A 93-year-old Irish writer Edna O'Brien recounts her controversial life, novels, love affairs, and stardom through personal journals read by actress Jessie Buckley.

In 1960, a young Irish woman named Edna O’Brien wrote a sexually frank debut novel, ‘The Country Girls’. She became a literary sensation, writing for The New Yorker, delivering provocative interviews and authoring screenplays. Her success enraged her writer husband and made her a pariah in her native Ireland, where her books were banned and burned. She would make her home in London, where she conducted numerous love affairs, hosted star-studded parties and made and lost a fortune. In July 2024, Edna passed away and this film provides a final testimony from her, aged 93, as she reflects upon her extraordinary life. Granting the director access to her personal journals, read aloud in the film by Irish actress Jessie Buckley, and with additional perspectives offered from Gabriel Byrne, Walter Mosley and an array of renowned writers, Edna does not shy from any subject.

Ireland / UK 2024 Sinéad O'Shea 99m

From the People’s War to the People’s Peace

To mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, a Talk for the Festival of Chichester, looking back at the portrayal of this momentous period in cinema.

Professor Maggie Andrews explores the role films played in the transition to peace at the end of the Second World War. ‘The Lamp Still Burns’ (1943), They Came to a City (1944) provided glimpses of the society the 1945 Labour Government was expected to create. However subsequent, films expressed the fantasies, fears and discontents created by the legacies of war.

This talk by Professor Maggie Andrews explores the role British films played in the transition from war to peace at the end of the Second World War. During the conflict cinema offered distraction, escapism, news, propaganda and dreams of a more egalitarian and socially just future. Films, such as ‘The Lamp Still Burns’ (1943) ‘They Came to a City’ (1944) and ‘Victory Wedding’ (1944) provided glimpses of the New Jerusalem the Labour Government, elected on the 5th July 1945, was expected to create.

In the following years, crime films, melodramas (including ‘They Were Sisters’ and ‘Waterloo Road’ — both 1945), action movies, even comedies, expressed and explored the fantasies and fears of a nation coming to terms with the complex legacies of war, whilst the popularity of films such as ‘Madonna and the Seven Moons’ (1945), ‘Scott of Antarctic’ (1948) or ‘The Glass Mountain’ (1949) indicated the nation’s ambivalence and ambiguity towards every day, domestic life in peacetime.

Adult £7.50, Under 25s £6, Blue Light & unemployed £6.

Sat 5 Jul 10:30