Event Details
In person: filmmaker Tacita Dean, historian Laurence Kardish
Internationally renowned fine artist Tacita Dean presents her rarely screened The Uncles (2004), in which the sons of Ealing Studios icons Basil Dean and Sir Michael Balcon reflect on their fathers’ careers and personal lives in an extended conversation with historian and curator Laurence Kardish.
Filmed and projected in anamorphic 16mm, The Uncles offers an unusual widescreen portrait of two loquacious, charming English gentlemen (Winton Dean and Jonathan Balcon) illuminating the accomplishments, failings, and elusive humanity of their eminent fathers with wit, candor, and understated complexity. Beyond the copious anecdotal nuggets of interest to any fan of classic British cinema, the film also grants intimate access to two men who both admired and struggled to truly know their fathers as... they consider their own youths in pre-war Britain.
In conjunction with this screening and organized by Los Angeles’ Marciano Art Foundation (MAF) director Hanneke Skerath and Mark Toscano, MAF will present the US debut of Dean’s landmark installation, FILM (2011), from September 18, 2026, through January 2, 2027.
Program and notes by Academy Film Archive Senior Film Preservationist Mark Toscano.
Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.
2004 | 77 minutes | UK | Color | English | Not Rated | 16mm
DIRECTED BY: Tacita Dean
WITH: Winton Dean, Jonathan Balcon, Laurence Kardish, Stephen Dean
Print courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery and the Tacita Dean Collection at the Academy Film Archive.