Nine Days in '26
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
Nine Days in ’26 is a remarkable 95-minute documentary made by Robert Vas about the General Strike of 1926. Vas expertly weaves together archive footage and the testimonies of a wide group of participants, including aristocrats and miners, in the May events of nearly fifty years before. The filmmaker later reflected that he had set out to challenge the cosy, consensus, middle-class viewpoint on the Strike ‘which ignores the real price in human suffering, and the complexity of ideas and beliefs that went on behind the strike’.
The BBC delayed the original transmission for three months because of a threatened miners’ strike, indicating the film’s potency in suggesting the parallels between 1926 and 1974. Fifty-two years on, parallels with today remain powerful too. The film was never repeated, and it has only recently been fully digitised. We believe this rare screening is the first public showing for more than half a century.
With an introduction by John Wyver, Professor of the Arts on Screen, University of Westminster
Nine Days in ‘26
Narrator Ian Holm
Camera Ivan Strasburg
Writer Tom Scott Robson
Producer Robert Vas
A BBC Production, 1974
Details for Robert Vas Symposium: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event/59932/robert-vas-in-context
Contact name: Matthew Barrington
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