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Film and Video Program
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Two
Centuries of
Charles Dickens
The greatest novelist of the English
language and one of the most imposing figures in all of world literature,
Charles Dickens was born 200 years ago in 1812. Immensely popular
in his own time—where he helped define the Victorian Era along
with Queen Victoria herself—Dickens’ work has endured
in film and television so much so that the latest round of landmark
small-screen epics like The Wire and The Sopranos can—and
have been—described as ‘Dickensian’ in scope,
ambition and execution.
Selecting from this expansive cinematic canon—there are more
than 50 versions of A Christmas Carol, 10 Oliver Twists
and 9 David Copperfields—provides something of a
challenge. Dickens adaptations reveal the concerns of the time of
their production as much as how that time regarded the Victorian
Era. Consequently, this series spans works from the 1930s to the
new millennium.
Dickens’ own fascination with social conditions, personal
ambition, education, law, and practically all other aspects of English
society are, of course, ripely on display in every single one of
these extraordinary productions.
Two connections to Nova Scotia are to be noted in the series: Carol
Reed’s 1968 musical production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver!
saw Cape Breton-born Onna White win a rare Oscar for Choreography,
only one of three ever awarded; Halifax’s David Manners stars
as the title character in the 1935 Universal Studio production of
The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Finally, Dickens himself visited
the province’s capital city in January, 1842, hosted by legendary
journalist Joseph Howe.
SCREENINGS WEDNESDAYS AT 8 PM
FREE ADMISSION
18 January - The Pickwick Papers
Noel Langley, UK, 1954, 109 minutes. Dickens’ first novel
is a picaresque comic romp populated by rascally but indelible characters,
all economically realized in this film version made in black and
white in Britain in the 1950s.
25 January - The Old Curiosity Shop
Kevin Connor, Ireland/UK, 1995, 185 minutes. The fate of Little
Nell and her grandfather transfixed Victorian Britain and refined
Dickens’ sense of tragedy. This Irish-shot TV film of the
story features lush exteriors and a fine cast including Peter Ustinov,
James Fox and Tom Courtenay as a memorable Quilp.
1 February - Oliver!
Carol Reed, UK, 1968, 153 minutes. Oscar Winner for Best Picture,
this musical setting of Oliver Twist contrasts poverty and wealth,
and law and order in the dense urban world of mid-1800s London.
8 - 29 February - Bleak House
Justin Chadwick, Susanna White, UK, 2009, 465 minutes. Acclaimed
as the best of the recent Dickens TV adaptations—written by
Andrew Davies—Bleak House follows a tangled court
case over an inheritance through a maze of subplots and incisive
characterizations.
8 February - Episodes 1-3, 120 minutes
15 February - Episodes 4-7, 120 minutes
22 February - Episodes 8-11, 120 minutes
29 February - Episodes 12-15, 120 minutes
7 and 14 March - closed for exhibition installation
21 March - David Copperfield
Simon Curtis, UK, 2000, 180 minutes (3 hours, complete in two parts,
one single screening). The most autobiographical of Dickens’
works, this 3-hour version launched Daniel Radcliffe (Harry
Potter) on his acting career as the young Copperfield; Maggie
Smith, Ian McKellen star alongside Bob Hoskins as Micawber.
28 March - Hard Times
Peter Barnes, UK, 1994, 110 minutes. Compressed and expressionistic,
Peter Barnes (The Ruling Class, Red Noses) captures
a Northern town on the cusp of change in this visually lush version.
Alan Bates, Richard E. Grant and Bill Paterson star.
4 April - A Tale Of Two Cities
Jack Conway, Robert Z. Leonard, USA, 1935, 126 minutes. Ronald Colman
stars in this Hollywood Golden Age adaptation of Dickens’
most dashing work, a French Revolution-era adventure tale that takes
place between London and Paris.
11 April - Great Expectations
David Lean, UK, 1946, 118 minutes. Acknowledged as the single greatest
film of any Dickens work, Great Expectations’ silvery
black-and-white cinematography illuminates a coming-of-age mystery
tale that has beguiled audiences for generations.
18 April - The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Stuart Walker, US, 1935, 85 minutes. Dickens’ last, uncompleted
novel—he only finished six chapters—sees the writer
moving from realism to symbolism in this embryonic murder mystery.
Halifax’s David Manners stars as Drood.
25 April - Oliver Twist
Roman Polanski, France/UK, 2005, 130 minutes. The most recent big-screen
version of Dickens sees the famed director of The Pianist,
Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby reflecting
his own extraordinary childhood through Dickens’ famous boyhood
hero.
Four
From Sidney Poitier
Arguably
the most important African American actor in screen history, Sidney
Poitier appeared in a series of groundbreaking films in the 1960s
that directly addressed issues of race in both the United States
and Britain. The Dalhousie Art Gallery will show four of these movies
on four Monday evenings as part of Black History Month.
SCREENINGS MONDAYS AT 8 PM / FREE ADMISSION
6 February - Lilies of the Field
Ralph Nelson, USA, 1963, 95 minutes. Sidney Poitier won an Oscar
for Best Actor in this gentle tale of a roving handyman who helps
a gaggle of German nuns build a church in the American Southwest.
13 February - To Sir, with Love
James Clavell, UK, 1967, 105 minutes. Poitier stars as a teacher
in one of the toughest parts of inner city London in this extraordinarily
frank examination of education, poverty and race in 1960s Britain.
20 February - In the Heat of the Night
Norman Jewison, USA, 1967, 109 minutes. Winner of five Oscars—including
Best Picture—this tough and engaging social thriller sees
Sidney Poitier as a Northern detective dragged into a nasty case
amongst the lingering racism of the American South.
27 February - Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Stanley Kramer, USA, 1967, 107 minutes. Three Oscars went to this
interracial marriage comedy-drama that sees Poitier appearing with
screen legends Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.
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Some notes about the Dalhousie
Art Gallery’s
Film and Video Programs
The Dalhousie Art Gallery offers the longest-running fine art
and repertory Film and Video Program east of Montreal. Ronald Foley
Macdonald has been our Film and Video Curator for the past 15 years.
He selects films to complement exhibition programs, and organizes
special series on film history and culture. Ron teaches film theory
at NSCAD and is an organizer of the Atlantic Film and Video Festival.
Through him, we also collaborate with the Atlantic Filmmakers’ Co-operative,
providing a periodic space for local experimental films and rarely
seen videos, and with the Annual Atlantic Film and Video Festival,
for which we are now an official venue. Our popular Wednesday film/video
screening and post-film discussion group extends participation in
the critical discourse to new populations of students, faculty and
the general public.
Our film program has three purposes:
- To animate specific exhibitions. For example, Film and
Video by Robert Frank accompanied an exhibition of Frank’s photographs
(1996); films on the Holocaust accompanied Herzl Kashetsky’s exhibiton
A Prayer for the Dead (1998); the series Masters of Modern Sculpture
accompanied the exhibition The Very Thing (2000); the series Space
Aliens accompanied Bill Eakin’s exhibition of photographs of UFO
sightings and alien culture, Have a Nice Day (2001); and, more
recently, the series “The sneaky everyday humour of the surreal”
was programmed to accompany Lynne Cohen’s exhibition No Man’s
Land (2001). Where an artist is a film or videomaker him- or herself,
(as in the case of Robert Frank, or, more recently, Herménégilde
Chiasson) we often present their cinematic and visual works together.
Films are usually screened in the Main Gallery space, so correlations
and references are easy to make, especially during the post-film
discussion. For many people unused to looking at art, but comfortable
with film, this program is an excellent way to prompt thinking
about, and provide access to, contemporary art.
- To examine the history and nature of the film medium itself.
Examples: Eisenstein and Soviet Cinema (organized in collaboration
with the Russian Department in 1995), 100 years of the Cinema
(a collaboration with King’s College Contemporary Studies Program,
1996), Female Filmmakers at Five (a collaboration with the Atlantic
Film Festval 1997), and Six by Kurosawa (a survey of this prominent
Japanese filmmaker’s art, 2001). This program often links up with
and supports film studies in various postsecondary institutions
across Halifax.
- To make a space for public screenings of Canadian films,
and local experiemental film- and video-makers’ works. For
example, we have screened works by Canadian film/videomakers Bill
MacGillivray, Cameron Bailey, Lisa Steele & Kim Tomczak, Herménégilde
Chiasson, Cathy Martin, Sylvia Hamilton, Phil Comeau, Claude Jutra,
Denis Arcand, and women filmmakers from the now defunct NFB Studio
D. More recently, we presented First Nations Films at Five: The
complete films of Alanis Obomsawin (in collaboration with the
Atlantic Film Festival 2001).
We have also aligned our film program more closely with critical
discussion in contemporary media arts, by asking our film curator
to preface certain Gallery film series with illustrated lectures,
and inviting film- and video-makers and critics to present and analyse
their works (such as the visits by curator/critics Cameron Bailey
and Peggy Gale, videomakers Doug Porter and Lisa Steele & Kim Tomczak
and filmmakers Sylvia Hamilton, Cathy Martin and Alanis Obomsawin).
In addition, where appropriate,we arrange viewer access video programs
to accompany exhibitions. These are set up in special viewing stations
in the Gallery, where visitors may select videos from the program
for themselves.
The Gallery’s Film and Video Program is generously supported by
a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
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