Our TV on the Big Screen strand is back (can you believe it’s been going a year already?). And we’re back where it all started with a Halloween themed edition! 

Originally part of the BBC’s legendary Play for Today Series, Penda’s Fen has become a classic of the genre described as a lasting vision of heresy and pastoral horror. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Alan Clarke, who would later make his name with his more familiar realist output like Scum and The Firm yet still fitting in its exploration of masculinity, offers a powerful portrait of adolescence and religious anguish in rural England. 

In summer 1955 (which looks a lot like summer 1974), through a series of real and imagined encounters with angels, demons, and England’s pagan past, a pastor’s son begins to question his religion and politics, and comes to terms with his identity in a rapidly changing world.

There will be an introduction prior to the film and afterwards will be a Q&A with Dr James Leggott, Dr Tom May and Stuart Frazer from the Film & Television Studies dept. of Northumbria University.

As with all of our TV on the Big Screen nights dressing up is encouraged, but not essential.