Requiem for a Village

Spellbinding 1975 curio by David Gladwell, which mingles supernatural horror and rural documentary.

In 1975 David Gladwell was best known as a skilled and versatile editor, particularly on Lindsay Anderson’s If… and O Lucky Man! He’d also made a series of his own experimental shorts, but nothing to prepare audiences for his first feature. Blending pastoral documentary, art film and a touch of supernatural horror, it jump-cuts between past and present, literally resurrecting the dead to explore what progress is leaving behind. With beautiful 16mm photography and a choral score by ethnomusicologist David Fanshawe, you wonder how this stayed hidden for so long. That it re-emerged is credit to BFI Flipside, and curators Will Fowler and Vic Pratt will be here to talk about unearthing Requiem for a Village.