The Bristol Festival of Ideas completes its season of Abel Gance classic films, which started with La Roue in May, with a rare showing, for the commemorations of the Armistice, of J’Accuse; a pacifist romantic drama set against the horrors of the First World War. Work on the film began in 1918 with some scenes filmed on real battlefields using real soldiers, many of whom were to die in later fighting. It portrays wartime suffering with incredible realism, and its climactic sequence of the ‘return of the dead’, made it an international success, making Gance one of the most important directors in Europe. Introduced by film historian and Gance champion, Kevin Brownlow, with live piano accompaniment by Stephen Horne.