“Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair”: Watership Down (1978)

Directed by Martin Rosen. 92 minutes. Rated PG. In English.

Screens as part of “Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair,” a week-long festival presented in partnership with the American Cinematheque. Discounted festival passes ($65, or $50 for PMA members and students) are available here. A festival pass will automatically register you for all “Bleak Week” screenings.

Please Note: This film will screen at SPACE Gallery, at 538 Congress St. in Portland.

With this passion project, screenwriter-producer-director Martin Rosen brilliantly achieved what had been thought nearly impossible: a faithful big-screen adaptation of Richard Adams’s classic British dystopian novel about a community of rabbits under terrible threat from modern forces. With its naturalistic hand-drawn animation, dreamily expressionistic touches, gorgeously bucolic background design, and elegant voice work from such superb English actors as John Hurt, Ralph Richardson, Richard Briers, and Denholm Elliott, Watership Down is an emotionally arresting, dark-toned allegory about freedom amid political turmoil.