Ray & Liz

In the beginning it was real life. Little Richard surviving through years and years of living with his desperate parents in a dilapidated Birmingham apartment, simple and desolate creatures going nowhere in the middle of Thatcher’s England. Richard took pictures of his alcoholic father and intense mother and became an internationally renowned artist. This long-gestating film takes from that hyperreal aesthetic and puts those images into motion. Divided into three chapters – different episodes in the life of Ray, Liz, their sons, uncles and neighbors –, Billingham reintroduces these characters: the old father who only get out of bed to drink some kind of dark alcoholic poison; the half-brother and uncle who put Richard’s little brother’s life in danger with more alcohol; and the same kid, years later, escaping through the neighborhood, unattended and unaccounted for. Billingham’s gaze is unflinching, direct, brutally honest, but there’s no judgement or distance. Even when he’s not the main character in any of these stories, you can see his eyes wandering through the debris of a city, of a house, witnessing the life of a family devastated by the loss of work,of dignity, of self-worth. (Diego Lerer)

In the presence of Richard Billingham.
Last minute change into OmeU.