Powell + Pressburger: In Prospero’s Room
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We are proud to present an installation of works on video presented at Prospect Cottage.
In collaboration with the BFI this installation will highlight the influence of Powell + Pressburger on Derek Jarman. This immersive installation will explore how their work continues to be a source of creative inspiration for artists working with the moving image.
Michael Powell, one half the legendary filmmaking duo Powell + Pressburger, had a fantastical vision for film, which was beautifully realised in 1940s films such as A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and The Red Shoes (1948). For Powell, Shakespeare's The Tempest contained "all the things I most loved and most believed in" but by the 1950s “fantasy had fled and the kitchen sink stood squarely in the academy frame” and he was unable to get his much dreamed-of feature adaptation made. Jarman, a great admirer of Powell’s work, did manage to do so, with a characteristically original take on the play. The Tempest was one of many points of connection between Jarman and Powell, along with the Kent landscape, English Romanticism, and a profound fascination with the idea of the artist/filmmaker as a magus, personified in the figure of Prospero.
The installation will be set across five rooms in Prospect Cottage, containing moving image works by Michael Powell, Derek Jarman, Victor Burgin and Adebukola Buki Bodunrin, along with reproductions on paper of production designs from both Powell's unmade project and Derek Jarman's completed film of The Tempest.
The event is presented as part of the BFI's nationwide celebration Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell + Pressburger. For more information on the screenings, events and exhibitions taking place in and around Folkestone visit www.PPFolkestone.co.uk
With support of the BFI Film Audience Network, awarding funds from the National Lottery.
