Towner Cine Club: Burning

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.

“To me, the world is a mystery.” Lee Chang-dong’s (Poetry) award-winning Burning is a sublime mystery thriller of obsessive love based on Haruki Murakami’s short story Barn Burning.

An isolated young man, Jong-soo (Yoo Ah-in) is living in Seoul and dreaming of becoming a writer when he’s accosted by Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), who says she remembers him from their childhood in a small village close to the North Korean border. They become close, but after she returns from a trip, she’s accompanied by the wealthy, urbane Ben (Steven Yeun) – with whom she is apparently in a relationship, and who eventually confides in Jong-soo about his very strange hobby.

Chang-Dong fleshes out Murakami’s slender short story to create a mysterious world of immense power. Beautifully crafted, Burning immerses the viewer in the lives and desires of its characters whilst exploring male rage, class conflict and unrequited love.

"An unconventional adaptation of a Haruki Murakami story even in a medium full of unconventional adaptions, Burning is a conundrum committed to its sense of mystery over any true resolution. It is mesmeric, and a perfectly cinematic take on a tale from one of literatures most enigmatic authors."