The British Film Institute have announced that they will release David Gladwell's
Requiem for a Village (1975), along with four exquisite and startling short films, as a Dual Format Edition, on July 18th.
The idyllic, rural past of a Suffolk village rises to life in
Requiem for a Village through the memories of an old man who tends a country graveyard. With influences that range from the poet TS Eliot to the artist Stanley Spencer, and using real village residents as amateur actors, the film powerfully suggests that history and memory are ever-present in our lives, regardless of the unrelenting drive towards modernisation.
This extraordinary, little-seen film, an archetypal Flipside discovery, is preserved in the BFI National Archive and newly transferred in High Definition.
Writing in the 1975 London Film Festival programme, Lindsay Anderson commented: 'David Gladwell's film is an authentic, lyrical pastoral of absolute and obstinate originality – the work of a unique artist… Requiem for a Village is one of that handful of works which prove that the English poetic genius is fully capable – given the right, rare circumstances – of expressing itself in cinema, as it always has in literature and painting.'
Since his wide and accomplished career as a film editor, writer and director, David Gladwell has returned to painting. He enjoyed a residency at Lambeth College in South London in 2004-2005 and currently lives and works in South London.
Special features:
- A Summer Discord (David Gladwell, 1955, 17 mins, silent): a visionary drama centred around a young girl's argument with her mother.
- Miss Thompson Goes Shopping (David Gladwell, 1958, 23 mins): a sensitive and inventive portrait of an elderly lady's shopping trip.
- The Great Steam Fair (David Gladwell, Derrick Knight, 1964, 18 mins): a lyrical example of Gladwell's extensive work as editor and director of documentary shorts.
- An Untitled Film (David Gladwell, 1964, 9 mins): an extraordinary piece of film art, exploring the power, beauty and violence contained in a single moment of time.
- 36-page booklet illustrated with Gladwell's paintings, with essays by Elizabeth Sussex; Rob Young, author of 'Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music' (2010), and Patrick Russell and William Fowler from the BFI National Archive. David Gladwell himself also contributes an essay.