And We're Back!


 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Act II of our series of films featuring adaptations and re-workings of da classics!


As you know, we have had a vaguely involuntary hiatus while they filled the Church basement with scaffolding. This they have now done, and we will be back in action on Thursday, the 3rd of March.

It should be noted that scaffolding we were promised, and scaffolding we have received. Our venue is looking a tad "brutalist" at the moment, but we should still be able to show films down there (and possibly swing from the rafters, should the urge overtake us).

   

Anyway, this Thursday's film is possibly the most esoteric I have yet shown - not least because it isn't actually a film at all.

Antigone was written by the Ancient Greek playwright Sophocles in the year 441 BC, and is one of the three so-called "Theban Plays". These plays recount the story of King Oedipus of Thebes, and the first of these plays (Oedipus Rex) is the one that has become instantly recognisable to everyone and their mother (if you get my drift).

Antigone is the third play of the trilogy (although it was actually written first; never mind) and deals with events following the death of Oedipus, when his daughter Antigone comes into conflict with Creon, the new king of Thebes.

As with most Greek drama, the story follows an inexorable course of doom and destruction that leaves every relevant character miserable and dead (not necessarily in that order).

As I say, Sophocles' play was written in 441 BC. 

2385 years later, the French playwright Jean Anouilh premiered his own version of Antigone, re-worked and adapted to the present day (1944, before you reach for your calculator).


Although the story follows the original quite closely, there is little doubt that Anouilh was constructing a metaphor for France under Nazi occupation (arguably worse: a puppet government that supported and collaborated with the Nazis).

The version of Antigone I plan to screen on Thursday is an American television performance from 1974 with Geneviève Bujold, Fritz Weaver and Stacy Keach. I'm sorry to say that the video quality is not as good as one might like, but the performance is so good that I feel it's worth putting up with a fuzzy image on this occasion.

Also (unfortunately) we are once again witnessing the invasion of a European country by a much larger and more aggressive neighbour; and as ordinary citizens are forced to consider the implications of mounting a (probably futile) resistance to a much more powerful occupying force, Anouilh's play is just as relevant as it ever was.

We will be screening Antigone at the usual time of 7.30 at the Victoria Park Baptist Church on Thursday, the 3rd of March. I hope to see you there!


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