- dir. CLIO BARNARD
- Year. 2010
- country. UK
- run-time. 94 mins
- rating. 15
£6.00 (£4.50 conc.)
Doors 19:00 - Film 19:30
Our #FemaleGaze season continues with:
THE ARBOR
The Arbor directed by Clio Bernard, is part fictional restaging, part documentary charting the tragic story of Bradford born Andrea Dunbar who was thrust from a working class council estate into the theatrical spot light when her play The Arbor about a teenage pregnancy won the young writers’ festival and premiered at the Royal Court in 1980. Her next play Rita, Sue and Bob too was also a success and made into a film by Alan Clarke in 1982. Bernard’s film The Arbor used lip synching actors to play out a series of interviews she conducted with Dunbar’s family. The film is located on the Buttershaw estate where Dunbar lived and and uncovers with intensity the relationships that she had with her daughters and the tragic legacy she left behind.
In English
“This groundbreaking study of the life of troubled playwright Andrea Dunbar merges documentary and performance to mesmerising effect”
“
The Arbor, by Clio Barnard, is a remarkable film: conceptually acute, brilliantly realised, impossibly sad. It explores the life and legacy of Andrea Dunbar, a hard-drinking working-class Bradfordian who died in 1990 at the age of 29, by which time she had written three plays.”
“Moving, bold, unconventional and impeccably staged, The Arbor is a worthy tribute to a powerfully artistic voice.”