As some may know, I’m currently engaged in a collaborative project with the writer, Robert Macfarlane, and also in periphery with the artist Stanley Donwood. Our aim is to produce a short visual summation of the fragmented novella booklet that Robert and Stanley released, together with writer Dan Richards, all about the Holloways of Dorset. These Holloways are sunken paths; pathways that have grown into … Continue reading Filming In The Holloways.
Much has been written about Kenneth Anger’s final counter-culture outpouring, Lucifer Rising. So often the discussion of its history, its constantly evolving final form, and its links with Charles Manson’s “Family”, overshadow the real thematic content of the short film. Whilst all of these elements are of great interest, especially in regards to Bobby Beausoleil’s score which seems highly prescient in the context of his … Continue reading The Ancient And The Otherworldly In Lucifer Rising (1970) – Kenneth Anger.
On a recent exploration of several films from the 1960s, some startling realisations occurred. A change in moral values is pretty easy to distinguish within any given time-frame but the casual representation of the era’s moral values were surprising to behold. In the 1960s, the concept of the teenager was barely a decade old; a new refreshing lease of life for a generation of people but … Continue reading Objectification As Desire In The 1960s British Youth Film.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Conclusions. “If its central characteristics remained immune to change, the ghost story did keep pace with the times through progressive modernization of settings and language.” – Cox (xix, 1991). From analysis of the BBC Ghost Stories, it is clear that the narrative function of the supernatural has a natural … Continue reading The Aural Aesthetics Of Ghosts in BBC Ghost Stories – Part 9 (Conclusions).
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.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. The Signalman And Aural Paranoia Over Dickensian Technology. “For those who look back on it, the Victorian age seems to be invested with a peculiar quality of difference – heightened by its relative proximity in time – that is reflected in its ghosts. It was an age shaped, perhaps more than any … Continue reading The Aural Aesthetics Of Ghosts In BBC Ghost Stories – Part 8 (The Signalman).
For a film about war, Ivan’s Childhood (1962) by Andrei Tarkovsky dwells quite unexpectedly upon the natural landscape of its narrative. At first, this might seem somewhat unsurprising; after all, most films set during war often make use of the battered terrain of the landscape, if only to show the fallout and power of the weaponry available. Ivan’s Childhood does more than this and contains … Continue reading The Forests Of Ivan’s Childhood (1962) – Andrei Tarkovsky.
When surmising the film work of Peter Greenaway, several rather luscious factors often come into play: The huge, architectural scale of his filming locations and sets; the painterly detail of his composition; Influences of Western high art; the larger than life (often Shakespearian) characters performed by the biggest stars in the UK. All of these facets are what makes his non-narrative, upscale films such as … Continue reading The Naturalist Tendencies of Peter Greenaway’s Short Films.
Best New Releases. 2014 has been a year that I’ve genuinely struggled to keep up with in terms of new releases. The sheer wealth of material out there and the incessant obsession of online reviewers to desperately be up-to-date has been an interesting but ultimately fruitless exercise to try and mimic. Luckily, I’ve watched a good number of excellent films from all around the world … Continue reading 2014 Review and Top 10s.
The following article contains plot twists. Hysteria and Nigel Kneale’s Baby. A very particular and often quoted segment from Freud’s summations of hysterical patients will be used here to begin the contextualisation our analysis. Whilst writing about the generalities surrounding such cases of hysteria and eventually compulsion neurosis, Freud came up with a short but rather useful sound-bite to describe every patient he had seen. … Continue reading Technological Hysteria in Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape (1972).
Celluloid Wicker Man 