Terence Davies
| Terence Davies jr | |
|---|---|
| Born |
10 November 1945 Kensington, Liverpool, Lancashire, England |
| Occupation | Screenwriter, film director |
| Website | terencedavies |
Terence Davies (born 10 November 1945) is an English screenwriter, film director, novelist and actor.
He is best known as the writer and director of Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992).
Davies was born in Kensington, Liverpool, Lancashire, to working class Catholic parents, the youngest child in a family of ten children. Though raised Catholic by his deeply religious mother, he later rejected religion and considers himself an atheist.
After leaving school at sixteen, he worked for ten years as a shipping office clerk and as an unqualified accountant, before leaving Liverpool to attend Coventry Drama School. While there, he wrote the screenplay for what became his first autobiographical short, Children (1976), filmed under the auspices of the BFI Production Board. After this introduction to film-making, Davies went to the National Film School, completing Madonna and Child (1980), a continuation of the story of Davies' alter ego, Robert Tucker, covering his years as a clerk in Liverpool. Three years later, he completed the trilogy with Death and Transfiguration (1983), in which he hypothesizes the circumstances of his death. These works went on to be screened together at film festivals throughout Europe and the US as The Terence Davies Trilogy, winning numerous awards. Davies, who is gay, frequently explores gay themes in his films.
Due to funding difficulties and his refusal to compromise, Davies' output has been comparatively sporadic, with only seven feature films released to date.
Davies' first two features, Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes, are very autobiographical films set in 1940s and '50s Liverpool, and they are his most celebrated works. In reviewing Distant Voices, Still Lives when it was first released, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote that "years from now when practically all the other new movies currently playing are long forgotten, it will be remembered and treasured as one of the greatest of all English films." In 2002, critics polled for Sight & Sound ranked Distant Voices, Still Lives as the ninth best film of the previous 25 years.Jean-Luc Godard, often dismissive of British cinema in general, singled out Distant Voices, Still Lives as a major exception, calling it "magnificent." The Long Day Closes was also praised by J. Hoberman as "Davies' most autobiographical and fully achieved work."
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