Professor Esther Johnson announces Spring 2017 screenings for Asunder

Esther Johnson, Professor of Film in ADRC, has announced a series of screenings across the UK of her new poetic documentary film Asunder which tells the story of what happened to an English town during the First World War, with almost all of its men fighting abroad and its women and children left behind. Asunder has a soundtrack composed by Sunderland’s Mercury-nominated Field Music and Newcastle’s Warm Digits, performed with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and The Cornshed Sisters. The narration for the film is voiced by journalist Kate Adie, with the actor Alun Armstrong as the voice of the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette.

Using archive and contemporary footage and audio, Asunder collages the stories of people from Tyneside and Wearside to uncover just what life was like on the home front, with bombs falling on Britain for the first time, conscientious objectors sentenced to death, and women working as doctors, tram conductors and footballers. The narrative moves from an Edwardian golden era, in which sport grew in popularity and aircraft and cars pointed to a bright new future, to a war that horrifically reversed this progress. In the Battle of the Somme, British, French and German armies fought one of the most traumatic battles in military history. Over the course of just four months, more than one million soldiers were captured, wounded or killed in a confrontation of unimaginable horror.

Upcoming Screenings

12 February 2017   Barbican, Milton Court Concert Hall, London, 20:00, Performance with Live Music.

22 February 2017   HOME, Manchester, plus Q&A with Esther Johnson and Bob Stanley, 18:20.

18 April 2017  Regent Street Cinema, London, time tbc

Community Film Screenings

18 January 2017       Back on the Map Community Centre Hendon, Sunderland, 14:00
15 February 2017     Pop Recs LTD Sunderland, 18:30
17 March 2017          Whitburn Methodist Church South Tyneside, 19:00
19 April 2017            Arts Centre Washington Sunderland, 13:30 and 19:00.
26 April 2017            Holmeside Coffee Sunderland, 18:00
7 May 2017               Phoenix Theatre Blyth, 19:30
TBC 2017                  National Glass Centre Sunderland

ASUNDER is co-commissioned by Sunderland Cultural Partnership and 14–18 NOW: WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, supported by The National Lottery through Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Sunderland Business Improvement District, Culture Bridge North East and Sir James Knott Trust.

Asunder is on Twitter @1916asunder

 

 

posted by Alison Honnor, Impact Researcher
find me on Twitter @alisonhonnor