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Public Talk on the Upcoming Documentary Wickermania! In Search of “The Wicker Man”

The Wicker Man is a shocker. The Wicker Man is a detective film. The Wicker Man is a musical. The Wicker Man is an ambivalent emblem of the 1960s and 1970s pagan revival and occulture in general. The Wicker Man, together with Witchfinder General and The Blood on Satan’s Claw, makes up the “Unholy Trinity” of British folk horror. The Wicker Man was acknowledged by Christopher Lee as the best film he ever starred in.

The Wicker Man is all this, and much more. Despite being a box-office flop on its 1973 release, The Wicker Man over the years has risen to the highest status of a cult film, also inspiring filmmakers, musicians, comic-book artists and scriptwriters, and fashion designers. After 50 years, The Wicker Man appears to be more infectiously celebrated than ever. The first one to severely suffer from ‘wickermania’ was its director himself, Robin Hardy, who ended up entangled in the troubled making of the film that he would forever be remembered for.

In 2016 Robin Hardy’s last public appearance was in Malta, where he held a mesmerising masterclass and participated in a lively Q&A following the screening of the ‘final cut’ of The Wicker Man. Both events were organised by the Faculty of Arts’ M.A. in Film Studies.

Seven years after this momentous event with Robin Hardy, the M.A. in Film Studies is proud to announce an unmissable talk by the director’s sons Justin and Dominic Hardy, together with Chris Nunn. The Hardy brothers and Chris Nunn will present their upcoming documentary Wickermania! In Search of “The Wicker Man”.

50 years on from the making of The Wicker Man, Robin Hardy’s lost papers for the years 1970-1974 came to Justin through the kindness of a stranger. Justin has never agreed with the exalted claims made for the film: for him, The Wicker Man’s force as a creative endeavour is marred by poor lighting, poor cinematography, poor direction, and Robin Hardy’s subsequent films have done nothing to change Justin’s opinion. But then his view is coloured by the fact that the film robbed him of his father, his home, and arguably his mother too. His brother Dominic has been more distanced, his experience of The Wicker Man filtered through the story of its survival and subsequent status as a cult film. For him, The Wicker Man is not so much a film as a shattered vase, a set of fragments: the stories that make up the film’s legend, the benighted production, the brutal editing, the buried negative, the lost scenes, the disavowal by British Lion, the critical reception, financial failure and then – against all odds – the later revival. Now, for the first time, the newly uncovered sources complete the picture, taking us into the creativity channelled through the difficult birth of the film. Now, the sons can ask: what, if anything, was Robin Hardy’s creative contribution to The Wicker Man?

As The Wicker Man celebrates its 50th anniversary, their feature documentary will help define this contentious film for the next generation of viewers. Was there a method to Robin Hardy’s madness, or is it precisely in the shape-shifting context of the musical-horror-thriller that its charm, renown, and success are located? Like his sons, fans may not always like what the brothers find, but may come closer to understanding the evolution of one of cinema’s most famous cult classics, and the maverick director behind it.

The talk will be delivered on 15 September 2023 at 18:00 in the Faculty of Arts Library (Msida Campus), the same venue where Robin Hardy gave his masterclass in 2016. The first part of the unreleased documentary will also be screened in a Maltese premiere.

The general public is cordially invited to the event. Entry is free, but seating is limited and will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

The M.A. in Film Studies is a part-time evening course sponsored by the Malta Film Commission. The programme combines theory with a practical component which gives the students the opportunity to collectively plan and shoot short films, developing them from the scriptwriting to the postproduction stages.

Further information may be obtained online.