Kent MOMI is pleased to announce a new eight-week programme of screenings at the museum. The screenings, collectively entitled CINEMA OF DESIRE will run every Friday evening from 16th August to 4th October.  See below for the intoxicating details!

WEEK FIVE Friday 13th September

Far from the Madding Crowd

Introduced by Joss. Running time: 169 minutes

Julie Christie shot to fame as the amoral model at the centre of John Schlesinger’s Darling (1965), for which she won an Oscar, and she was, indeed, the darling of the 1960s.  When Schlesinger came to adapt Thomas Hardy’s masterpiece, Far from the Madding Crowd, in 1967, there can have been no doubt as to who would play headstrong, independent, beautiful Bathsheba Everdene, one of the heroines (like Tess) in whom Hardy most invested his own deep-seated romantic yearnings and sensual feelings. 

Bathsheba has three suitors – a good man, as the name implies, solid Gabriel Oak, who loves her with open eyes (Alan Bates, who won the Golden Globe for Best Actor); an older man who desires her to the point of obsession, farmer Boldwood (a stand-out, neurotic performance by Peter Finch); and red-coated Sergeant Troy (Terence Stamp at his sneering and handsome best), who dazzles and excites her while himself desiring another woman.  Their intertwined and conflicting desires and fates play out in the lush and timeless landscape of rural Dorset, where the film was shot: nature itself is part of the film’s appeal to all our senses. 

Watch out for the famous scene in which Troy performs his sword exercise around Bathsheba’s body – one of the original novel’s most charged and brilliant sequences, in which Hardy managed to write about sex without writing about sex, (much to the secret enjoyment of Victorian audiences), proving – like this film – that what is only half glimpsed is more erotic than what is openly flaunted. 

To reserve places, please hit the button, below, or email info@kentmomi.org

First come, first served with a limited capacity of 30 places.

Doors open 5.30, for drinks, nibbles & classic cocktails by Dr. Natasha.

Films commence 6.30pm sharp.

Screenings are FREE to Kent MOMI yearly ticket holders, but a £5 donation is suggested, to help us keep the lights on. Museum tickets can be bought at the door, and are valid for a year.