By Our Selves
Synopsis
John Clare's escape from Epping Forest; an epic march through hunger and madness, is an English journey to set beside 'A Pilgrim's Progress'. Andrew Kötting, hyperkinetic camper-van captain of Gallivant, sets out in hot pursuit, dressed as a Straw Bear. Father and son, Freddie and Toby Jones, are possessed by the spirit of Clare, and locked in Beckettian embrace: one all-voice and one all-mute.
The writer Iain Sinclair watches from the shadows, Alan Moore waits like a bearded figure of fate, in Northampton and Dr Simon Kovesi hands out the medicine.
Captured in lustrous black and white photography, they discover the only truth of the road; whatever our hopes and delusions, we are always By Our Selves.
Inspired by Iain Sinclair’s Edge of the Orison and John Clare’s Journey out of Essex.
Details
- Year
- 2015
- Type of film
- Features
- Running time
- 83 mins
- Format
- HD, Super 8mm
- Director
-
Andrew Kötting
- Producer
- Andrew Kötting, Edward Fletcher
- Executive Producer
- Gareth Evans
- Editor
- Andrew Kötting, Cliff West
- Screenwriter
- Andrew Kötting, Iain Sinclair
- Director of Photography
- Nick Gordon Smith
- Sound
- Philippe Ciompi
- Music
- Jem Finer
- Principal cast
- Iain Sinclair, Freddie Jones, Toby Jones, David Aylward, Eden Kötting, Simon Kovesi, MacGillivray, Alan Moore
- Voice
- Macgillivray
- Downside - Up rig
- Tony Hill
- Quadrocopter and additional aerials
- Damian Daniel
- Additional cast
- Anne Caron Delion, Gareth Evans, Marcia Farquhar, Leila McMillan, Kristin O’Donnell, Jim Roseveare, Tom Sangster, Vigo, Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Production Status
Production Company
Andrew Kötting
Soda Pictures, www.sodapictures.comSales Company
Soda Pictures, www.sodapictures.com
Page updates
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The Whalebone Box
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A box made of whale bone, entangled in a fisherman’s net was washed up on a remote beach in the Outer Hebrides. Once touched the box can change lives. <br /> The box was given to Iain Sinclair almost thirty years ago by Steve Dilworth, a sculptor based on the Island of Harris. It was always intended to be an active thing, kill or cure. An animal battery. And part of the power of the crafted box comes from its lack of signature. At best this object has the anonymity and moral authority of tribal art, of a fetish, a relic or an accidental survivor. It is dangerous. What is inside might produce good magic or it might produce bad magic but like the box that contained Schrödinger’s Cat it must never to be opened.<br /> In 2018 the box was taken on an 800 mile reverse pilgrimage from London back to the Isle of Harris, in the company of the filmmaker Andrew Kötting, the photographer Anonymous Bosch and the writer Iain Sinclair. There was unwellness on the island and they hoped that the box might help, however little did they know the delirium that they would unleash. <br /> And all the while Eden Kötting narrates the story, working as both muse and soothsayer. She tries to make sense of the journey as it unfolds, sometimes awake and sometimes in deep sleep. Ultimately the whalebone box is finally buried in the sand on the very beach from which it came all those ever-so-many years ago BUT something happens at the very end of the film after the credits have finished rolling, something extraordinary and miraculous….<br /> Official Selection FID Marseilles 2019 - World premiere