Terence Davies urges Brit filmmakers to snub 'lousy' US cinema

By Staff
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London, May 23 : Director Terence Davies has asked his fellow British filmmakers to forget about "sub-American nonsense" and make films set in the UK instead.

While speaking at the launch of his latest documentary, Of Time and the City, at the Cannes Film Festival, the Liverpool-born director called for British directors to make films about their own country and not America.

"If we are going to have a national cinema, we have got to make stories which arise from our islands. The American template is very often lousy. Why do we want to imitate it?" BBC quoted him, as saying.

His new 74-minute documentary film is gathering praises from all corners, with Screen Daily's Howard Feinstein describing it as "an outstanding work".

Shot for 250,000 pounds, the film is touted as "both a love song and eulogy", and captures Liverpool's transition from the post-war period till the 1960s.

Time and the City is one of three films commissioned for Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture.

Though Davies left the city in 1973, he said that he "wanted to capture the essence of what it was like to be a Liverpudlian".

In fact, he was shocked to see some of the archive footage of the city's slums, "even though I grew up in one", he said.

The 62-year-old has tried his hand at direction first time after The House of Mirth, his Bafta-nominated 2000 adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel. His drama Distant Voices, Still Lives won the Fipresci Prize at Cannes in 1988.

ANI

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