The Outer Hebrides was long ago once thought of as a place of seers, who were known to have the gift of Second Sight: an ability to foretell future events. These prognostications were revealed to the seer in the form of visions or otherworldly sounds. Sometimes they took the form of portents derived by augury read from animals, bones, or weather patterns foretelling what has yet come to pass.
Using these stories as a starting point, THE TWO SIGHTS, is a portrait of a rapidly changing maritime environment with its acoustic ecology and culture in flux in a time of uncertain futures.
Long take Super 16mm cinematography, interwoven with site-specific field recordings and interviews collected from the disappearing oral histories of several Hebridean communities are collaged to explore the relationship between place narrative, environment, and the reciprocal influences they exact upon one another.
Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2020 - Forum - World premiere
Moving from the frozen landscapes of the Jura mountains to the urban centres of Port-au-Prince, Ouvertures brings the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture back to life. In France a Haitian researcher tries to read the past within the stratigraphic layers of Jurassic limestone, whilst in Haiti a group of young actors translate and rehearse scenes from 'Monsieur Toussaint', a play written by Édouard Glissant, that recounts the last days in the life of Louverture dying in exile in a prison cell in the Jura, 1803. Ghosts from the pantheon of Haitian history visit Louverture on his deathbed and put him to trial. As the play proceeds the actors become possessed by their characters, and eventually the ghost of Louverture joins the group and takes them on a voyage for a new kind of exile.
Official Selection Berlinale 2020 - Forum - World premiere
The title is borrowed from a recent book which discusses the effect of the use of the internet on peoples emotions i.e. body image, general existential issues etc . I consider the work in terms of assemblage as currently understood in contemporary philosophy and literature. (Richard O'Callaghan)
The VR experience, inspired by UK National Theatre director Rufus Norris’ production of SMALL ISLAND, uses immersive technologies and a life-size volumetrically captured performance to take audiences on a unique musical journey.
The ceremony of live performance and the craft of theatrical staging magnificently converge with immersive technologies and the musical direction of composer Raffy Bushman to bring a communal audience into a new kind of theatrical space. ALL KINDS OF LIMBO is a fantastical engagement of a musical performance starring Nubiya Brandon, who sings a musical narration of her life in limbo that spans the genres of reggae, grime, classical, and calypso.
Through a specially commissioned piece of music, vocalist Brandon, composer Bushman and the NuShape Orchestra take audiences through musical genres including reggae, grime, classical and calypso, reflecting the historic influence of West Indian and black culture on the UK music scene.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2020 - New Frontier Exhibitions
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2020 - LFF Expanded
Go inside the cyclical centre of a Kikuyu tribal myth from Kenya, where man may become woman and woman may become man. Through virtual reality, dance, and music, a sacred space is created to explore many versions of yourself.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2020 - New Frontier Exhibitions
A loving 16mm ode to Scottish poet and avant-garde filmmaker Margaret Tait. Artist filmmaker Luke Fowler circles her Orkney home surrounded by red tulips and buzzing insects, visits her films' locations, and zooms in on her notebooks of ideas. We also listen to Tait's poem 'Houses', about what it means to feel at home.
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 - Bright Futures - European premiere
LOOK THEN BELOW was filmed in Somerset, a place transformed into a coloured, mist-enveloped island in an oily ocean with a cave basking in a subterranean glow. Time seems to stand still there.
After SLOW ACTION and URTH, this is the final part of a trilogy developed with American SF author Mark von Schlegell.
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 - Bright Future - Ammodo Tiger Short Competition - World premiere
The starting point for this video piece is an image of artist Maryam Jafri's sculpture 'Anxiety', that has been turned into a stock photo for licensing on a major photographic agency's website without the artist's prior knowledge or permission.
A voiceover traces the work’s trajectory from a readymade sculpture for sale at an art fair to a stock photo for licensing online and finally, to a video commissioned by a Kunstahalle, a space meant to guarantee the autonomy of art. The work reflects upon the role of originality, artist labour and copyright in our culture of sampling and remixing.
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 -Bright Future
A monster film with no monsters. Inspired by the existence of taxonomies of monsters at the heart of Early Modern European science, the film explores and reinterprets a way of seeing the natural world that is almost impossible to imagine from today’s vantage point. Early Modern naturalists were guided by a logic in which scientific truths were discovered through visual analogy. The word ‘monster’ comes from the latin ‘monstrare’, meaning to show, to reveal, to demonstrate. A DEMONSTRATION picks up on these themes in a poetic exploration of the boundaries of sight and the metamorphosis of form.
Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2020 - Berlinale Shorts - World premiere
Documenting Summer Solstice at Glastonbury Tor in Somerset.
For many, Glastonbury Tor is the spiritual and mythological heart of England, acting as both the geographical centrepiece to Arthurian legend and Christianity's arrival into Britain.
Shot in 2019, a year in which national divides were embellished by further populist rhetoric surrounding the country's exit from the European Union, A THIN PLACE acts as an alternative catalyst to reflect on dialogues surrounding English nationalism, identity and Romanticism.
