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A Matter of Life and Death

Sunday 12 and Wednesday 15 May, 2024

To celebrate the release of the new documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger, we’re delighted to bring this fine example of the duo’s creative genius in action back to GFT. In this audacious Technicolor fantasy, a Second World War airman finds himself summoned to heaven after surviving a plane crash that should have killed him.

Set in a Technicolor England and a monochrome heaven, A Matter of Life and Death took the imaginative daring of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger to new heights.

David Niven plays a British airman who survives a plane crash and falls in love with an American radio operator (Kim Hunter), only to be summoned to the afterlife by a divine messenger. But is heaven just a hallucination brought on by brain injury?

In 2004, Total Film named A Matter of Life and Death second on their list of the greatest British movies ever and it counts Martin Scorsese, Michael Sheen, Stephen Fry and Daniel Radcliffe amongst its famous fans. Its influence can be seen across contemporary cinema, from the conveyor belt that transports Joe Gardner to the afterlife in Pixar’s Soul to the production design in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. This was also the first feature photographed by the great cinematographer Jack Cardiff, previously camera operator on Powell and Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

GFT 12 Rose Street, G3 6RB

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