A Clockwork Orange – The Prophecy at International Anthony Burgess Foundation

International Anthony Burgess Foundation hosts the first English-language screening of A Clockwork Orange: The Prophecy, a new documentary by Benoit Felici and Elisa Mantin.

Drawing on archive footage and new interviews with major cultural figures, this stylish documentary reconsiders the 60-year history of A Clockwork Orange as a novel, film, stage play and cultural influence.

The film features extracts from Anthony Burgess’s unfinished manuscript, ‘The Clockwork Condition’, discovered in 2019. There are illuminating interviews with the writer Will Self, the artist Ai Weiwei and Alexandra Spencer-Jones, director of the all-male stage adaptation.

A Clockwork Orange: The Prophecy was partly filmed at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation here on the Oxford Road Corridor, and it includes footage of Manchester on a flip dark chill winter night.

The film’s directors, Elisa Mantin and Benoit Felici, will introduce the screening and respond to audience questions afterwards, moderated by Anthony Burgess’s biographer Andrew Biswell.

Elisa Mantin wrote and directed Au nom de la grèce (In the Name of Greece), Sand et Colette, and A Telling Eye: The Work of John Berger, the latter co-directed with Michael Dibb. She has directed films for the BBC and Channel 4, alongside directing many acclaimed films on writers such as Salman Rushdie, and Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah: Italy’s Other Mafia. Her 1997 French documentary about Anthony Burgess was co-produced with the BBC, and footage from this film was also seen in The Burgess Variations in 1999.

Benoit Felici’s films include Unfinished Italy and The Real Thing. Alongside many other accolades, he was awarded Best Cinematography at the Raindance Film Festival.