Category: Landscape

Film, Folk Horror, Landscape, Uncategorized

Interview: David Gladwell on Cinema and Requiem For A Village

This interview was originally was published on the Small Cinema Liverpool website with thanks to Sam Meech and the BFI. However, since the closure and destruction of the cinema by Liverpool developers, the website has since been closed. This interview is saved here for posterity and in appreciation of a much underrated editor, filmmaker and artist Celluloid Wicker Man: In terms of filmmaking, how did … Continue reading Interview: David Gladwell on Cinema and Requiem For A Village

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Art, Landscape, Literature, Uncategorized

Responses: Poems On Landscape And Melancholy (Volume 2)

Throughout 2017, I have continued with the responses form of article to works of art and other miscellanea.  Like last year, I found that a more interesting way to assess a piece of work was to not simply write an essay but to pair it with a poem; condensing the essence of the reading down into a basic selection of key notes, reactions and atmospheres.  … Continue reading Responses: Poems On Landscape And Melancholy (Volume 2)

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Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature, Uncategorized

Wanders: M.R. James’ Grave

On a rather muddled day in early autumn, I decided to visit M.R. James.  In recent years, I’ve become interested in the places that James frequented, usually because they have had clear and profound effects upon his ghost stories.  Visiting them with a sense of curiosity seems to invert the man’s clichés back upon him; walking in search of the known as opposed to the … Continue reading Wanders: M.R. James’ Grave

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Art, Landscape, Uncategorized

Responses: Eileen Agar’s Butterfly Bride (1938)

“Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly.  I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhuangzi.” Looking at Eileen Agar’s Butterfly Bride (1938) is to look into the dreams of insects.  Or perhaps these are our dreams of insects, where our waking moments are … Continue reading Responses: Eileen Agar’s Butterfly Bride (1938)

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Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography, Short Film, Uncategorized

Short Film – Greenteeth

Above is Greenteeth, my film adaptation of the short story by Gary Budden which can be read in his upcoming volume of short stories.  It is currently up for a fantasy award and follows the pressures on a young woman in a struggling part of north London whose social worries begin manifest in more folkloric ways through the legend of Jenny Greenteeth.  The film came … Continue reading Short Film – Greenteeth

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Film, Landscape, Uncategorized

Fox Hunting in Wyrd Landscape Cinema

Few events take place in the countryside as brutal as fox hunting. It is one that highlights the class divisions still present in this country, far more powerfully than most other country pursuits. Aside from obvious power on display by those who still, quite illegally, partake in it, even before its ban in 2004 it had become a symbol of the ultimate violence of the … Continue reading Fox Hunting in Wyrd Landscape Cinema

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Film, Landscape, Uncategorized

Heart Of Glass (1976) – Optimism in Destruction

On a rock, there sits a man lost in thought.  Or perhaps he is not thinking at all and is instead letting the landscape around him fill his thoughts unconsciously.  Werner Herzog’s 1976 film, Heart of Glass (Herz aus Glas), has one of the director’s strongest opening set of images as the main character of the film sits in a foggy Bavarian landscape with life … Continue reading Heart Of Glass (1976) – Optimism in Destruction

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Art, Landscape, Uncategorized

Responses: Eric Ravilious’ Cerne Abbas Giant (1939)

A naked man lies on a Dorset hill whilst another is painting him, quickly.  Eric Ravilious is on a fleeting trip to just north of Dorchester and the war, already broken out, is on his mind.  He paints the man, the land around and the humanity of the hills, quickly.  The man is the Cerne Abbas Giant, a mysterious earthwork of a primitive man with … Continue reading Responses: Eric Ravilious’ Cerne Abbas Giant (1939)

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Film, Interview, Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography, Uncategorized

Interview: Grant Gee + James Leyland Kirby (The Caretaker) on W.G. Sebald + Hauntology

For a recent symposium on Hauntology, I gave a paper on the links between the philosophy of hauntological ideas with the work and W.G. Sebald.  The subject had been interesting me for a while, not least because the jump between the style of the former and the thematic ideas of the latter are the amalgamation that I’m currently aiming for in my own fiction writing.  … Continue reading Interview: Grant Gee + James Leyland Kirby (The Caretaker) on W.G. Sebald + Hauntology

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