Category: Landscape

Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature

Rurality In Folk Horror And The Films of David Gladwell.

This paper was originally given at The Alchemical Landscape conference at Girton College Cambridge, 07/07/2016. Though more well known for work as a film editor associated with the Free Cinema Movement of the late 1950s, and for cutting work on several films by Lindsay Anderson including If…. (1968) and O’ Lucky Man! (1973), David Gladwell is a director in his own right; a cinematic outsider … Continue reading Rurality In Folk Horror And The Films of David Gladwell.

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Folk Horror, Landscape, Television

Wire and Grass Landscapes

At the recent Alchemical Landscape conference in Cambridge, there was some interesting discussion of the landscape seen in the opening segment of Alan Clarke and David Rudkin’s Play for Today episode, Penda’s Fen (1974). The point of the discussion was to show the subversive nature of the opening titles of the film in regards to its melding of two potentially differing realities of English landscape. … Continue reading Wire and Grass Landscapes

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Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography

Wanders: Ian Nairn’s Pimlico (London).

I’ve always had a slight relationship with Victoria and Pimlico in London.  As central London areas go, it has always represented two things to me: the awful feeling of leaving the city and the sense of dread at having to wander around somewhere largely built of private buildings, houses and hotels (not the ideal place to burn an hour in wait for a coach or … Continue reading Wanders: Ian Nairn’s Pimlico (London).

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Landscape, Psychogeography, Short Film

Trailer – Heavy Water.

Above is the trailer for the next short film, Heavy Water.  This is to be the longest film this year and the most ambitious in terms of scope in spite of future projects containing narratives and actors.  Heavy Water ‘s difficulty is the connection of its two main themes represented by adjacent places on the Suffolk coast; the strange, liminal landscape surrounding Sizewell nuclear power … Continue reading Trailer – Heavy Water.

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Film, Landscape, Literature

Place and Youth in Margaret Tait’s A Portrait Of Ga (1952)

“My mother lives in the windy Orkney Islands.  It’s certainly a wonderful place to be brought up in.” In making a short film about her mother, Scottish experimental filmmaker Margaret Tait also explored the interesting relationship between place and youth. In A Portrait of Ga (1952), a 4 minute short film shot on 16mm with a voice-over by the filmmaker, a fragment of biography becomes … Continue reading Place and Youth in Margaret Tait’s A Portrait Of Ga (1952)

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Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography

A Last Glimpse of the Land

“The contours of the Sizewell power plant, its Magnox block a glowering mausoleum, begin to loom upon an island far out in the pallid waters where one believes the Dogger Bank to be, where once shoals of herring spawned and earlier still, a long, long time ago, the delta of the Rhine flowed out into the sea and where green forests grew from silting sands.” … Continue reading A Last Glimpse of the Land

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Art, Landscape

Responses: Andy Goldsworthy’s Ice Arch (1982)

Andy Goldsworthy’s work has a transience running  through its core. Such quiet transience is perhaps best expressed in his use of ice within sculpture. Though almost everything the artist does has a brief lifespan as a finished object, there are few that seem so precarious as his ice works, specifically the various ice arches that he laboured on throughout the 1980s. For this article, the … Continue reading Responses: Andy Goldsworthy’s Ice Arch (1982)

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Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography, Short Film

Trailer – A Walk By Waiting (Pinter/Sinclair).

Above is the trailer for a very short fragment of film made in collaboration with the writer, Iain Sinclair.  Though I had been thinking about doing something with the poems of Harold Pinter for the some time, I had left it to stew away rather than properly organise it as with other, simpler films.  With initially failing to get in touch with Iain, I had … Continue reading Trailer – A Walk By Waiting (Pinter/Sinclair).

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Film, Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography

“Wyrd” Wirral – Spirits Of Place (02/04/2016)

This is an edited version of the paper given at Spirits Of Place in Calderstones Park, Liverpool 02/04/2016.  My thanks to John Reppion and Leah Moore for organising the event and for to the other excellent speakers (Gill Hoffs, David Southwell, Gary Budden, Kenneth Brophy, Richard Macdonald, Ian “Cat” Vincent and Ramsey Campbell).  Here’s to the next one. There is strange landmass on the opposite … Continue reading “Wyrd” Wirral – Spirits Of Place (02/04/2016)

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Landscape, Psychogeography

Wanders: Student Flatopia (Liverpool)

It’s an oft-stated critique of Liverpool city centre in recent years that it’s become an increasingly oversized student campus as opposed to a city.  A number of local writers and commentators, including an excellent summation earlier in the year by Seven Streets, have mentioned the suspiciously sheer abundance of developments comprising purely of student accommodation within the centre though it has rarely been quantified as a reality if … Continue reading Wanders: Student Flatopia (Liverpool)

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