How does time change a place and the people who live there? Combining vintage footage, evocative music, and a lyrical voiceover, notable filmmaker Terence Davies creates a vivid, highly personal account of Liverpool’s transformation from an edgy, decaying working-class town into a tourist-safe yet banal port city.

Part collage, part memoir, “Of Time and the City” takes an intimate, bird’s eye view of notable goings-on in Liverpool, known to many as the home of the Beatles. Davies frames each interlude with droll commentary about the Catholic Church, Queen Elizabeth II, the bygone joys of Hollywood cinema, and the prohibition against homosexuality in a narrative that evokes a sense of nostalgia and loss. Sad, witty, sweet, and elegiac in equal measure, “Of Time and the City” is a rhapsodic valentine.