Watership Down (1978)

Directed by Martin Rosen. 92 minutes. Rated PG. In English. Screens as part of "Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair," a week-long festival at PMA presented in partnership with the American Cinematheque. This screening will be held at SPACE Gallery.

With this passion project, screenwriter-producer-director Martin Rosen brilliantly achieved what had been thought nearly impossible: a faithful big-screen adaptation of Richard Adams’s classic British dystopian novel about a community of rabbits under terrible threat from modern forces. With its naturalistic hand-drawn animation, dreamily expressionistic touches, gorgeously bucolic background design, and elegant voice work from such superb English actors as John Hurt, Ralph Richardson, Richard Briers, and Denholm Elliott, Watership Down is an emotionally arresting, dark-toned allegory about freedom amid political turmoil.