The 2023 Culture on Campus exhibition (on display in the Macrobert Arts Centre until 21 Mayl) celebrates the centenary of the birth of the filmmaker Lindsay Anderson whose personal and working papers are held in the University of Stirling Archives. We are delighted to present two events in the Macrobert Filmhouse in April which welcome contributors to our exhibition who will focus on different aspects of Anderson’s work and his archive.
Screening of If…. (Lindsay Anderson, 1968) and Q&A with David Wood OBE
7.30pm, Monday 17 April 2023
Winner of the Palm d’Or at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival If…. is a lyrical, poetic and at times surreal tale of teenage rebellion set in an English public school. One of the key British films of the 1960s, its memorable finale of machine gun toting young rebels taking on figures of the establishment reflected the protests and social upheaval of the time. The screening will feature a Q&A with David Wood OBE, author of Filming If…. (2018) who played the young rebel Johnny in the film.
The Old Crowd (Lindsay Anderson, 1979); Casting Through and Scenes from Radcliffe (Stephen Sutcliffe, 2017)
7.30pm, Wednesday 26 April 2023
The artist Stephen Sutcliffe has made extensive use of the University of Stirling’s Lindsay Anderson Archive in his work. His film Casting Through and Scenes from Radciffe dramatizes the turbulent relationship between director (Lindsay Anderson) and actor (Richard Harris) during the making of This Sporting Life. The film was informed by Stephen’s research of Anderson’s personal papers. Join us for a discussion with Stephen on how the use of archives informs his practice.
The event will also screen a rarely-seen work by Lindsay Anderson chosen by Stephen Sutcliffe. The Old Crowd was a television play written by Alan Bennet and directed by Anderson broadcast on ITV on the evening of Saturday 27 January 1979 about a dinner party taking place in a society on the brink of collapse. An experimental production shown at prime time the play was unfavourably received by critics and viewers with as Anderson described it, “an almost flattering unanimity of outrage.”
“Watching The Old Crowd recently I was intrigued by similarities to recent events. It takes place in a future where a pandemic has taken hold and a certain social set are either in denial, or too self-absorbed to care.
Stephen Sutcliffe
