Back to the Garden

Director: Jon Sanders

Year: 2021

Some time after the death of their mother, two sisters Phoebe and Dot, both performance artists, have returned to their family home on the Isle of Wight, a large house crammed full of Edwardian bohemian memorabilia and accumulated family clutter. Before selling the house, they are working on a site specific piece which will reflect their troubled childhood memories and their mother’s work as a composer; she wrote music for both pianola and music box which included songs using the words of the Victorian poet, Mary Coleridge whose poem 'A Clever Woman' becomes the title of the film.<br /> The action takes place over one day when the sisters’ producer/curator , Monica comes to visit. With them all is Tom, a young man who has been house-sitting; he is also an accomplished musician and the sisters have started to get him involved in their project. As the day progresses the sisters rehearse some of their mother songs and work on dramatising various aspects of her life including her complicated marriage and serial infidelity; this produces a heightened and haunting atmosphere which, coupled with an unexpected connection between Tom and Monica, leads to dramatic revelations and an explosive and poignant conclusion.

Director: Jon Sanders

Year: 2016

In an attempt to revisit a creative collaboration and revive his marriage, a theatre director brings together a group of performers to spend a week with him and his wife in an isolated, mountainous part of southern France. As the work progresses, fiction and reality become blurred and there is a constant tension between the characters' own lives and the nature of the work - an investigation into the changing nature of love. <br /> The couple are haunted by memories and dreams which, in the end, threaten not only the venture but the marriage itself. All this is underpinned by a sense of melancholy, reflected in the songs and music performed, and in the dramatic and implacably beautiful landscape.<br /> “Will it come like a change in the weather...... O tell me the truth about love” WH Auden

Director: Jon Sanders

Year: 2008

Low Tide tells the story of the last three days of a woman's life; Kathy is dying of cancer and is being nursed at home. Her husband Tom cooks and cares for her but is unable to offer her emotional support and keeps himself apart, playing his music or drinking with a recently widowed friend. Kathy forms a strong attachment to her visiting nurse, confiding in her about her past affairs, her ambiguous feelings towards Tom and her fear of death. Her closest friend comes to visit and a rift is healed; memories haunt her and eventually, after a painful confrontation, she and Tom attempt to come to terms with her infidelities, their unhappy marriage and the loss of their only child.