Derek Jarman’s War Requiem – Coventry Cathedral

Coventry Cathedral will stage a very special screening of Derek Jarman’s War Requiem this Remembrance Sunday – 60 years after it was commissioned specially for the consecration of the new Cathedral.

The special presentation of the film will include a post-screening conversation with a key member of the film’s creative team, producer, Don Boyd.

Hailed as one of director, Derek Jarman’s finest movies, War Requiem interprets Benjamin Britten’s setting of poems of Wilfred Owen and the Requiem Mass with a sequence of scenes of the First World War depicting life and loss.

The Very Revd John Witcombe, Dean of Coventry said:

“We are very privileged to be welcoming Don Boyd back to the Cathedral for this significant event. His work with Derek Jarman to bring Britten’s War Requiem alive through imaginative film with a distinguished cast should be on every Coventrian’s ‘must see’ list, as well as all those for whom the War Requiem remains an iconic statement about the devastation and futility of war.”

The Q&A with Don Boyd will be facilitated by Stoke Screen film programmer, John Gore, who saids:

“This is a very special event. To screen this film, a realisation of Benjamin Britten’s masterpiece, commissioned for the consecration of the Cathedral sixty years ago, in the Cathedral on Remembrance Sunday with a key member of the creative team, producer Don Boyd discussing its production is momentous.

“It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. It is not to be missed,” he added.

Don Boyd is a film director and producer.

He began his career at the BBC after graduating from the London Film School in 1970.

In the 1980’s he produced British films like Alan Clarke’s Scum, Jarman’s The Tempest, Lindsay Anderson’s Look Back In Anger, and the Palme D’Or nominated opera film Aria with Robert Altman, Nicolas Roeg, Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Russell and Derek Jarman. He then returned to his directorial career with Twenty One.