Nourishing Mother Cambridge + Q&A

We are delighted to welcome filmmaker Rowan Hall Maudslay for a post-film Q&A.

Scattered across Cambridge are reliefs depicting a 400-year-old university emblem. It shows a woman, naked, with milk pouring from her breasts onto an inscription placed below: ALMA MATER CANTABRIGIA. This is the source of the Americanism, ‘alma mater’. The inscription translates as NOURISHING MOTHER CAMBRIDGE.

Cambridge is known internationally for its status and history. In that history is a story of how the world has changed. A story of a tension, between an institution which prides itself on stasis and tradition, on the one hand, and the inevitability of time on the other. A story of how we make sense of what came before us, and how visions of the past inform our perception of the present. A story of the people who live in Cambridge today, and how this history has shaped them.

‘Nourishing Mother Cambridge’ is a documentary film that tells this story.