Thu, Oct 1 / 6:30 pm
Fri, Oct 2 / 9 pm
Sat, Oct 3 / 1:30 pm & 4 pm
Sun, Oct 4 / 4 pm
Tue, Oct 6 / 6:30 pm
Wed, Oct 7 / 9 pm
Directed by Mark Bosco & Elizabeth Coffman
2019, USA, 97 min
Saturday, October 3 / 4 pm screening introduced by Alison Gillmor, pop culture and film writer for the Winnipeg Free Press.
Misfits and sinners. Bible-thumpers and heretics, these are the themes of writer Flannery O’Connor. Flannery is the lyrical, intimate exploration of the life and work of author Flannery O’Connor, whose distinctive Southern Gothic style influenced a generation of artists and activists. With her family home at Andalusia (the Georgia farm where she grew up and later wrote her best known work) as a backdrop, a picture of the woman behind her sharply aware, starkly redemptive style comes into focus. A devout Catholic who collected peacocks and walked with crutches (due to a diagnosis of lupus that would take her life before the age of 40), O’Connor’s provocative, award-winning fiction about southern prophets, girls with wooden legs and intersex “freaks” was unlike anything published before (or since). Over the course of her short-lived but prolific writing career (two novels, 32 short stories and numerous columns and commentaries), O’Connor never shied away from examining timely themes of racism, religion, socio-economic disparity and more with her characteristic wit and irony.
Content Advisory: This film contains offensive language, including an ethnic slur that—in an effort to retain the integrity of the literary works examined therein—has not been muted or otherwise distorted in the presentation of the documentary. Racist language was wrong during Flannery O’Connor’s lifetime and is wrong today. This film, the filmmakers and those presenting the film do not promote or support the use of racist language in any way.
*Winner – First-ever Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film*
Sponsored by St. Margaret’s Anglican Church and Thin Air: Winnipeg International Writer’s Festival
