Tuesday 21st January 2019
Time: 3pm – 5.30pm
Venue: Marchesi room, Sir John Hurt Centre, Cinema City, St Andrew’s Street, Norwich
We are delighted to support the UEA to present a rare screening of the 1981 dystopian classic Memoirs of a Survivor with an introduction by UEA lecturer Iain Robinson.
The film will be preceded by footage from the East Anglian Film Archive, of Rouen Road being transformed into a post-apocalyptic landscape for the making of the movie.
Tickets cost £3.00 can be be purchased here.
Memoirs of a Survivor
Set in Britain at an unspecified point in the near-future, Memoirs of a Survivor tells the story of ‘D’, a housewife trying to carry on after a cataclysmic war that has left society in a state of collapse. Rubbish is piled high in the streets among near-derelict buildings covered with graffiti; the electricity supply is variable, and water is now collected from a van. ‘D’ spends her time examining her relations with authority, with the marauding gangs of brutalised children who roam the streets, and with Emily, the traumatised, orphaned teenager who is delivered into her care.
The movie stars Julie Christie as ‘D’, Christopher Guard and Leonie Mellinger, with a cameo role from Nigel Hawthorne. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival in 1981.
The original Lessing novel, The Memoirs of a Survivor, was first published in 1974.
Iain Robinson is a lecturer in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at UEA. He convenes the module Imaginary Endings: British Fiction and the Apocalypse.
Please note this film has an 18 certificate.
More information about the Doris Lessing at 100 Exhibition can be found here.