Saturday Breakfast Film Club: Daisies

This new, curated programme of cult and alternative art films, specially selected to provide extra context to Towner's exhibitions, will begin on 14 June. Each screening is accompanied by a short introduction from film writer Henry Jordan. The first films in the series link to exhibitions Paule Vézelay: Living Lines and Sussex Modernism. 

14 June: The Seashell and the Clergyman
12 July: Borderline
13 September: Daisies

Henry Jordan works at Towner as a Duty Manager and helps with the day-to-day operations of the Towner cinema. He studied English and Film Studies at University of Exeter, which included a study abroad year that he took at University of South Florida in Tampa, USA. During Henry’s time at university, he discovered his core fields of interest, among them para-cinema, surrealism and anti-literature.

Before Towner, Henry worked at the Arts Picturehouse in Cambridge, where he was a regular host for their sell out quiz nights and hosted a Q&A with Dame Pippa Harris for her film Empire of Light. He also was a regular on the Cambridge Film Show, has been published in The Quietus and still writes for The Quite Nerdy Blog, his blog about pop culture that has been running since 2014.

Věra Chytilová’s Daisies stands as both a core film in our understanding of surrealism and, also, one of the most anarchically enjoyable films yet made. Originally banned in Czechoslovakia for “depicting the wanton” and rejected by many American critics as “pretentiously kookie and laboriously overblown”, the film has since been recognized as a work as radical as it is jubilant, which we are delighted to present to you as an accompaniment to the exhibition Paule Vézelay Living Lines.

Daisies follows best friends Marie (Jitka Cerhová) and Marie (Ivana Karbanová) on their merry misadventures, as they con wealthy men, get into food fights and stay out all day dancing – carving a wake in which we can trace our modern understanding of female friendship. Coming in at 28th in the 2022 Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll, film critic Carmen Gray wrote that “Rebellion against institutionalised power has scarcely before or since embraced such audacity, glee or playful invention”. Whether you’re interested in radical cinematic dismantling, anarchic pranks or a combination of the two, Daisies remains a singularly unique experience that is a treat at the cinema.

This screening is part of the public programme for Paule Vézelay: Living Lines, and will be introduced by film writer Henry Jordan.