British Council Logo UK Films Database
Project Detail

Villanelle for Elizabeth not Ophelia

A woman lying in a pool with arms out and poetry beneath her
A girl in a pool with multiple girls in the background and poetry

Synopsis

Shakespeare’s male-dominated Ophelia in Hamlet committed suicide by drowning. This film is a warning address to all women but directed at Elizabeth Siddall, known for playing Ophelia in the famous Pre-Raphaelite painting by John Everett Millais. Life imitated art, since Elizabeth caught pneumonia whilst posing in a cold bath for the picture, and was also dominated by her unfaithful and controlling husband Dante Gabriel Rossetti, causing her to also commit suicide. In the UK alone ‘200 women take their own lives every year, and nearly 30 women attempt to complete suicide every single day due to domestic abuse’. Parallels can also be made to today’s actresses and Harvey Weinstein, Me Too, and the latest uncovering of the Epstein, Trump, Casablancas etc. case (where young girls were groomed for the sexual appetites of a roll call of powerful, rich men). Villanelle aims to bring hope, rewriting Elizabeth’s fate and the fate of all women facing such distressing thoughts.
Visit Film Website

Details

Year
2022
Type of project
Shorts
Running time
5 min 52 sec
Format
digital
Director
Sarah Tremlett
Producer
Sarah Tremlett
Editor
James Symonds and Sarah Tremlett
Screenwriter
Sarah Tremlett
Director of Photography
Sarah Tremlett
Sound
Anna Mayilyan singer; 'Sirt im Sassani' (My Heart Trembles with Fear) 13th century Armenian liturgical chant
Composer
harmonised by: Komitas, arranger Daniel Yerajisht
Principal cast
Sarah Tremlett, XaiLA (Hatti Rees), Georgie Rees

Genre

Art / Artists Experimental Woman Director

Categories

Artist Project and Video / Experimental

Production Status

Complete

Production Company

PoemFilm

Sarah Tremlett

Page updates

This page was last updated on 14th October 2026. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

Suggest amendments

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

A bargeman on a river by an old bridge with modern buildings layered beneath Nocturne for a Lighterman

Director: Sarah Tremlett

Year: 2025

Dark undercurrents interact in the lives of Victorian artist – James McNeill Whistler – and a bargeman (one of poetry filmmaker Sarah Tremlett’s ancestors) on the River Thames in London. Based on Whistler’s painting Nocturne in Blue and Gold, Old Battersea Bridge, the poem is written in neo-symbolist mode and the contemporary footage is of the same view as the original. The soundscape by leading Belgian composer Marc Neys, though not inspired by Debussy, evolved from Tremlett’s fascination with his repetitive musical phrases, and his friendship with Whistler. Nocturne for a Lighterman is taken from TREE, a forthcoming family history chronicle by Sarah Tremlett, and is an experiment with painting with film.

Experimental Woman Director
Babamamadada Babamamadada

Director: Sarah Tremlett

Year: 2000

We follow the ups and downs of a toddler's day, alternating between the baby's point of view and that of the harassed, unseen mother.

Woman Director Drama
Face, boy, eclipse A Season in Secret

Director: Matthew Berka

Year: 2027

A SEASON IN SECRET brings together material both close at hand and far away. It is a meditation on things glimpsed at a distance and the limits of perception. What lies behind the screen is hidden and may only be hinted at through the language of visible images and sounds. The film takes some of its cues from the Japanese aesthetic concept of Yūgen, described in part by the 15th-century aesthetician Zeami Motokiyo: “...to stand upon the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands.”

Experimental