Take a look at this amaz­ing art­work inspired by Audrey Diwan’s Happening

Based on a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el by French writer Annie Ernaux, Audrey Diwan’s lac­er­at­ing dra­ma Hap­pen­ing fol­lows Anne, a young lit­er­a­ture stu­dent in 1960s France whose future and bod­i­ly auton­o­my are sud­den­ly sti­fled as she falls preg­nant. Diwan’s film is a raw, chill­ing and nec­es­sary char­ac­ter study that pulls no punch­es, and arrives at a time when repro­duc­tive free­doms are still being stripped away from women across the world.

Ahead of the Gold­en Lion-win­ning film’s release in UK cin­e­mas on Fri­day 22 April, Pic­ture­house have com­mis­sioned 10 women artists, writ­ers and cre­ators work­ing across dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines, to respond to the film’s per­ti­nent sub­ject mat­ter and its poignant por­tray­al of a woman’s right to engi­neer her own destiny.

A par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing response comes from Anna Bunting-Branch, whose artis­tic prac­tice includes paint­ing, mov­ing image and writ­ing, coa­lesc­ing into a body of work that explores fem­i­nist visions and revi­sions of his­to­ry. As well as attempt­ing to express dif­fer­ent rela­tions to fem­i­nism and its com­plex his­to­ries, her prac­tice locates flu­id­i­ty and inter­con­nec­tion with­in art forms, dis­ci­plines and genres.

For her ani­mat­ed work ​‘After Hap­pen­ing’, she uses paint­ing and ani­ma­tion to pro­vide a sen­si­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the film’s sear­ing poignan­cy and res­o­nance. Recall­ing a scene where Anne and her friends recite the con­ju­ga­tion of the Latin verb ​‘agere’ (to act, to dri­ve, to lead) in cho­rus, this work depicts the protagonist’s gold neck­lace as a sym­bol of action and reaction.

Anna Bunting-Branch’s work is part of a series of cre­ative respons­es shared across Picturehouse’s social chan­nels, includ­ing an episode of the Girls on Film pod­cast, where Anna Smith speaks to Audrey Diwan and Direc­tor of the Irish Nation­al Women’s Coun­cil Orla O’Connor.

Keep an eye out on the Pic­ture­house Blog for Anna Bogutskaya’s essay about the prag­ma­tism under­pin­ning Ernaux’s book Diwan’s film, as well as poet­ry from Sophie Herx­heimer and Be Manzi­ni, vibrant illus­tra­tions by Mary­lou Fau­re and Ruby Tay­lor, pho­tog­ra­phy work by Ruth Med­jber, a video intro­duc­tion from Rhi­an­na Dhillon, and a video essay by Jes­si­ca McGoff, which draws par­al­lels between three films depict­ing three dif­fer­ent parts of the world across three dif­fer­ent decades.

Hap­pen­ing is exclu­sive­ly screen­ing in cin­e­mas from today, 22 April – more details at hap​pen​ing​film​.com