Director Terence Davies dicusses his Liverpool upbringing and film technique

Terence Davies is one of THE HOBBLEDEHOY’s favorite filmmakers. Davies is best known as the writer and director of Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992) as well the collage film Of Time and the City (2008).

The Terence Davies Trilogy

The autobiographical films of Terence Davies are not simply nostalgic journeys into the director’s past; they are piercing insights into the filmmaker’s turbulent early life. While Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), The Long Day Closes (1992) and Of Time and the City (2008) are feature-length depictions of the people and places he knew growing up, the three short films that comprise The Terence Davies Trilogy  – Children (1976), Madonna and Child (1980) and Death and Transfiguration (1983) –are the earliest looks at the filmmaker’s life, focusing on the solitary figure of Robert Tucker. Just as François Truffaut showcased the adventures of Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), his surrogate self, across five films, the character of Tucker (played by a range of actors across the three films) is a stand-in for Davies. Continue reading

Terence Davies interview: A Quiet Passion director on making his new Emily Dickinson biopic with Cynthia Nixon | The Independent

Ted Hughes called her “one of the oddest and most intriguing personalities in literary history”. In the course of her life, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only saw six of her poems in print. She never strayed far from her home in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her poetry was playful and profound by turns but also often very cryptic. She uses punctuation in an idiosyncratic fashion, littering her verse with hyphens and capital letters. There is an erotic charge to much of her writing.

Source: Terence Davies interview: A Quiet Passion director on making his new Emily Dickinson biopic with Cynthia Nixon | The Independent