The Last of England + The Dim Little Island

The Last of England. Dir. Derek Jarman. 1987, 92 mins. 35mm print source: Metropolis Kino. Preceded by The Dim Little Island. Dir. Humphrey Jennings. 1949, 10 mins. 35mm print source: BFI. Humphrey Jennings’s The Dim Little Island is an anomaly of post-war melancholy sprinkled with a feigned optimism for the perseverance of the British spirit. Jennings films Ford Madox Brown’s painting The Last of England and empty smoke-filled cathedrals while composer and narrator Ralph Vaughan Williams predicts that the contemporaneous decline of Britain as a world power will bring about a future of unprecedented artistic expression. Who could deny Williams’s prophesying genius when such an unprecedented artistic collaboration as that of Derek Jarman and his composer Simon Fisher Turner lay on the distant horizon with their own monumental The Last of England?

Tickets: $15 ($11 seniors and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / free for children under 3 and Museum members at the Film Lover and Kids Premium levels and above). Order tickets online.(Members may contact [email protected] with questions regarding online reservations.)

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