(cancelled) Asunder

*As of 6pm Friday 16 October, the Queen’s Film Theatre is closed for a minimum planned 4 week period in response to recent public health guidelines from the NI Executive. If you’ve booked tickets to this screening the QFT team will be in touch with you as soon as possible.

Asunder tells the story of what happened to an English town during the First World War, with almost all of its men fighting abroad and its women and children left behind. The North East was in the front line, thanks to its shipyards and munitions factories.

Using archive and contemporary footage and audio, Asunder collages the stories of people from Tyneside and Wearside to uncover just what life was like on the home front, with bombs falling on Britain for the first time, conscientious objectors sentenced to death, and women working as doctors, tram conductors and footballers.

A film by Esther Johnson, with a soundtrack composed by Sunderland’s Mercury-nominated Field Music and Newcastle’s Warm Digits, performed with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and The Cornshed Sisters. The narration for the film is voiced by journalist Kate Adie, with the actor Alun Armstrong as the voice of the Sunderland Daily Echo & Shipping Gazette, written by co-producer Bob Stanley.

Asunder is co-commissioned by Sunderland Culture and 14-18 NOW: WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, supported by The National Lottery through Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Sunderland Business Improvement District, Culture Bridge North East and Sir James Knott Trust. asunder1916.uk

Dir: Esther Johnson | 2016 | UK | 1 hr 12 mins

To read more about the new measures Queen’s Film Theatre are taking to stay COVID-secure, including our new allocated seating click here. If you have any questions, they have a new range of FAQs here, and you can e-mail them on qftmanager@qub.ac.uk.