More so than his relationship with painting, film, drugs or threesomes, Donald Cammell’s life and work seems to have been directly linked with mirrors. While all of the former aspects played huge roles and allowed access to knowledge of his obsessions in the first place through his work, it is the mirror and its hidden powers that seem to haunt Cammell as an artist and … Continue reading Mirrors, Donald Cammell and Jorge Luis Borges.
Few films are as explicit in their depiction of character relationships that are at the mercy of the fluctuating landscape than Roman Polanski’s 1966 film, Cul-De-Sac. Polanski had been to both ends of the environmental spectrum within his previous two films – the open waters of Knife In The Water (1962) and the cramped, claustrophobic London of Repulsion (1965) – and Cul-De-Sac sees him returning … Continue reading Isolation And Madness In Cul-De-Sac (1966) – Roman Polanski.
Introduction. The building of form within the space of landscape has become a common occurrence in sculpture for a number of years now. The moving of artistic forms out-of-doors provides so many new potential contexts that it seems almost puerile to suggest so. One aspect of particular interest is when these new forms of Earthologistic sculpture come into contact, perhaps even competition, with older forms of … Continue reading Uncanny Portals And Standing Stones (Children Of The Stones and Barbara Hepworth)- Part 1.
Part 1. Part 2. Herostratus (1967) Expanding upon the ideas of screaming in The Shout, the analysis of Francis Bacon’s influence on counterculture British cinema can conclude with Don Levy’s 1967 film Herostratus. The film and its obsessions with textures and urban landscapes has already been discussed in other articles but Herostratus is full of other forms of terrain; the morphed and emotionally tortured form … Continue reading Cinematic Identity Crises And Francis Bacon – Part 3 (Herostratus).
An Impossible Dérive is a film that channels a number of my own current interests. Though predominantly about the changing landscape and topography of the city centre of Liverpool, it is also about using psychogeography and the writing of John Wyndham to assess and comment upon the fallout of such change within the landscape. The title, An Impossible Dérive, refers to two different aspects of … Continue reading Short Film – An Impossible Dérive.
There exist volumes of academic research and work surrounding the role of repetition in religious and cultural practices. Repeated actions of any type, creating an easily recognisable mimesis, seems almost an aesthetic by-word for a normalised analytical framework of cultural activities, especially musically. From prayer to mantra, the idea of repetition is stretched to form (or conform) belief patterns, as if deliberately signposting theological culture … Continue reading Repetition And Occultism Of Invocation Of My Demon Brother (1969) – Kenneth Anger.
There seems to be an overt connection between analogue recording technology (of both the visual and aural varieties) and the narratives surrounding paranormal activity in 1970s British fantasy television. Of course, there are no doubt connections between the interest in such activity (with the genuine events surrounding the Enfield Haunting for example, recently made into a drama on Sky) and the technological means of the … Continue reading Analogue Ghosts of the 1970s And Hauntology.
Part 1. The Shout (1978) “I’ve always desired to be able to paint the mouth like Monet could paint the sunset.” – Francis Bacon (1966, interview with David Sylvester). Though Jerzy Skolimowski’s The Shout (1978) is equally as complex as Performance in terms of narrative linearity (or lack of it), Skolimowski’s film and its complexity derives not from the identity crisis surrounding individual characters within … Continue reading Cinematic Identity Crises and Francis Bacon – Part 2 (The Shout).
It feels odd to finally be able to say that Holloway is finished. This oddness derives not just from the fact that it has been the longest planned film that I’ve produced so far (starting all the way back from Robert Macfarlane’s first email to me in February 2014) but because the subject of the film itself is never-ending. The holloways of Dorset do not … Continue reading Short Film – Holloway (Robert Macfarlane)
In the British tradition of the Chase & Pursuit drama, there are several reoccurring themes. The idea of a lone individual being chased through different landscapes by a group was popularised in Britain by the Second World War but was around far before then. The basic set-up has an individual wanted for some crime or misdemeanour (sometimes falsely). They are pursued by various parties, from the law … Continue reading Fugitive in the Landscape
Celluloid Wicker Man 