Short Film – Weather Words (Colin Riley feat. Robert Macfarlane)

Having already written about the Weather Words film for Caught By The River (link here), I won’t add much more about the project. For more specific details, read that piece. It’s the first and probably only film project of mine in 2018, partly due to funding problems and partly due to other big projects taking time (finishing my PhD, editing first novel, drafting second, selling … Continue reading Short Film – Weather Words (Colin Riley feat. Robert Macfarlane)

adamscovellSeptember 3, 2018Leave a comment

Art

Responses: Albrecht Dürer’s St. Jerome (1521)

An old man is sat at a desk. His intelligence burns brightly above is head like a white halo as he writes in ink on a raised platform. His room is filled with things; measuring equipment and scientific apparatus, a skull, cushions, a lion, a dog and many books. The light from outside translates the designs of the glass windows onto the adjacent wall while … Continue reading Responses: Albrecht Dürer’s St. Jerome (1521)

adamscovellAugust 20, 2018Leave a comment

Film, Uncategorized

Accumulation in Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse (1991)

For a while after watching Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse (The Beautiful Troublemaker, 1991), I repeatedly heard the sound of ink scratching from a nib onto rough paper and canvas. This action occurs throughout the almost four hour long film, to the point where the process of painting – from its earliest preparatory sketches to a devilish, unseen final canvas – feels almost conveyed in … Continue reading Accumulation in Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse (1991)

adamscovellAugust 6, 2018Leave a comment

Literature, Uncategorized

Marcel Proust Turns Away

“What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.” – Roland Barthes Marcel Proust turns away. His head is straight but not quite obscured. It could be considered a picture in profile if not for the angle of his body, crumpled and creating the illusion of multiple positions. His hand weakly grips his lapel, … Continue reading Marcel Proust Turns Away

adamscovellJuly 23, 2018October 6, 20232 Comments

Film, Literature, Uncategorized

Horror’s Pleasure of Distance

One of my favourite moments from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) is not a typical choice considering the film’s many infamous scenes. Rather than showers, murders and other more memorable images, I particularly love a relatively bland scene later on in the film. It has narrative development in its eerie punch line but has little else on screen in terms of Hitchcock more generally: it is utterly perfunctory … Continue reading Horror’s Pleasure of Distance

adamscovellJuly 9, 2018December 18, 20231 Comment

Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature, Uncategorized

Arcadian Folklore

Arcadian Folklore The lost realm of Arcadia was noted for its vast array of folklore and customs. Many unusual tales are at the centre of a rich and diverse research field which has painstakingly assembled a wealth of material from a huge variety of sources. This essay can only give a brief overview of some of the more unusual and seasonal based customs, superstitions and … Continue reading Arcadian Folklore

adamscovellJuly 2, 2018April 20, 20261 Comment

Art, Literature, Uncategorized

Responses: Tacita Dean’s Berlin And The Artist (2012)

Chance played a huge role in the writing of Robert Walser. I can picture his slow meanderings around towns and valleys, spotting something that fired his brief need to write before getting distracted by something else entirely. I can see him getting excited by the way sunlight reflects off a lake’s water, by the fustiness of a suited man coming out of a bank, by … Continue reading Responses: Tacita Dean’s Berlin And The Artist (2012)

adamscovellJune 25, 2018October 6, 2023Leave a comment

Landscape, Literature, Uncategorized

Fragments: Herr Lehmann’s Pond In Baden-Baden

Herr Lehmann resembled Kafka. He looked less like Kafka at first but more like Kafka as I came to know him. He was Kafka-esque though not in that sense, the sense of being horrifyingly bureaucratic – which he was, though this is not the reason – but in the sense that his face seemed, for always, like Kafka yet imagined with slight errors. Herr Lehmann … Continue reading Fragments: Herr Lehmann’s Pond In Baden-Baden

adamscovellJune 18, 2018April 20, 2026Leave a comment

Landscape, Literature, Uncategorized

Fragments: On A Hillside Near Château Haut-Barr

And then we had lost each other within the trees. The moment slipped away as quickly as her shadow, passing onwards through the breeze. I craved the warmth of the Château Haut-Barr once more, leaves falling through the cracks in its walls, our souls simply kindling for the hungry fire to burn. But I was alone in the murk of trees, all of whom leaned … Continue reading Fragments: On A Hillside Near Château Haut-Barr

adamscovellJune 11, 2018April 20, 2026Leave a comment

Film, Uncategorized

Snails and Death

When I think of the films of Luis Buñuel, the first image that comes to mind is that of the corpse of a murdered child. Her legs are strewn among the branches of deep, dark woodland, and her legs covered in snails. The image in question is from Buñuel’s 1964 film Diary Of A Chambermaid; a relatively straight film for the director and lacking the overt … Continue reading Snails and Death

adamscovellJune 4, 2018December 18, 20232 Comments