Of Time and the City

A poetic, visual journey portraying Liverpool – the city of the director’s youth, and the much-changed city of today.

LIVERPOOL AUTEUR TERENCE DAVIES is one of the most respected British filmmakers in cinema today. His films have garnered recognition from all the A List festivals around the world.

Terence came to world prominence with his uncompromising dramatic interpretations of post-war Liverpool. His trilogy of films, and specifically Distant Voices, Still Lives, created a visual feast that stands out as one of the most powerful and evocative tableaus of working class life in fifties Liverpool.

The film was based on his memories of childhood and adolescence in Liverpool during the 50s and 60s, a time when Liverpool’s grandeur on the world stage was beginning to fade.

SOL PAPADOPOULOS AND ROY BOULTER are Merseyside-based producers of both factual and fictional film. Together, they have produced shorts, single dramas and international documentary series. As Hurricane Films they have been short-listed for an Emmy, nominated for a BAFTA and won four Royal Television Awards, not to mention a variety of awards for shorts, since the company’s inception in 2000. Their 2007-released feature, Under The Mud, is currently receiving international critical acclaim at film festivals around the world.

SYNOPSIS AND BACKGROUND

Of Time And The City is an abstract, visual poem of the first 28 years of Terence Davies’s life, up until 1973 when he left Liverpool for London. Combining aural and archive clips, music and poetry, the documentary charts the re-birth of Liverpool, right up to present day.

Terence has been in the Northwest for the past few months, working on the documentary with producers, Sol Papadopoulos and Roy Boulter.

“I’ve been having a wonderful time, absolutely wonderful!” he says. “The team we’ve got work together so well, Sol and Roy are terrific and we’ve already captured some incredible work.”

However, Of Time And The City very nearly didn’t even get past the idea stage. As Terence explains: “This film would not have been made without Sol. Many years ago, he took some photos of my mother – which I still have – and they were the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen,” explains Terence.

“When Sol and Roy then wanted to get involved in Digital Departures, Sol phoned and asked if I wanted to make a film about Liverpool. I said no, because I had already done two documentaries about me growing up in the city, and I didn’t feel there was anything else I could do.

“But then we spoke some more, and it occurred to me there was a story I needed to tell, a story which captured the nature of our city.

“After seven years of not being able to get anything off the ground, this project and working with Sol and Roy has made me feel worthwhile again. That’s why I want to publicly thank them for getting me involved in this, because if you’re not mainstream cinema, there aren’t that many opportunities for your work.”

For Terence, making the Digital Departures documentary has evoked memories and emotions he hadn’t expected. “The whole experience has made me quite rueful. Walking around Liverpool, everything has changed. I’d remember that little shop on the corner of the street – but now it’s gone. And I remember there were eight cinemas within walking distance of the street I grew up on – but they’ve all gone now, too,” he says.

Of Time And The City captures the emotions those discoveries provoke. “I received my education at the movies – I remember going to see Singing In The Rain at the Odeon cinema, and that made such a huge impression on me, it’s stayed with me throughout my life,” says Terence, who left Liverpool in 1973.

“When I left, the city was a very down at heel sort of place, but I really do feel that the city is reviving, and with it, so too has my heart. I really didn’t expect that to happen simply by doing this film, but it has.”

The team are hoping to have the documentary completed by March, although as Terence confides: “There are still some elements I am struggling with. The pop revival in the 1960s, for example, I was never in to popular music, but that didn’t stop me, or anyone else, being able to feel the excitement the music created.

“There was the most incredible feeling in the air, you could almost touch it, and I want to try and capture it. It’s not as easy as using old news reels from the time, I want to re-create that feeling on screen.”

Helping him re-create those feelings on screen are Sol and Roy. The Liverpool-based filmmaking duo have been working together for seven years, after first meeting when former professional photographer, Sol, was asked to take a photo for a record cover, featuring Roy’s band, The Farm.

But they both knew they wanted to do greater things. Sol, a former stills photographer, funded himself through a short film course before making the break and setting up Hurricane Films in 2000, with Roy joining the partnership soon afterwards.

Having now produced around 30 short films, the friends have overcome their fair share of hurdles – many of them financial – and are now established as key players in Northwest film. Not only have they acquired a growing reputation, but a raft of industry awards, too, including a BAFTA nomination for a BBC children’s drama, and a Royal Television Society Award for Best Educational Drama.

More recently, Sol won the 2007 USA CINE Golden Eagle Award for Warplane, a landmark series which was originally produced in association with Granada for an American network, and has since been aired in over 50 countries worldwide.

“Getting awards certainly helps to break the ice, but it’s a bizarre world – you still have to work hard for every commission out there, especially if you’re in the regions,” says Roy, whose recent writing commissions include an acclaimed episode of Emmy-award-winning BBC series, The Street.

The pair currently have several other projects in development, and are working on a co-production for BBC3.

Their first feature film, Under The Mud, written by a group of teenagers from a deprived part of Liverpool, is currently playing to film festivals around the world, regularly receiving stand ovations. The pair also received a Royal Television Society Award for their Granada documentary charting the making of Mud.

“We really do put our hearts and souls into every project,” says Sol, “and we’re really excited about Of Time And The City. It’s a very ambitious film, a visual poem similar in style to Humphrey Jennings’ classic 1940s film, Listen To Britain.”

“By also presenting his own take on contemporary Liverpool, Terence brings the documentary right up to date and we’re able to witness the civic pride of a city in renaissance,” adds Roy.