LRB Screen presents ‘The Flowers of St Francis’ at Great St Barts

A special screening of Roberto Rossellini’s most joyful film at London’s oldest parish church – marking the 800th anniversary of the death of Francis of Assisi with the first film screening in Great St Barts’ 900-year history, with special guest Alice Goodman.

In a series of simple vignettes, director Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini lovingly convey the universal teachings of Francesco, giullare di Dio (Francis, God’s jester – as the film’s Italian title puts it). Gorgeously photographed to evoke the paintings of Francis’s time, and cast with actual monks from the Nocera Inferiore Monastery, The Flowers of St Francis is a timeless and moving portrait of the search for spiritual enlightenment. Loosely based on the anonymous 14th-century Italian novel Fioretti di San Francesco (Little Flowers of St Francis), François Truffaut called it the most beautiful film in the world.

We are grateful to one of London’s most storied and dramatic medieval buildings for hosting LRB Screen’s first ever pop-up screening. Despite featuring as a location in scores of movies, including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Shakespeare in Love and The End of the Affair, this is the first time a film has ever been screened there.  

Joining regular host Gareth Evans to introduce The Flowers of St Francis – and the historic, saintly, mythic, maverick figure of Francis of Assisi – will be the poet and Anglican rector Alice Goodman, best known as the librettist for John Adams’s Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, two of the most celebrated and significant operas of recent times.