'Letter From Urbino' Debuts this Friday in London

‘A people does not carry the memory of its humiliation as an individual does.’ André Chamson. 1940.

romatearne.blogspot.co.uk

(LONDON) - Letter From Urbino is a twenty-minute film about a Sri Lankan refugee working as an attendant at the National Gallery in London.

Each day he gazes at the paintings there and watches the faces of the people who come and go through the rooms. Then one day he has the chance to visit Italy and view the frescos of Piero della Francesca. In a moment of blinding understanding he contrasts the love and care lavished upon these precious images with the wilful destruction of his own culture and the consequent fragmentation of his own life.

The film opens with his voice reading from a letter he is writing, explaining to an unknown woman the terrible things that a civil war does to a human being. He speaks of how memory is all that remains for the migrant in his restless travel across lands, not his own. His is the story of all those who, in the twenty-first century, are displaced and disenfranchised. For it is the individual who carries the memory of the humiliation of his whole people.

Some of the images in the film come from documentary footage taken in Sri Lanka and are disturbing.

Roma Tearne’s fifth novel The Road To Urbino will also be launched at this event.

For further details click here.

The trailer for Letter from Urbino is here, or watch below.

Trailer - Letter from Urbino from Conrad Weiskrantz on Vimeo.

More about Roma Tearne

Roma Tearne: Writer / Author / Film Producer

Roma Tearne is a Sri Lankan born artist and writer. Her first novel, Mosquito, has been shortlisted for the 2007 Costa Book Awards first Novel prize.

Currently a Fellow at Oxford Brookes University, she has had many exhibitions including "Nel Corpo delle cittá" at the prestigious MLAC ( Museo Laboratorio Arte Contemporanea) in Rome.

She became the artist in residence at the Ashmolean Museum Oxford in 2002 and while there, worked on "Happenings in a Museum"

Salem-News.com is extremely pleased to work with this esteemed author, and to be able to utilize her approach in communicating stories about war and ethnic strife that cross all boundaries; those things that make the very soul of our earth bleed needlessly.

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Roma Tearne's Writing Collection