The KimStim Collection will be teaming up with
Icarus Films on Feb. 4 to prove for all to see that there really is a hell on
earth. This place of hopelessness is encapsulated
in the Billingham flat — somewhere near Birmingham, England in the 1980s — and it
is showcased in all its putrid glory in artist and photographer Richard
Billingham’s award-winning biographical drama, Ray &
Liz.
Richard Billingham is a celebrated and award-winning
photographer, who first published the collected photographs of his life growing
up in the 1996 book titled “Ray’s a Laugh” … other books followed, “Black
Country” (a reference to the area around Birmingham dating back to the
Industrial Revolution), “Zoo” and “Landscapes.”
He also did the documentary titled Fishtank
(1998), which is about his family and the short film titled Ray (2016),
which is expanded here to feature-length status with Daniel Landin (Under the
Skin) handling the cinematography and Justin
Salinger and Ella Smith (Hoff the Record, Babylon,
Frankenstein, etc.) starring as the Ray and
Liz title characters — Billingham’s parents — Patrick Romer and Deirdre Kelly
play older versions of the same.
Perhaps you can say that poverty and the lack of
marketable skills are the condemning factors for Billingham’s parents, but it
appears that sloth and indifference play a much larger role. The lovely Liz, is obese and tattooed and
seems to have little ambition … Ray simply drinks.
The film is put together in the form of vignettes —
drawn from memories — which are as terrifying as any horror film. A train wreck of wasted lives and near
depravity that is as riveting in its presentation as it is equally difficult to
watch. Hell on earth.
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