Persistence of Memory: The Films of Terence Davis

From 27 February to 1 March, the National Museum of Singapore presents four amazing films from Terence Davies – The Terence Davies Trilogy, Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Long Day Closes and Of Time and the City.

The Terence Davies Trilogy
Presented by the National Museum of Singapore in collaboration with The British Council
Fri 27 February 2009, 7.30 pm
101 mins
Gallery Theatre, Basement
National Museum of Singapore
Tickets at $8 / $6.40 (Concession)

Part I – Children
The theme is violence – social and domestic – and its effect on the main character Robert Tucker. The story is told in a series of extended flashbacks and incidents from his childhood in Liverpool, his Catholic upbringing and how they have affected his adult life. Constant bullying at school and a violent and sick father at home are events intertwined with Tucker’s view of his own sexuality. The film ends with a memory – the death of his father – where the boy appears to be trapped in his sexuality and his childhood.

Part II – Madonna and Child
Part two tells the conflict between Catholicism and sexuality, a severe and intimate portrait of Robert Tucker in middle age, trapped between his private and public personas. A dutiful son and conscientious worker, he is also a man for whom religion and sexuality have become synonymous. This dilemma produces in him an overwhelming sense of despair from which he feels there is no escape.

Part III – Death and Transfiguration
Part three completes the story in more ways than being merely the final instalment. It is a summing-up of Tucker’s life and his attitudes towards the remembered events of his life, and his coming to terms with his mortality. In this synthesis of memory, times of the past and present merge into the single moment which puts into a new perspective Tucker’s life, and the trilogy as a whole.


Distant Voices, Still Lives
Presented by the National Museum of Singapore in collaboration with The British Council
Sat 28 February 2009, 4 pm
80 mins
Gallery Theatre, Basement
National Museum of Singapore
Tickets at $8 / $6.40 (Concession)

Drawn from his own family memories, Distant Voices, Still Lives is a strikingly intimate portrait of working class life in Liverpool during the 1940s and 1950s. Focusing on the real-life experiences of his mother, sisters and brother whose lives are thwarted by their brutal, sadistic father, the film portrays beauty and terror in equal measure. Davies uses the traditional family gatherings of births, marriages and deaths to paint a lyrical portrait of family life – of love, grief, and the highs and lows of being human that is at once deeply autobiographical and universally resonant.


The Long Day Closes
Presented by the National Museum of Singapore in collaboration with The British Council
Sat 28 February 2009, 7.30 pm
85 mins
Gallery Theatre, Basement
National Museum of Singapore
Tickets at $8 / $6.40 (Concession)

The Long Day Closes focuses on Davies’ own memories of growing up in a working-class, Catholic family in Liverpool. Eleven-year-old Bud finds escape from the greyness of 1950s Britain through trips to the cinema and in the warmth of family life. But as he gets older, the agonies of the adult world – the casual cruelty of bullying, the tyranny of school and the dread of religion – begin to invade his life.


Of Time And The City
Presented by the National Museum of Singapore in collaboration with The British Council
Sun 1 March 2009, 2 pm
74 mins
Gallery Theatre, Basement
National Museum of Singapore
Tickets at $8 / $6.40 (Concession)

From the original voice of the great British auteur, Terence Davis, comes the visual poem Of Time and The City which draws on the first 28 years of the director’s life – his life in Liverpool until he left in 1973. Many of Davies’ themes from his earlier narrative pieces thread through this film – Catholicism, homosexuality, violence, death, loss, the glory of cinema, outsider-ness and childhood. But Of Time and The City also documents the memories, the City and the country which shaped those themes in the growing artist. And throughout the film, a masterful voice guides the audience with his strength, his poetry, his candour and his anger.