proof of the underground ethos: Even with meagre mechanical means, the artist can command the universe." – VILLAGE VOICE

“John Smith’s improbable treatise on representation has deservedly become a Co-op classic.” – TIME OUT

TICKETS

On the door: £5 / £3.50 (concessions)

Or advance tickets online: £4.50 and £3 (concessions) http://www.wegottickets.com/event/204693