PRIDE OF PLACE
Dir. Dorothea Gazidis and Kim Longinotto, 1976
UK, 60 mins.
MONDAY, MARCH 1 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 6 – 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, MARCH 19 – 5:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 31 – 10 PM
If you caught last month’s SCRUBBERS (Zetterling, 1982), don’t miss PRIDE OF PLACE, the documentary by and for revolutionary teen boarding school prisoners.
Director Kim Longinotto was banished to a Buckinghamshire boarding school at the tender age of 10. Seven years later, she flew the coop and – after a few down-and-out years – landed at England’s National Film and Television School.
The time came for Longinotto to pick up a camera, and she wielded it like a hammer against her punitive alma mater. The resulting film, made with co-director Dorothea Gazidis, blew the lid off England’s august propensity for stiff upper lips and institutional child abuse.
PRIDE OF PLACE is an observational documentary that refuses to hear both sides. Shot from the students’ point of view, Longinotto and Gazidis regard their setting as a junior police state. They leave no room for finger-wagging. You won’t hear morning talk show bromides about “sparing the rod.”
One year after PRIDE OF PLACE was released, the aforementioned boarding school was closed by the state. After seven years in this brutal borstal, a spell on the streets, and a return to the scene of the crime, Longinotto got the last word.
Special thanks to Women Make Movies.