When the Wind Blows - partnership event with Hyde Park Picture House
Thanks are due to Wendy from the Hyde Park Picture
House, who selected such an appropriate film for LitFest, and to Allan who
showed us the two giant 35 mm film projectors upstairs in the projection box.
Next to the modern digital version the huge reels of film emphasised how far
technology has moved on, in war as in its imagery
Monday 31 March
Sally Bavage writes:
 |
| Photo: Sally Bavage |
When the Wind Blows author Raymond Briggs’ eightieth birthday and
the one hundredth birthday of the Hyde Park Picture House, as well as the
centenary of the outbreak of WW1, are three good reasons to revive one of the
classics of a war from another era – planning to survive the Cold War or what
would have been WW3.
Jim and Hilda Bloggs believe
in the government, believe the pamphlets about building a home-made shelter and
believe that they can survive if they follow the government’s ludicrous lists
of instructions in Protect and Survive and The Householder’s Guide to
Survival. Rather like those who
came from the Boer War to WW1, they have no idea of the difference in the
destructive power of the new weapons that will be used, nor of the insidious
effects of nuclear radiation.
“It’ll all be over in a
flash” says Jim in a moment of unintended prescience. “It’s all gone dead,” doesn’t just refer to the electricity,
the radio and the television; the landscape is stark and burned, the lettuces
evaporated, the animal life limited to rats coming out of the sewers - and the
steam coming from the kettle assumes the shape of a mushroom cloud. This viewer was starkly reminded of
much more recent imagery coming from Chechnya, Iraq and Syria.
Raymond
Briggs, illustrator, cartoonist, graphic novelist and author achieved great success amongst adults and
children. He is also known for his
story The Snowman, a book without words, as well as Fungus the Bogeyman and Father Christmas. In an era of the resurgence
of the genre of the graphic novel, a graphic film that we watch as hope and
belief in their survival finally fade.
Hankies all round as David Bowie sings us out.
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