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Terence Davies

Davies is a singularly idiosyncratic, independent British filmmaker noted for his intensely personal autobiographical films ("Distant Voices, Still Lives," 1988; "The Long Day Closes," 1993) that effectively evoke the sounds and textures of post-war working-class life in England's Liverpool. His recurring themes include memory and its close relationship to popular culture--particularly music and movies, the disjunction between bleak lives and glittering fantasies, the collision between the brutish masculine behavior of fathers and the terrified homosexual identity of their sons and the power struggles inherent in familial relations. Spare and austere, these low-budget yet surprisingly elegant films tend to be contemplative, deliberately paced and melancholy in tone; while certainly not for all tastes, they have been hailed as sublime works of art.