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 early features have one 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, only really content in isolation. In Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975), we follow a woman trapped in the monotony of a mysteriously empty everyday … Continue reading All The Lonely People
This is an edited transcript of a talk given at Norwich Castle on Tuesday the 27th of August 2019. My thanks to Dr Nick Warr and Philippa Comber for their help. Considering the wealth of photography on the walls of the Line of Sight exhibition housed next door (an exhibition detailing many photographs taken by the author for his novels), it is unsurprising to find the work … Continue reading Echoes & Imprints: Towards A Sebaldian Cinema
Mothlight was released on the 7th of February and I’ve been going on about it on social media quite heavily. In spite of this, I wanted to post a quick update about the book and then generally leave the discussions surrounding it to official events and to other websites. The guys at Influx Press (Gary Budden, Kit Caless and Sanya Semakula) have been wonderful and … Continue reading Mothlight
A strange act of temporal travel occurs for me when hearing the voice of Tracey Thorn. Thanks to exposure at an impressionably young age to two songs which feature her voice, her soft tones still to this day have an overly powerful effect on me. For the most part, this power is melancholic, for it reminds that the home life which surrounded my childhood self … Continue reading And I Miss You… The Nostalgic Womb of Tracey Thorn’s Voice
New Releases Happy End – Michael Haneke Faces Places – Agnès Varda The Antigone – Tacita Dean Let The Sunshine In – Claire Denis You Were Never Really Here – Lynne Ramsay I don’t get to the cinema much these days, being both skint and constantly nervous of Dolby Surround Sound which sadly gives rise to anxiety attacks. However, these are the best films I’ve … Continue reading 2018 Review
Above is a short film made with Influx Press all about my next book, Mothlight. Running back and forth between London and Merseyside, the film features me waffling on a little and also revisiting the original locations up north that inspired the book. Also featured, for which I’m incredibly lucky, are some readings by my previous voice-over collaborator Paul Carmichael who lends his rich tones … Continue reading Mothlight (Film)
Marguerite Duras lived in a little flay in what was once the Hôtel des Roches Noires in Trouville on the Normandy coast for over thirty years. She spent long periods of time there from 1963 to 1996. She would stare out of the window towards the horizon line, or at least was photographed often staring out of the window towards the horizon line. Though undoubtedly … Continue reading Winter Waves: Marguerite Duras And Trouville
Celluloid Wicker Man 