The Making of The War Within Credits Reviews Links

"An extraordinarily moving portrait of one of the giants of twentieth century literature"

    --American Film Institute

Winner of the feature award of the International Documentary Association and the National Educational Media Network's Golden Apple.

This definitive documentary was shot in England at Sissinghurst Castle with its world-famous garden, the 365-room Knole mansion, the rooms at Cambridge where Virginia gathered material for A Room of One's Own, London and Richmond, Charleston and Monk's House -- legendary locations in Bloomsbury history.

Among those interviewed on camera are Virginia's niece and nephew, Angelica Garnett and Quentin Bell; Vita Sackville-West's son Nigel Nicolson; and Bloomsbury notables including Frances Partridge and poet-novelist Stephen Spender.

With archival footage, paintings of the period, and haunting family photos of a Victorian childhood of both beauty and abuse, the film interweaves the personal story of Virginia's life and loves with the turbulent times she lived in. Rare documents, filmed for the first time, include the document in her handwriting used to establish the League of Nations, newly-discovered letters to her beloved Vita, and the Gestapo list where she and Leonard were marked for arrest.

The voice of Virginia Woolf in The War Within is that of famed British actress Anna Massey; the voice of Vita Sackville-West belongs to Vita's grand-daughter Juliet Nicolson. The narrator is Ian Redford.

The film was scripted by John Fuegi and directed by Fuegi and Jo Francis, whose earlier documentary work, Red Ruth: That Deadly Longing, won the Danish TV Oscar for Best Film of 1992 and the Silver Diploma at the Berlin Prix Futura competition. Cinematographer Morten Bruus and editor Niels Pagh Andersen have both had films nominated for Academy Awards.


For broadcast licensing and DVD video distribution information contact Flare Productions: jf@flarefilms.org

Danish Version, I malstrømmen- et portręt af Virginia Woolf, is available from libraries in Denmark thanks to the Danish Film Institute.

 

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