Saturday, March 20, 2010

To Kill a Mocking Bird - final event in the Kensington Remembers programme


Kensington Remembers, which I chair, has been running a Diversity Film Festival for the last 6 months or so.

Our final film is on Tuesday night, 23rd March, at Venture House on Boaler Street, L6

All free, come for 6.30pm for something to eat, the film starts at 7pm. I am introducing the event and we have Taher Ali Qassim from the PCT to chair the discussions afterwards.

It is a terrific film from 1962, based on a Pulitzer prize winning book by Harper Lee written in 1960. Gregory Peck stars as Atticus Finch, a white lawyer defending a black man charged with raping a white woman. In 2003, the American Film Institute named Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero of the 20th century.

If you would like to come, and I sure that you will, please phone Kenny Regen on 0151 2336136 to book your place.

2 comments:

Suzanne Richards said...

I love this book. I think Scout has to be my favourite character ever and as for Atticus!!!

Louise Baldock said...

Hi Suzanne, I have read the book about three times but only seen the film once and that was years ago. It was great to watch it again, particularly with the backdrop of "diversity" which was why we were showing it - as the biggest, most famous film within our diversity film series.
With diversity in mind there is so much more to the story than the white/black tensions in America at that time. There were issues over so many people being "different". There is Boo Radley and the issues around his "care in the community" - and the idea that kids have about some houses being where the "witch" lives. Often only the home of old people with limited means and dirty curtains. There was the issue of Scout not wanting to wear dressers and wanting to be a tomboy but being made to conform - something we have brought out at recent Kensington Remembers events. Issues about mob rule and pack mentality... all as valid if not more valid today than they were 50 years ago when Harper Lee wrote such an amazing story.
We had a great evening and a fascinating discussion afterwards.
I would like to thank Martin Pinder and Kensington Regeneration for supporting Kensington Remembers with this fantastic film series, you have been simply the best.