Birds’ Eye View have curated a ‘Reclaim The Frame : Vintage’ season as part of the BFI FAN Film Feels: Obsession season, on the theme of Women and Obsession. Join us for a double bill of two unique and under-screened female-made thrillers from 1985, plus specialist talks and a creative writing workshop, tapping into one’s own obsessive capacities!

British noir Dance With A Stranger (1985) starring Miranda Richardson and written by Shelagh Delaney (A Taste of Honey), is based on the true story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain following her conviction for the murder of her lover. Ellis’s murder trial in the 1950s became a national obsession, later informing the debates leading to the abolishment of the death penalty in 1965. Dance With A Stranger explores what it means to commit a ‘crime of passion’ and how class and gender can inform the criminal justice system.

Smooth Talk (1985) directed by Joyce Chopra and featuring a young Laura Dern in her debut lead role as Connie, a teenage girl who is pursued by an enigmatic older man. Atmospherically crafted Smooth Talk won the Grand Jury prize in the dramatic category at Sundance Film Festival. It unsettlingly contracts two types of sexual obsession – a teenager’s sexual curiosity and tendency to ‘crush’ and an older man’s fetishisation and manipulation of innocence.

In addition, the audience are invited to an extended introduction from three specialist speakers, plus a post-screenings discussion led by Mia Bays, Birds’ Eye View’s Director-At-Large and Oscar-winning producer.

Following the films there will be a workshop, hosted by Be Manzini, award-winning poet, creative writing facilitator and Director of Caramel Film Club. Here, the audience can explore their own objects of obsession, through words and images.

Confirmed speakers:

Mike Newell (Director of Dance With A Stranger)

Sophie Monks Kaufman (Film Critic, Little White Lies),

Dr Lizzie Seal (Reader in Criminology at the University of Sussex and author of Women, Murder and Femininity: Gender Representations of Women who Kill)

Stephen Beard (Grandson of Ruth Ellis)

Katherine Angel (Academic and writer who’s work focus on sexuality, psychiatry, feminism, and gender in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries)

 

This screening is part of Film Feels: Obsession, a UK-wide cinema season, supported by the National Lottery and BFI Film Audience Network.  Explore all films and events at www.filmfeels.co.uk

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