Art of Psychiatry Society

We are thrilled that the writer and director, Clio Barnard, recently awarded the inaugural Wellcome Trust and BFI Screenwriting Fellowship, will be joining us to discuss her original and moving film following the screening.The Arbor is an experimental documentary on the life of the playwright Andrea Dunbar and meditation on memory and family relationships.Andrea Dunbar grew up on one of the roughest estates in Bradford but against the odds, wrote three plays, all produced at The Royal Court, including “Rita, Sue and Bob Too” (later made into a successful film). She was on the brink of major success but drinking heavily and sadly died of a brain haemorrhage in a public house aged just 29. She was survived by three children.Barnard explores her extraordinary life and legacy using actors lip synching real interviews with her children, archive footage of Dunbar, and restaged excerpts from her plays on the estate where she lived. They reveal the subsequent impact on her children and show how different their experiences and memories of the same events can be.Trailer for the film: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TyNqRdM0Y4g

Reviews at Metacritic http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-arbor

Guardian 4* review http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/21/the-arbor-film-review