At Last the 1948 Show
Thirteen Episodes!
| Premiering in 1967, this groundbreaking, splendidly silly and surreal comedy sketch series written and performed by John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Marty Feldman (Young Frankenstein), was a major milestone on the road to Monty Python’s Flying Circus. This sketch show was often Monty Python in all but name – it even featured an early version of the ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch that later became a staple of the Python stage show. |
Maeve
A film by Pat Murphy
| Pat Murphy and John Davis’ experimental film attempts to posit an alternative, feminist perspective on the Troubles and Irish nationalism. Flitting between the various pasts and present, it follows the experiences of the titular character as she grows up under the spectre of sectarianism, leaves Belfast and then returns after years away. |
| Ascendency A film by Edward Bennett Set in Ireland in 1920, Ascendancy is a powerful meditation on English guilt over the tormented history of Northern Ireland. Connie (Julie Covington) is an English aristocrat driven to despair over the horrors of war, including both the residual effects of the Great War and a new wave of violence emerging on the streets of Ulster. Produced in 1982 by the BFI and Channel 4, Ascendancy reflects the political climate of the time, when the British government’s strategy for dealing with Northern Ireland was often openly questioned. Edward Bennett’s forceful and intelligent film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, but has since been difficult to see – it is now ripe for reappraisal. |
A History of the European Working Class
A four-part series by Stan Neumann
| The working class has played an essential part of European countries’ history – through revolutions, wars and social progress. A spectacular tale told in four episodes, this series reminds us of what our societies owe to the worker’s movements and its struggles. |
Watch This Weekend: “Belly of the Beast”
Erika Cohn’s scathing documentary Belly of the Beast joins OVID’s lineup this week, just as we are all reckoning with a probable future without Roe v Wade.
