Penda's Fen and Embia Quickbeam

A rare 16mm screening of Alan Clarke’s remarkable 1974 BBC ‘Play for Today’ - one of the visionary masterworks of British television drama. Set against a backdrop of the Malvern Hills, the film follows Stephen Franklin, the self-righteous teenage son of a pastor, whose world is about to unravel through a series of mystical experiences and encounters with angels, demons, Edward Elgar and the pagan King Penda - a journey of self discovery that confronts questions of nationhood, religion and sexuality. Rudkin script is charged with a powerful sense of ‘Deep England’ and its radical potential - the landscape seems alive, knowing and always in flux.