Watch Jabberwocky Q and A At The BFI London Film Festival 2017

Wrestling With Monsters

♦ At this year’s London Film Festival, they brought Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Annette Badland to BFI Southbank, following their BFI London Film Festival screening, to talk to us about the restoration process for Jabberwocky. And here’s that chat in full…

Restored by the BFI from the original camera negative, Jabberwocky -Terry Gilliam’s first film as a solo director is an intriguing landmark in British cinema. Terry Gilliam’s first feature as a solo director, gloriously restored, is a riotous tale of monsters, true love and medieval manners. Sometimes seen as a companion to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Jabberwocky is pure, undiluted Gilliam. The most Python touch is the presence of Michael Palin – playing put-upon medieval peasant Dennis Cooper, who is forced to seek his fortune in a land of mud, gore and historically authentic junk food, whilst he is menaced by the hideous dragon ‘Jabberwock’. Riotously funny, the film is also a fascinating signpost to its director’s future – Dennis a definitive Gilliam hero, the little man terrorised by bureaucracy. For Gilliam, the road to Brazil well and truly began here.