A Matter of Life and Death

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Part of Great Beyonds: The Afterlife on Film film talk series!

Join Jeffrey Bender as he shuffles off this mortal coil and into the realm of the fantastic, the celestial and the downright absurd, in this four-film series exploring cinematic conceptions of the afterlife from a variety of styles, genres and perspectives across film history. It’s everything you wanted to know about the hereafter, but were afraid to ask… all on our big-screen!

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After miraculously surviving a jump from his burning plane, RAF pilot Peter Carter (David Niven) encounters the American radio operator (Kim Hunter) to whom he has just delivered his dying wishes, and, face-to-face on a tranquil English beach, the pair fall in love. When a messenger from the hereafter arrives to correct the bureaucratic error that spared his life, Peter must mount a fierce defense for his right to stay on earth – painted by production designer Alfred Junge and cinematographer Jack Cardiff as a rich Technicolor Eden – climbing a wide staircase to stand trial in a starkly beautiful, black-and-white modernist afterlife. Intended to smooth tensions between the wartime allies Britain and America, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s richly humanistic A Matter of Life and Death traverses time and space to make a case for the transcendent value of love.

Jeffrey Bender

Jeffrey Bender has hosted a number of in-person and online Film Talks with the Westdale, most recently ‘Ride or Die Cinema’. He joins us this fall to host ‘Great Beyonds: The Afterlife on Film’, featuring four essential explorations into the afterlife as interpreted throughout film history, as well as serving as one of the guest speakers for Noirvember, featuring a survey of classic and contemporary film noir.