Sally Potter’s first feature is now available on DVD from BFI Distribution for the first time, digitally-remastered and with a host of extras.
Sally Potter writes about THE GOLD DIGGERS screening at the BFI Southbank on 7 December:
Seeing The Gold Diggers again in the presence of beloved collaborators was something of a revelation. Not only was Julie Christie there, radiant and gorgeous in her uniquely iconic way, but also Colette Laffont (who remains one of the handful of black female actors in a lead role in a British film during the last 25 years) as well as Rose English and Lindsay Cooper, co-scriptwriters on the film and designer and composer respectively.
Rose spoke beautifully on the panel afterwards about space, performance and the political/aesthetic context in which the film was made. Lindsay, who now has advanced multiple sclerosis and can no longer move or speak, received some of the praise due to her for her extraordinary work on the score. We were all deeply moved by her presence and to feel how her music must now speak for her, in a sense.
And for those who know me well and have heard me talk in private from time to time, painfully and ambivalently, about The Gold Diggers and its initial reception, I can say that I actually enjoyed it, as the audience seemed to also from their focused attention. It is as if the original intentions of the film had become visible for the first time in 25 years. Perhaps its moment has come.
