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Poster for Transfigured Night

Transfigured Night

2014 · 27 min

A slow, essayistic meditation that drifts between image and music, asking you to sit with history's disappointments rather than follow a story.

Directed by
John Akomfrah
Overview
Transfigured Night draws its inspiration from two sources of the same name – Verklärte Nacht – the German poem by Richard Dehmel from 1896 and the musical composition by Arnold Schoenburg in 1899. Using the five-part structure of both the poem and the composition to reflect on the key moments and events which have shaped postcolonial histories, Transfigured Night mirrors the relationship between postcolonial subject and state with that of Dehmel’s lovers – speaking to the fleeting promises and ensuing disappointments of the post-colonial state.

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In the UKNo streaming, rental or purchase options known.
Directed by
John Akomfrah
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How it feels

Written by AI. It can be wrong.

Tone
  • melancholicstrength 2 of 3
  • earneststrength 2 of 3
  • bleakstrength 1 of 3
  • tensestrength 1 of 3
Pacing
slow-burn, 1 of 4, from slow-burn to relentless
Attention
demanding, 4 of 4, from background-friendly to demanding
Themes
  • colonialism
  • politics
  • memory
  • identity
  • betrayal
Places
None
Era
contemporary
Audience
adult
Form
  • nonlinear
Content intensity
  • Gore none
  • Language none
  • Violence mild
  • Sex none
All scales, 0 to 10
Scales, 0 to 10
ScaleValue0 to 10
Action1
Horror1
Humour1
Realism6
Romance2
Tension4
Darkness6
Complexity8
Emotional weight7

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Where to watch in the UK

No UK streaming, rental or purchase options are known.

Streaming data from JustWatch.TMDB

Details

Directed by
John Akomfrah
Runtime
27 min

TMDB