Author: adamscovell

Film, Landscape

The Breeze In The Grass – Elemental Realisation in Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975).

In last month’s issue of Sight & Sound (November, 2015) Nick James details his relationship with the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky in line with the season of films he’s curated for the BFI.  Though the article is chiefly surrounding Tarkovsky’s (vast) legacy, one aspect in particular caught my attention whilst reading.  He refers to a scene from Tarkovsky’s 1975 film, Mirror, which partly accounted for … Continue reading The Breeze In The Grass – Elemental Realisation in Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975).

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Folk Horror, Landscape, Short Film

Short Film – Salthouse Marshes

Salthouse Marshes began life in a strange way.  Having chatted about adapting Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows with Robert Macfarlane (who had wanted to re-set it in England), there was always to be a “haunted waterway” film on the cards.  But, after constant reading of the narrative of The Willows, the thought of organising the filming on two boats and on celluloid simply proved too intimidating.  … Continue reading Short Film – Salthouse Marshes

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Film, Folk Horror, Television

Ritual And Identity in Penda’s Fen (1974) – Alan Clarke.

The relationship between myth and ritual has been often debated within anthropology ever since its Victoriana days of enlightened scientific thinking through the prism of evolution and the birth of mechanisation and industrial blight.  The idea of returning to the “primacy of ritual”, where whole belief systems stem as a result from repeated actions or events, is a common theme of exploration in Folk Horror as … Continue reading Ritual And Identity in Penda’s Fen (1974) – Alan Clarke.

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Film, Folk Horror, Landscape, Psychogeography

The “English Eerie” and The Landscape Venn.

As I write this, it is just under two weeks to the Spectral Landscapes event in Oxford.  Put together between myself and the Oxford University’s Romantic society through Jen Wood, the event is looking at the resurgence of interest in work across all forms of creative media which looks to the landscape in order to find essences of the “eerie”, especially of that in English … Continue reading The “English Eerie” and The Landscape Venn.

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Art, Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature, Television

Uncanny Portals And Standing Stones (Children Of The Stones, The Owl Service and Barbara Hepworth) – Part 3.

Part 1. Part 2. The Eeriness of Landscape Entities. The final aspect to assess is the natural eeriness created from putting an object within a landscape; here, it is the context of such an action and implications of the aesthetics that is key.  When Hepworth’s work is situated in the landscape, two things can occur.  The first is that the link between the work and … Continue reading Uncanny Portals And Standing Stones (Children Of The Stones, The Owl Service and Barbara Hepworth) – Part 3.

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Film, Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography, Television

Walking “A Warning To The Curious” (M.R. James).

A few years back, whilst on holiday in Norfolk, I began exploring some of locations used for the BBC’s famous M.R. James adaptations, specifically for Lawrence Gordon Clark’s adaptation of A Warning To The Curious (1972).  Though I had been far from thorough in this escapade (I completely missed the film’s most iconic structure in the church at Happisburgh), on finding myself in Suffolk, I … Continue reading Walking “A Warning To The Curious” (M.R. James).

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Art, Film, Landscape, Psychogeography

Journey Within Practice – Richard Long and Chris Marker.

The work of Richard Long is so indebted to the act of walking into a landscape that it seems a rather obvious aspect to point out.  While many of his transient works, especially of the sculptural variety left in various wildernesses, required the act of the artist to walk, it is often the photographic capture of the finished event in question that, in the majority, … Continue reading Journey Within Practice – Richard Long and Chris Marker.

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Film, Folk Horror, Landscape, Short Film

Trailer – Salthouse Marshes.

Above is the trailer for my last film of the year, Salthouse Marshes.  Continuing on from last year’s theme in a trend I hope to continue with on a yearly basis, the film is a short, landscape obsessed ghost story.  With the BBC seeming reluctant to bother with a ghost story for Christmas any more, it feels necessary to in some way plug the gap … Continue reading Trailer – Salthouse Marshes.

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Art, Folk Horror, Landscape, Television

Uncanny Portals And Standing Stones (Children Of The Stones, The Owl Service and Barbara Hepworth)- Part 2.

Part 1. Portals, Dimensions and Time. For Barbara Hepworth the process actually began in Yorkshire, and Cornwall is the second and last English phase of a basic topographical emotion which is no longer a matter of geography but one of the mind and creation. Neither is it any longer a matter of feeling for landscape in the narrow sense but one of the relation of … Continue reading Uncanny Portals And Standing Stones (Children Of The Stones, The Owl Service and Barbara Hepworth)- Part 2.

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Film, Landscape, Literature

Emerson’s Nature and Sleep Furiously (2008) – Gideon Koppel.

Nature is always present or at the very least contrasted against something in Gideon Koppel’s nostalgia portrait, Sleep Furiously (2008).  In spite of the film being a very clear ethnographic postcard from the director’s past, having lived previously in the Welsh town of Trefeurig, it manages to underline its gentle portraiture with a sense of pervading nature and landscape; where even the most concrete of … Continue reading Emerson’s Nature and Sleep Furiously (2008) – Gideon Koppel.

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