Join us forTending to the Garden, a conversation between Horse Hospital founder Roger K Burton and artist Chiara Ambrosio, followed by a screening of Joseph Despins’s 1975 film, The Moon Over the Alley
[ID: B+W single colour lino print depicting Roger K Burton wearing a cardigan and a THH pin badge, standing at a desk]
Doors: 7pm
Tickets: £7 - £15
This event is part of the Raft Festival programme (see the main festival page on our website for full listings).
We encourage you to consider purchasing a ‘festival pass’ bundle ticket which will allow you, at a reduced rate, to access a given number of events across the full programme (either 5 events, 10 events, or all 30 events). See the link below for more details about these options!
‘We were told that there was no room, but we entered anyway.
We walked through the only door left open, down the ramp and through the heavy velvet curtain that sealed us all in.
We listened and we cared, and we held each other’s gaze as we came and went, without fanfare nor permission- we simply turned up for the show.
[…]
When we entered, we did not know that a room is all you need to dream.
When we dreamt, we did not know that a dream is all you need to float.’
Raft Festival is delighted to present a screening of Joseph Despins’s 1975 masterpiece, The Moon Over the Alley. The screening will be preceded by a conversation between Horse Hospital founder, Roger K Burton, and artist and filmmaker Chiara Ambrosio.
Exploring controversial issues such as racism, paedophilia, rape, drug abuse and stripping, The Moon Over the Alley employs a number of seemingly incongruous devices – musical numbers, over-the-top performances, theatrical staging – to produce a profoundly affecting work. The magic realist numbers from the film are by Galt MacDermot, who composed the score for the musical Hair, made into an award-winning film in 1979.
“...like a Bert Brecht-Kurt Weill collaboration mated with one of the more sentimental working-class subjects that Gracie Fields used to stretch her vocal cords on. Oddly, unexpectedly, the two intentions unite in a truthful, fresh fashion that doesn't exploit the milieu, but illuminates it.”
Alexander Walker, Evening Standard, 28 October 1976