Projects matching: Andrew Kotting

Synopsis

A documentary about life off-grid in Devon and much more.
Maverick soul mates Ged and Dave are on a mission through the winding lanes and hidden tracks of North Devon, to record the lives and experiences of people living without mains electricity. Filming for ten years they capture not only the beauty of this often harsh environment but also the spirit of the wonderful off-grid characters who inhabit it. A diverse collection of people whose stories at first appear meandering tributaries but quickly swell to become an intricate weave of philosophies and vibrant wit, uniting around our common search for happiness.
This rich tapestry of personalities, stunning landscapes and the musical accompaniment of Cosmo Sheldrake combine to deliver the film’s unique and extraordinary soul. Electrically charged with a seductive power not supplied by the National Grid.
A perfect antidote to the intensity of life in the modern world.
Official selection Cinecity Brighton Film Festival 2023 - UK premiere

Synopsis

Neuro-diverse artist Eden Kötting’s remarkable drawings, paintings and collages create an illusory, animated world where the rules change and everything is possible.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Experimenta - What Are You Looking At?

Synopsis

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.
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.
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.
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….
Official Selection FID Marseilles 2019 - World premiere

Synopsis

In a hinterland within the 'elsewhere', a lone character meanders in search of meaning and understanding. Hither and dither doth he wander reflecting upon all things that came before and all things hereafter.
This work is a companion piece to Andrew Kotting's feature film LEK AND THE DOGS and was shot in the Atacama desert in Chile. Produced to run on a loop in a gallery 'space' the film exemplifies Kotting's ability to take an idea and run with it until it spills over into the expanded cinematic 'elsewhere'.
With the beguiling presence of French performance artist Xavier Tchili and sublime cinematography by Nick Gordon-Smith the work is designed to be experienced within the pitch black and the sound up high.

Synopsis

A pilgrimage from Andrew Kotting to Derek Jarman along the south coast of England through a haze of post-election hope and despair.

Synopsis

Experimental artist and auteur Andrew Kotting creates a groundbreaking crossover between narrative film and contemporary art piece, based on the award-winning play by Hattie Naylor. The film is inspired by the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who walked out of his Moscow apartment at the age of four and spent two years living on the city streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs. In the recession-ravaged city, Ivan’s human world was dominated by deprivation and violence; his only hope was to turn to feral dogs for company, protection and warmth. Kotting’s spellbinding and utterly original story of survival conjures the streets of Moscow in the 1990s through the eyes of a child, drawing on a range of innovative modes and techniques to produce a montage essay on the state of the world.
Official Selection Rotterdam International Film Festival 2018 - International premiere

Synopsis

A 60 minute 66 second feature film inspired by a walk from Waltham Abbey in Essex via Battle Abbey to St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex. The film documents a pilgrimage in memory of Edith Swan Neck.
Bits of King Harold's body were brought to Waltham for burial near the High Altar after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and his hand fast wife Edith Swan Neck is seen cradling him in a remarkable sculpture at Grosvenor Gardens on the sea front in St Leonards. The film re-connects the lovers after 950 years of separation.
The 108 mile journey, as the crow flies, allows the audience to reflect upon all things Edith. A conversation in Northampton between Alan Moore, Iain Sinclair and Edith Swan Neck also is a key ingredient to the unfolding ‘story’.
With images shot using digital super 8 iPhone apps and sound recorded using a specially constructed music box with a boom microphone, the film unfolds chronologically but in a completely unpredictable way. The numerous encounters and impromptu performances en route are proof, that the angels of happenstance were to looking down, with EDITH as their hallucination.

Synopsis

By Our Selves documents a four-day walk made by the English Poet John Clare. Toby Jones, Iain Sinclair and a Straw Bear follow in his footsteps exactly 150 years after his death. En route they bump into Macgillivray, Dr Simon Kovesi and the wizard Alan Moore. Meantime the journey is narrated by Toby’s father Freddie, a maverick actor who featured in numerous David Lynch films.

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.

Synopsis

Swandown is a travelogue and odyssey of Olympian ambition. A poetic film-diary about encounter and culture. It is also an endurance test and pedal-marathon. Andrew Kötting (the filmmaker) and Iain Sinclair (the writer) pedal a plastic swan-shaped pedalo from the seaside in Hastings to Hackney in East London, via the English inland waterways. This action may, in part be seen as an act of ‘dada performance’ or as a response to the spirit of Olympic diversity and ambition. The journey and all that it entails is documented on both film and video and presented as a 90-minute feature length experimental documentary.

Synopsis

Water, sunlight, breathing and skin – this is a submersion into the joy of sea swimming by night and by day.
A series of moving portraits and interviews held exclusively in the sea off the coast of Hastings in the South East.

Synopsis

An idyllic location, a perfect spot, but something just isn't quite right, something doesn't fit.

Synopsis

A portrait of a tumbledown Pyrenean farmhouse as seen through the eyes and ears of the family that have lived there on and off for the last 22 years. With music by Scanner and a range of voices from the filmmaker’s sound archive, the work explores notions of nostalgia, memory and place.