In spite of the unending calamity of the 2020s, films, books and television have still kept me going throughout 2022. Here are my highlights. Film Throughout the period of December 2021 to December 2022, I’ve watched just over 270 films. In general, I’ve focussed on my usual deep dive into the handful of national cinemas that I’m really invested in, though this year has seen … Continue reading 2022 Review
For a long time, the only thing I ever had nightmares about was secondary school. The nightmares would vary in tone and scenario but often had several reoccurring themes. They would include the corridors of the school, the feeling of being stuck within the walls of the building and the rising embarrassment of failure in front of peers. No pleasure was greater than feeling that … Continue reading Nettles (Influx Press)
2021 has been a strange year. I’ve found it harder than 2020, in spite of getting more work and generally doing more things as we (briefly) returned to normal. It still just didn’t sit right. Perhaps it was simply because my previous years have been focussed around big projects coming out like book releases and this year was characterised by sitting on one until its … Continue reading 2021 Review
I was in a cafe in the Alésia area of Paris in 2017 trading horror stories about school days with the writer Édouard Louis when the novel potential of some of my own childhood memories became apparent. I had met Édouard through a mutual producer and we were discussing film projects that were never to materialise. Having read The End of Eddy and loved it, … Continue reading Nettles (2022, Influx Press) – Preview
This article was originally commissioned as part of an ongoing series for Little White Lies. As the photograph was damaged by rain, and not wanting to revisit to re-do the photograph, the article is published here. Further installments of the column are ongoing and can be read here. One of the great screen presences of cinema’s Golden Age, Jean Simmons forged a strong career on … Continue reading Beginnings: Jean Simmons
In what has undoubtedly been a cursed year, I have been thankfully kept sane by a number of things, namely films and books but also a few other outlets of frustration. Suffice to say, when you’re taking solace from a hobby for which the tagline is ‘In the grim darkness of far future, there is only war’, you can bet it has been a pretty … Continue reading 2020 Review
The London of my mind’s eye is still shabby and industrial. It is not built on the reality of its modern identity but from its documentation and portrayal in older books, television and film, even more so than ever due to lockdown. This London is not one filled with looming, luxury high-rises like the horrors in Nine Elms, nor is it the city that turned … Continue reading Trailer: Factory (Derek Raymond) – LWT, 1976
I’ve very happy to say that, after five years since the very first frame was shot, the film adaptation of Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood’s Ness is finally finished. Started before the book was even written, the project has been on and off since late 2014 when first gaining permission to visit the famous site of Orford Ness; once a semi-fictionalised place in my mind’s … Continue reading Short Film – Ness (Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood)
Chantal Akerman’s first series of features in the 1970s have one defining aspect in common: all are suffused with loneliness. In her first fiction feature, Je Tu Il Elle (1974), a character wanders between lovers old and new but is always confused as to what she really wants. In Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975), we follow a woman trapped in the monotony of … Continue reading All The Lonely People: Chantal Akerman’s Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978)
This is an edited transcript of a talk given at Norwich Castle on Tuesday the 27th of August 2019. Detail has been edited, aspects taken out and points clarified from the original talk. My thanks to Dr. Nick Warr and Philippa Comber in particular for the help and information given both before and after the talk. Introduction Considering the wealth of imagery on the walls … Continue reading Echoes & Imprints: Towards A Sebaldian Cinema
Celluloid Wicker Man 