Between the Ears - Intensive Care

Film director Terence Davies has often been hailed as one of Britain's greatest living film-makers. His acclaimed works include 'Distant Voices, Still Lives', 'The Long Day Closes' and the recent BAFTA nominated 'Of Time and the City', a stunning visual poem, narrated by Davies himself who wrote a masterful script and displayed an untapped ability to present. Inspired by 'Of Time and the City', the production company Unique approached Davies after hearing of his passion for radio and especially for Radio 3, and encouraged him to develop his first radio feature. The result is 'Intensive Care', an intensely personal memoir of his mother combined with a self-portrait of an artist as a young man. Davies writes and narrates this autobiographical piece which covers his early years at drama and film school & the making of his first film 'Children'. Threaded through this narrative, Davies also describes his relationship with his mother, her decline into old age and her eventual death that was to have such a devastating impact on him. Terence's mother is evoked in the programme by the songs he heard her sing during his childhood. They have been especially performed by the actress Lorraine Ashbourne who played the part of Maisie in 'Distant Voices, Still Lives' and works with Davies for the first time since 1988. As Davies meditates on the passing of time, memory and mortality, he also reads some of the poetry that has touched and inspired him: Auden, Betjeman, Sassoon. The programme's soundtrack is a personal selection of classical music: Shostakovich, Webern, Debussy. 'Intensive Care' thus becomes a unique insight into emotional and artistic life of one of Britain's great auteurs.