Once I loved a man who was a lot like the desert, and before that I loved the desert. – Rebecca Solnit Late last year, I watched two films back-to-back that effectively spoke of one very particular theme. Viewing Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970) followed by Dennis Hopper’s directorial debut The Last Movie (1971) highlighted a number of unavoidable connections between the films. Both films … Continue reading Sex and the Landscape
“My mother lives in the windy Orkney Islands. It’s certainly a wonderful place to be brought up in.” In making a short film about her mother, Scottish experimental filmmaker Margaret Tait also explored the interesting relationship between place and youth. In A Portrait of Ga (1952), a 4 minute short film shot on 16mm with a voice-over by the filmmaker, a fragment of biography becomes … Continue reading Place and Youth in Margaret Tait’s A Portrait Of Ga (1952)
British cinema is obsessed with the effect of location upon the individual. In fact, it wouldn’t be so sweeping to suggest that large swaths of culture born on these isles stems from the idea that the individual can be deeply molded by their surroundings and any fictional drama from Albion will be bare the aesthetics of its areas as far more than a setting. While … Continue reading Fear And Loathing In The Countryside – Withnail And I (1987).
Nature is always present or at the very least contrasted against something in Gideon Koppel’s nostalgia portrait, Sleep Furiously (2008). In spite of the film being a very clear ethnographic postcard from the director’s past, having lived previously in the Welsh town of Trefeurig, it manages to underline its gentle portraiture with a sense of pervading nature and landscape; where even the most concrete of … Continue reading Emerson’s Nature and Sleep Furiously (2008) – Gideon Koppel.
Few films are as explicit in their depiction of character relationships that are at the mercy of the fluctuating landscape than Roman Polanski’s 1966 film, Cul-De-Sac. Polanski had been to both ends of the environmental spectrum within his previous two films – the open waters of Knife In The Water (1962) and the cramped, claustrophobic London of Repulsion (1965) – and Cul-De-Sac sees him returning … Continue reading Isolation And Madness In Cul-De-Sac (1966) – Roman Polanski.
In the British tradition of the Chase & Pursuit drama, there are several reoccurring themes. The idea of a lone individual being chased through different landscapes by a group was popularised in Britain by the Second World War but was around far before then. The basic set-up has an individual wanted for some crime or misdemeanour (sometimes falsely). They are pursued by various parties, from the law … Continue reading Fugitive in the Landscape
The characters of Nigel Kneale’s work rarely like an outsider. The drama of his plays is often built around small groups of people at odds with some concept of an outsider. The oppositional group will be diametrically opposed for a variety of reasons; sometimes for more pulp tendencies such as aliens in a space invasion scenario, but also more recognisable images of townspeople entering closed … Continue reading Fear of the Outsider in Quatermas II
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.
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.
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.
Celluloid Wicker Man 