You get that effect if you are highly interior with the characters. The more you can internalize somebody, you kind of need less to make plot. You just need a human being in their sweet, diluted state going out into the world and then when it happens, you get an explosion. These seem to me very political stories.
The Man Booker prize winning novelist George Saunders turns to short-stories for his latest book, Liberation Day. From workers dressed as ‘ghouls’ in an underground amusement park to brainwashed political protestors and story-telling slaves his protagonists underscore what it means to live in community with others. George Saunders tells Tom Sutcliffe how his stories veer from bizarre fantasy to brutal reality.
The move from fantasy to stark reality can be seen in the history of Russians living in exile in Paris after the Revolution in 1917. Helen Rappaport’s After the Romanovs details how former princes, used to a life of luxury, could be seen driving taxicabs. While some emigres, like Diaghilev and Chagall, found great success in this new world, others became trapped in a cycle of poverty and homesickness for a country that was no longer theirs.
The BFI and UK-wide horror film season In Dreams are Monsters celebrates how monstrous bodies of all kinds have been represented on screen over the past hundred years. Curator Anna Bogutskaya explores the symbolism and emotional impact of ghosts, vampires, witches and, arguably the most politicised of all cinematic monsters, the zombie – a terrifying, dead-eyed blank canvas for social commentary.
Producer: Katy Hickman