Tag: Derek Jarman

Landscape, Short Film, Uncategorized

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)

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Art, Landscape, Uncategorized

Responses: Derek Jarman’s Avebury

One of Derek Jarman’s first short super-8 film was the haunting A Journey to Avebury. Early evidence that Jarman was interested in the genii loci of English landscapes, his walk through the Wiltshire landscape, after the intense stint of work on the sets for Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), had a larger influence upon him than the singular short film belies. The ancient landscape generated a whole range minimalist paintings … Continue reading Responses: Derek Jarman’s Avebury

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Folk Horror, Landscape, Psychogeography

Dérives: A Journey To Avebury.

The Neolithic town of Avebury in Wiltshire has figured in much that I love for a growing number of years now.  Its draw has been one that has crossed all areas of the arts that dominate my current interests, to the point where the village almost seemed to embody a fictional realm akin to Alan Garner’s Elidor or Tolkien’s Middle Earth.  It had become a … Continue reading Dérives: A Journey To Avebury.

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Landscape, Psychogeography, Short Film

Short Film – The Menhir Motorway.

The Menhir Motorway is the first film of 2016 and it should set the tone for the rest of the year’s projects.  Having filmed in late December, a mere few days before Christmas in the freezing edge-lands of Wallasey on The Wirral with the help of my girlfriend, Lauren (who took all of the proceeding digital photos of the shoot), the film has been gently … Continue reading Short Film – The Menhir Motorway.

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Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography, Short Film

Showreel 2015.

Above is a showreel built from footage I’ve shot over the last twelve months.  Compared to last year’s showreel, this one feels far more defined and less haphazard with the visual ideas I want to play with.  Gone are the mixtures of stop-motion, digital and film, instead replaced entirely by different stocks of super-8 footage.  This year has felt like a much more defined trajectory … Continue reading Showreel 2015.

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Art, Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography, Short Film

Short Film – Holloway (Robert Macfarlane)

It feels odd to finally be able to say that Holloway is finished.  This oddness derives not just from the fact that it has been the longest planned film that I’ve produced so far (starting all the way back from Robert Macfarlane’s first email to me in February 2014) but because the subject of the film itself is never-ending.  The holloways of Dorset do not … Continue reading Short Film – Holloway (Robert Macfarlane)

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Film, Literature

Alchemical Magic in Derek Jarman’s The Tempest (1979).

Forever a cinematic alchemist – a sage that conjured and devoured celluloid before the eventual ritualistic sacrifice- Derek Jarman is the perfect suitor to Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1979); a play whose heart is bathed in the tragedy and power of magic.  Of course Jarman isn’t the only person from the Brit-pack of avant-garde directors to remould the work but his is the most natural.  Peter … Continue reading Alchemical Magic in Derek Jarman’s The Tempest (1979).

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Film, Landscape, Literature, Short Film

Trailer – Holloway (Robert Macfarlane).

Above is the trailer for the film that I have been working on with Robert Macfarlane.  Only recently, upon reading a Wikipedia entry no less, did I discover that it is an adaptation of a “Sunday Times best-seller”.  Perhaps it is best to ignore the pressure of this in spite of the article actually putting my name to the project.  As the edit progresses, Holloway … Continue reading Trailer – Holloway (Robert Macfarlane).

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Film, Landscape, Literature

Perception Of Landscape in A Journey To Avebury (1971) – Derek Jarman.

Out of all of Derek Jarman’s pre-feature length film work, his short capture of a 1971 walking trip, A Journey To Avebury, is perhaps his most interesting and subtly complex piece of short film work.  These were the early days of Jarman’s experimentation when his work as a painter and even a set designer still seemed to dominate over his purely cinematic interests.  This was … Continue reading Perception Of Landscape in A Journey To Avebury (1971) – Derek Jarman.

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Film

Great British Documentaries

“In documentary we deal with the actual, and in one sense with the real. But the really real, if I may use that phrase, is something deeper than that. The only reality which counts in the end is the interpretation which is profound.” – John Grierson. With Sight & Sound’s recent poll for best documentaries (September 2014), I wanted to explore some of the British … Continue reading Great British Documentaries

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