46. The Awakening

‘Think of it as the resurrection of an old tradition.’

Juxtaposing ghostly apparitions with mundane historical re-enactment, The Awakening (1984) is a response to the 1970s ‘folk horror’ genre from the perspective of the 1980s costume drama. It draws on a rich tradition of British cinema and television that explores time at odds with itself to depict a village verging on social and temporal collapse, and questions how we can responsibly remember and respond to the violence of the past.