Towner Cine Club: Persona
Widely hailed as one of the greatest films ever made, and one of Ingmar Bergman's indisputable masterworks, Persona still feels radically modern – a feat of experimental filmmaking and a genuine investigation into the nature of identity.
Towner Cine Club is a chance for you to catch classic films back on the big screen, all presented with an introduction by Henry Jordan. Whether it’s arthouse oddities, cult classics, old favourites or new discoveries, we’ll be showing something exciting every month at Towner Cinema.
Henry Jordan works at Towner as a Duty Manager and helps with the day-to-day operations of the cinema, as well as hosting Towner Cine Club. 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.
Widely hailed as one of the greatest films ever made, and one of Ingmar Bergman's indisputable masterworks, Persona still feels radically modern – a feat of experimental filmmaking and a genuine investigation into the nature of identity.
In her first performance for Bergman, Liv Ullmann plays an actor who has inexplicably gone mute; Bibi Andersson the chatty young nurse looking after her in a remote island cottage. While isolated together, the women undergo a strange psychological and emotional transference. Performed with astonishing nuance and beautifully shot, with iconic black and white imagery by Sven Nykvist, Persona is a penetrating, haunting work of profound psychological depth.
"Ingmar Bergman's enigmatic masterpiece still captivates" ★★★★★ The Guardian
"What makes Persona such a brilliant film is how it starts by destroying our preconceptions of film, all to then use its fleeting 86 minute runtime to envisage new possibilities for it. By the time the title card appears, your jaw will be on the floor."