London Short Film Festival

Dates: 7-16 January | Location: various London cinemas and venues

The London Short Film Festival is back for it’s eighth year with yet another jam packed programme. We recommend that you check out a few choice highlights at the very least in this short film fiesta:

Clio Barnard: Before the Arbor – a selection of short plus Q&A with the Director;

Shorts a la carte – short films by Kayla Parker, Max Hattler, Julian Hand and Naren Wilks, projected onto your tabletop as you eat at Inamo restaurant;

Tonight We Go A-Gleaning – the London premiere of the Gleaners project, commissioned by Abandon Normal Devices, with an accompanying programme of found footage shorts by Jordan Baseman, Sarah Wood and Dave Griffiths;

Club des Femmes and Spinster Take New Berlin – screening of Tatjana Turanskyj’s Eine Flexible Frau (The Drifter) & performance by Sinster;

And lastly one event that we’ve co-curated, Ben Rivers: This is My Land + In Conversation with Andrew Kötting – a selection of shorts plus post-screening in conversation with Andrew Kötting.

A great start to the new year in short film.

The shortlist for the second annual series of FLAMIN Production awards has just been announced. A funding scheme for London-based artist filmmakers, Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network provides in 2010 eleven development awards of £1,000 before shortlisting between two to five artists for production awards of up to £50,000.

Five production grants were awarded in the inaugural competition in 2009 with funding to artists Phil Coy, Charlotte Ginsborg, Anja Kirschner and David Panos, Elizabeth Price and Ben Rivers, from a development long-list that included Gillian Wearing, Mark Aerial Waller, Faisal Abdu’Allah and Chris Newby. Of the films awarded funding, Façade by Phil Coy had its premiere at this year’s Whitstable Biennale, Kirschner and Panos’ Brecht in Hollywood looks to be completed by the end of this year, along with Elizabeth Price’s West Hinder. Details are less forthcoming regarding Ginsborg’s and Ben Rivers’ efforts, but Rivers’ production will be his first feature, and thus far the only FLAMIN Productions film to be feature length.

Alongside FLAMIN Productions another artist development programme has recently publicised a call for applications – LUX’s Associate Artists’ Programme, now in its fourth year. These are two very different schemes, aimed at artist filmmakers of varying experience. A roll call of alumni from LUX’s programme includes Rachel Reupke and Anja Kirschner in 2007/08, Luke Fowler, Laura Gannon, Laure Prouvost and Grace Schwindt (all from 2008/09’s extraordinary selection) and last year’s admissions included Cara Tolmie and the deliciously talented pairing of Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth.

FLAMIN Productions proudly state their core intentions to commission “…new, single screen works which represent a significant leap in artists’ careers…(attracting) the capital’s most innovative moving image artists…The scheme is for work that is ambitious in premise and duration.”

There are two aspects of the core programme that appear to play at odds with the core tenets of a professional development programme. Essentially a competitive scheme, a panel of experts selected by FLAMIN Productions judges each project against the others to decide which they would prefer to take forward for production. The development grants enable the artists to properly assess the production viability of their films and bring the project to a level where they can, in essence, begin production. But beyond the development phase, where does this leave the artists whose films have not been selected for production, other than in some kind of hazy limbo?

At a time when an innovation in artists’ moving image is an emphasis on the translation and adaptation of feature-length film technique within an artists’ moving image capacity, and with FLAMIN in a unique position to utilise parent organisation Film London’s billet as a feature film development organisation, not taking advantage of this boon feels like folly.

The unanswered question – or perhaps more succinctly the answer which is not immediately available – is why FLAMIN Productions exists at all. As a replacement for the broader London Artists’ Film and Video Awards? That in itself is not reason enough. To provide established artists with the methods and means of producing innovative work?  Surely every arts production organisation has that line in their mission statement? If the aim is to create experimental film works, intended for the gallery, projection room, cinema, online and in public, then why restrict the criteria to single-screen production? The LAFVA-funded Perestroika by artist Sarah Turner gathered a strong audience, thanks in part to good marketing, effective distribution and the fact that it is feature length. It is an act of bravura filmmaking by the artist, but I nevertheless feel that the feature format isn’t necessarily effective for an artist’s ambitions. Since Perestroika there have been a number of gallery-mainstream efforts, notably Tacita Dean’s Craneway Event, which suffered from a similar ailment, and Emily Wardill’s Game Keepers Without Game.

As talented and as interesting as the artists funded by FLAMIN Productions in 2009 may be, it is difficult to see how challenged they will be in the future unless they are working to develop a new aesthetic criteria or adding to a developing aesthetic criteria, as Ben Rivers is doing or Gillian Wearing, who withdrew from the development process in order to begin filming her debut feature length moving image piece, Self Made – developed through an earlier programme run by Arts Council England and UKFC to develop feature projects by artists.

I cannot wait to see Brecht in Hollywood and West Hinder but in terms of the future of artists’ moving image in London (though LUX’s scheme is not regionally-specific), I’ll keep my eye on Shacklewell Lane.

About the Author: Ajay RS Hothi is a documentary filmmaker. He is a research student at the Royal College of Art, focussing on art writing and it relationship to gallery-based exhibition, and is currently manager of tank.tv.

Jack Stephenson by Ben Rivers

We are pleased to be able to present Husne Tekagac by Charlotte Ginsborg and Jack Stephenson by Ben Rivers, part of the 12 films made for The Personal Profile Project series by Project Art Works. Project Artworks is a creative intervention in the transition of young people with complex needs from children’s to adult services.

‘Project Art Works proposed that a short film, made by an artist, in collaboration with a young person and showing him or her in a variety of social, environmental and creative contexts, with and without family, teachers and friends, could positively inform the transition process. It would complement the other forms of documentation and assessment and illuminate the discussion between parents and professionals about the young person’s interests, abilities, attributes and needs.’

‘We will support artists of distinction to collaborate with the young people on making films that observe and record them going about their daily lives. Creating a more rounded picture of a young person, the films will be used to broker for them more relevant and specific support services to help enable opportunities for their adult lives that are tailored to their needs and aspirations rather than to what is available in a range of existing (non tailored) services. In Transit embeds creativity, art and film within the assessments, planning and processes of transition.’

Angela Kingston has written an article for APEngine, When artists are put to purpose, considering how the artists felt making these films. APEngine has also interviewed Ben Rivers, which is available to read here.

Jack Stephenson by Ben Rivers

Husne Tekagac by Charlotte Ginsborg

Anisa Mayet by Charlotte Ginsborg

The meaning, value and purpose of art cannot consciously be determined: these come as after-effects, and can only be understood once the artwork has been made. We learn all this as a habit of mind at art school, and it’s one aspect of our understanding of the term ‘independent’, as applied to artist-filmmakers. True artists’ films are self-initiated, and free from external demands and expectations, and the artists are answerable only to their individual, creative processes.

I was conscious of this whole etiquette when I co-commissioned Alnoor Dewshi to make a film for a hospital in Birmingham. We asked him to make a piece that would support teenagers undergoing treatment for cancer. His response was Mknki (1999), a surprisingly funny film with monkey characters, and an allegory for the various ways a life-threatening illness might be faced. But in any other context, I don’t think anyone would be conscious that it was made for a purpose. It’s just a great little film.

Cornelia Parker, on the other hand, when asked to contribute to a biennial about ‘art, ecology and the politics of change’, was so struck by the importance of the subject that she ‘decided to take the theme head on, and attempt to make a polemical piece’ (Guardian, 12 February 2008). In the resulting film, Chomskian Abstract (2007), Noam Chomsky answers her questions about the world powers’ slow response and the Bush government’s denial. In a debate at the RSA, Cornelia Parker explained that she’s prepared to risk the accusation that she’s made a piece of propaganda.

When disabled children reach adulthood, they undergo a formal ‘Assessment of Need’. One of the functions of the assessment is to give information to the people who will be involved in their future care. Kate Adams, an artist and the director of Project Art Works, found the assessment of her son extremely limited: ‘There was very little information about who he is and how he engages with, and perceives, the world. Many of these facets of his personality and individuality are enigmatic and subtle but a good understanding of them is vital to his well being.’

As a response to this, Kate Adams commissioned artist-filmmakers to make portraits of twelve young adults with disabilities, to flesh out their bare-bones formal assessments: six artists took part, including Charlotte Ginsborg and Ben Rivers. Given the responsibilities of the task and the direct sense of purpose, how did the artists feel about the whole process?

Ben Rivers, who made a film about Jack Stephenson: ‘It was a really great video to make. I’ve spoken with Charlotte a few times about how it was quite a different experience for us both, from our ‘normal’ practice. I think in many ways I would rather have made a film with less narration because Jack doesn’t communicate in words, but I was always aware that I needed to convey some important information, because of the purpose of the video. It was also a strange and new experience to film a person who wasn’t able to communicate directly and that it was OK for me to film him. On the whole though, it was a really enjoyable experience, mainly because Jack is a very nice person to be around.’

Charlotte Ginsborg, who made films about Anisa Mayet and Husne Tekagac: ‘It necessitated a very different approach to the filming process than when making my own films. Although I do employ documentary techniques in my ‘art’ films, and the people who appear in my films are ‘real’, I have always incorporated an element of fiction or overtly staged performance. With the Project Art Works films I felt that it would have been entirely inappropriate to add any fictional elements to the works. Both Anisa and Husne presented extremely challenging behaviour and I wanted to portray the sophisticated understanding of emotion and behaviour (both from the girls and from their carers) that I discovered in their homes and at their school.’

As a further comment, Charlotte Ginsborg says: the Project Art Works films enabled me to feel less constrained in my making process. I felt relieved of the pressure to make an ‘artwork’ and the pretension that comes with this.’ Going back to the first points I made in this article, I’ve felt a sense of relief, too, in the course of describing each of the works that I’ve mentioned, that the individualism of art practice can be dropped. It can seem an over-rated quality, in this era of the individualist and the artist-as-celebrity.

About the Author: Angela Kingston is a curator and writer. A book about the Personal Profile Project, called Art in Transition, is available as a pdf download from Project Art Works.

Husne Tekagac by Charlotte Ginsborg and Jack Stephenson by Ben Rivers is available to watch on APEngine showcase, The Personal Profile Project: Ben Rivers and Charlotte Ginsborg. There is also an interview with Ben Rivers available here.

Ben Rivers, I Know Where I'm Going

Dates: 8-17 January 2010 | Location: London

The programme for the 7th London Short Film Festival has been revealed. It’s a packed lineup; screenings, events and workshops will be taking place at venues across the city, and works by some of APEngine’s favourite contemporary filmmakers – including Max Hattler, Tal Rosner, Kayla Parker and Stuart Moore, Sarah Cox, Laurie Hill and Ben Rivers – will be showing.  Eventswise, on 9 January Club des Femmes will be looking looking back at women making music on film with A Star is Born, while 12 January sees respected UK animation studio Nexus Productions offering a retrospective look at their work and discussing the current shape of the industry. Elsewhere there’s comedy, documentary and live music on the bill – something, in fact, for everyone. Tickets are available now.

Ben Rivers, Origin of the Species

Dates: 26 November – 5 December 2009 | Location: Picture This Atelier, Bristol

Picture This presents  two works by Ben Rivers, Origin of the Species and Slow Action. Both are about man’s relationship to nature and the legacy of Charles Darwin: Slow Action (which, appropriately enough, is a work in progress) addresses island biogeography, considering how life might flourish and develop on isolated landmasses; Origin of the Species focuses on a 75-year-old amateur inventor’s engagement with Darwin’s seminal book, which has recently celebrated its 150th anniversary.

There will be a chance to see the two works screened and hear Ben talking about their development tonight (25 November) at the Atelier from 6:30pm. Full details are available at the Picture This site. Oh, and don’t forget to check out Ben’s interview with APEngine from earlier this year, or our showcase of his gorgeous eco road movie I Know Where I’m Going.

The Wooden Lightbox: A Secret Art of Seeing (Alex MacKenzie)

Adam Pugh, Director of the Aurora Festival, talks to us about this year’s event, and why it’s the last.

Aurora has always explored intriguing themes – this year it’s Common Ground – what the thinking behind that?

I usually start with a core idea – it might be quite insignificant or fleeting at first – and work from there, ‘gathering’ the programme throughout the first few months of the year, as opposed to establishing a definitive title early on and trying to make work fit.

I guess it’s an inductive model, rather than a deductive one. I wouldn’t be much good as a scientist with this working method, but it feels comfortable as far as programming is concerned.

This year, although the core itself hasn’t changed much, I went through several working titles, none of which seemed right. ‘Common Ground’ is in fact Gareth Evans’ title and it immediately felt right. The theme developed in tandem with the new format of the festival – the idea of an alternative to the established ‘film festival’ model – and I found that the programme side of things complemented the practical infrastructure well.

In brief, the theme set out to look in a sidelong fashion at anthropological and ethnographic studies. I’d intended to include quite a bit of material which was manifestly ‘anthropological’, but ended up selecting work which dealt with anthropological themes in a more oblique way, explorations of myth and ritual. We describe it as “an entirely literal reading” in which ecology collides with social history and direct action. Social history aside (a long, frustrating story, which is dealt with in part in the ‘Common Ground’ book), it’s direct action which has most directly coloured the theme, with several events, including Ultra-red’s show at Outpost, a talk by the great John Jordan, and discussion events as part of the Festival Weekend.

I wish we could have taken the theme further, especially the political aspect. The notion of ‘camps’ and the increasing importance of activities which, in one sense or another, disrupt or subvert the status quo, have great currency at the moment. It’s becoming harder and harder to have a voice, and to ensure that that voice is heard. This applies to protest, of course, in a specific way (the climate camp in London during the G20 summit the most lucid example in recent years), in which that voice is actively suppressed; but in an entirely different way to the type of activity we’re trying to present. It’s difficult to maintain the importance of the particular, of the marginal, of the outspoken, and it’s this which is most pernicious, perhaps, because it’s self-policing. People willingly engage in activity which erodes their own liberty without even realising it. So it’s political from the start, regardless of the theme.

So, the idea of ‘common ground’ is, I hope, not only a programmatic conceit but something active and physical which informs the very structure of the event: we hope to establish a ‘common ground’ of some sort in which people can show, watch and discuss work in a uniquely intimate and focused manner.

It’s a shorter festival than usual – there’s a week of workshops and screenings, but the ‘main’ event is a packed long weekend…

I guess the Festival Weekend is the ‘main’ event as far as our core audience is concerned, but the Festival Week is much more than just a preamble, or an addition – it does interact with the Festival Weekend, and the workshops and performances add to or contextualise some of the activity within it too. But yes, it is shorter than before. And that’s no accident.

After last year’s event, which took place across a number of screens over four and a half days in a commercial cinema (with all the accompanying issues come with that), we were keen to try something different. We felt strongly that, in growing bigger, we had traded something of the soul of the event. There was more ‘content’ – to borrow from the terminology of fundraising… what an awful thing, to reduce all artistic activity to this bald word! But it meant that people had to make more choices – they had to see x instead of y – and, most importantly, that it was becoming harder to enable people to find time to meet up and maintain conversations with one another throughout the event (or to ‘facilitate networking’ if you prefer!). The other factor related to the practical issues, which led us to think that we’d be better off doing it all ourselves and kitting out a cinema space from scratch… then at least we’d be answerable only to ourselves in terms of quality control.

So we’re creating a space – a zone – where people can meet – old friends, new acquaintances – and experience screenings, music and discussions. A sense of human interaction is primary, rather than secondary to ‘volume of content’, or in thrall to the usual machismo of number-crunching that seems to have gripped most film festivals. The decision to make the event purposefully smaller – in time and space – followed from this.

I’ve realised that it’s a heresy of sorts… whoever heard of a festival retracting, diminishing in size? It goes against everything we’re told to do: make money! Climb the property ladder! Further your career! And it’s not without a sense of perverse humour that I’m enjoying spending the money, descending the ladder, forgetting the career.

I’m very happy with the way the Festival Weekend programme has come together – it just remains to be seen whether it works, in terms of whether or not people buy into the fact that they need to come for the whole thing in order for it to work. We’ve only 100 seats to sell and we’ve tried to create the event in such a way that it’s easy enough to join us for the whole thing. And all meals are included in the price of the ticket which is key to creating an environment in which people do meet one another, talk over dinner, have a drink together. Norwich Arts Centre is the Festival Weekend venue and that’s ideal for the event – based in a mediaeval church and suitably relaxed.

What’s in the programme?

For people who’ve been to Aurora before, there are many familiar elements – artist programmes, in this case two programmes each by Jem Cohen and Milena Gierke, and one by Jon Bang Carlsen – who are each joining us to present their work. Discussion sessions with Shezad Dawood, Mark Wilsher, Beatrice Gibson, Gareth Evans, Graeme Hogg, Andrew Kotting and others.

There are three thematic programmes with work by Ben Rivers, Lucy Parker, Nick Collins, Peter Todd and others (who are also joining us). Music with Emma Pettit & Nick Luscombe (Roots & Shoots) and, finally, the brilliant Alasdair Roberts – whose work I’m crazy about – in a special double-performance with Jarman Award winner Luke Fowler.

And there’s an Open Projector event, where Festival Weekend ticket holders can elect to show their own work and discuss it without any form of pre-selection. Power to the people!

It’s very different from the standard model – along with other events like AND in Liverpool and Flatback in Birmingham. It’s a different approach, and ‘philosophy’ to showing films – would you say?

Yes, certainly when compared to ‘regular’ film festivals, and deliberately so -  although some, whilst outwardly ‘regular’, are sources of great inspiration and admiration, such as Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen. It’s been difficult at times over the past few years to deflect the calls (by funders, onlookers, curtain-twitchers) to join a ‘club’… whether, in the early years of the festival, the ‘animation’ club, or the artists’ film fraternity, or the digital meeja futurists. They all have good points, and good people, but the point of Auora has been to retain the freedom to present work from as interdisciplinary a perspective as possible. The point is not that there is no point, but that there are all points. It’s pure Zen! We’ve only partially achieved that… I mean, we haven’t presented a great many Henry Moore originals, Viennese blood-letters or beat poetry recitals – we have stuck to the moving image, by and large – but as you say, it’s more about the philosophy, about trying to move about with open eyes, than something pedantically interdisciplinary. And although it’s a bit circular, it’s also about the fact that philosophy shouldn’t be a dirty word, in the sense that a thoughtful programme and a selection of work and activities which, I’d hope, inspire thinking and the exchange of ideas, should be valuable.

Importantly, my amendment to this ‘philosophical’ take on things – which it’s taken a while to grasp – is that there’s no rule, as far as I’m aware, that dictates that thinking should preclude having fun.

I was part of a panel discussion session about the ‘future of film festivals’ (ironically enough) last year and had been saying that we shouldn’t let the word ‘festival’ be divorced too completely from its original meaning – a festival should be a celebration, an extraordinary occasion, whatever it’s about – when someone at the back of the room pleaded in a small and tired voice that we “please get away from this awful idea of ‘celebration’” – the implication being that we should return to doing ‘serious’ things. What a load of horseshit.

Aurora had developed remarkably in just three years, so it’s incredible that you’ve announced it as ‘the last ever edition’. How can that be?

I’m still trying to figure out how it can be myself, to be honest. The complete story is pretty convoluted and quite dull to repeat here. I should be tactful and say something about ‘adjusted priorities’ and ‘unforeseen fiscal shortfall scenarios’ but the short and tactless version is this: we’ve been stuffed and stitched up by a group of patsy middle-managers who know next to nothing about the festival, or festivals.

The slightly longer version is that we heard from the institution where we’re based (Norwich University College of the Arts) last December that one of our core funders, whose funds the college managed and which paid for our salaries, was due to be wound up at the end of 2009, so we’d need to find another source of core funding. I started to research it, and it became clear that a likely source of funding was available, and that other funders would open up sources of funding in response, too. Then there was a change of management at the college, and the ‘economic crisis’ began to bite, and they changed their mind within a month to tell us that we could no longer apply for funding.

So we’re in the strange position that we could have found the money but have been prevented from doing so, because we’re tied to the organisation – who also control the independent company and charity which is the festival’s legal entity. A bit murky, really, and most frustrating – because our hands have been tied, to the extent that we weren’t even allowed to announce the festival’s end properly – and above all, because AURORA had so far to go. It’s only three years old, as you say: I’d have liked to see it grow a bit older and manage to do more, but alas, it looks as though that’s impossible. The college have trademarked the name, too: I’m not sure quite why, or how – but that’s that. I’m tempted to start ORORA in Northwich but I fear the solicitors too much.

There are some ways in which it’s positive. Festivals need fresh ideas every so often – so whilst there’ll be no fresh ideas (or any ideas, for that matter) the festival at least won’t ossify or turn into an ego-trip; and being forced to re-think personal direction, whilst scary, is quite cathartic. It forces you to think about what’s really necessary; what’s really important — and if anything similar to AURORA did emerge again in future, it’ll call the shots itself and not be prey to an executive leather-chair power fantasy. So there!

Aurora runs from 5-15 November at various venues across Norwich.

I Know Where I'm Going, image courtesy of Ben Rivers

Ben Rivers’ I Know Where I’m Going documents a road trip undertaken by the artist earlier this year. The title is a nod to the Powell and Pressburger movie of the same name, the location of which – the isle of Mull – provided the end point for the journey. Contrary to the title’s assertion, Rivers didn’t embark with a clear plan of action, depending instead on a faith in ‘serendipity’ and a willingness to let the people he encountered shape the film’s direction. As our slideshow attests, this approach paid dividends; the trip turned out to coincide with February’s intense (and intensely beautiful) snowstorms and saw Rivers encountering a fascinating cast of geologists, beekeepers, hermits and eccentrics. Check out our interview with Ben for more on his fascination with places ‘off the beaten track’ and those who choose to inhabit them.

[[Show as slideshow]]

Credits
Images courtesy of Ben Rivers

Ben Rivers

Ben Rivers talks to APEngine’s Gary Thomas about slasher movies and heading north. His show A World Rattled of Habit is at A Foundation in Liverpool until 17 October 2009, and he is in the group show An Entangled Bank
- Darwin & Edinburgh at Talbot Rice, Edinburgh, from
 24 October – 12 December 2009.

You studied fine art at Falmouth?

Yes. I started off making paintings and very quickly moved into making more sculptural work: models and installations. And then taking photos of the models so they became more like fragments of narratives. With the sculptures, installations and collages I became more interested with sequences and mini-narratives. Then it seemed an inevitable move into wanting to make films, add sounds and movement and time in a way that was kind of frustrated with the 3D work.

Were you encouraged to do that?

Not really no; Falmouth at that time was fairly traditional, broken up into painting, printmaking…my tutor did encourage me, but I was the only person making film in my year. I got a Super 8 camera – I think it was in my second year, so I would have been 19, and just started filming a few home movie things while on an exchange in Munster, just to get the hang of it. And then I shot an animation and it all came out black so that was the end of animation for me!

Came out black or avant-garde I think it’s called..

Well if I made it now, you know, I’d probably show it. But then I was crushed.

And were you looking at films – artists’ films?

Not really. I didn’t really know what they were. But I did start showing films — I started a film club so I was showing feature films – films that I had read about that I wanted to see. Lots of French new wave and the occasional horror movie. All sorts.

And did you move to Brighton straight after Falmouth?

Straight after.

And I first met you when you were running — it must have been shortly after you set up Brighton Cinematheque?

It was actually a couple of years after I left Falmouth, a couple of years in no-man’s-land, and then just through fluke of place and time met Michael Sippings and Adrian Shepherd who wanted to start a cinema as well. We were offered a space. So we started the cinema in 1996 and really, the programming was based around mainly what we wanted to see. A kind of hunger…it was very eclectic.

You said you weren’t looking at artists’ films in Falmouth – so, was that because you were never encumbered by that kind of history?

I think so – out of ignorance more than anything, because nobody had that kind of knowledge in Falmouth. Apart from Nick Collins who would come down occasionally, and who did introduce me to some kind of artists and experimental films.

And you were still making work yourself?

Yes, but it was very slow. In Brighton I wanted to make 16mm films and it took me a really long time to make one particular film; it took me about four years to make my first 16mm film. You know, I started it, didn’t like it, started again. It was a long process.

Was it a learning process?

It was – it was a good learning process! My private kind of film school. I wanted to have so much control over everything and as the years have gone on I’ve become less controlling in terms of what I start with. Like making storyboards and that kind of thing – feeling like you have to have the whole film in your head before you start to make it.

The way you make films now, you’re still completely in control aren’t you? In the sense that you’re the author and you physically make the work. But in the work that you’re perhaps best known for you obviously let go of some of that control in your approach. Because they’re about things other than yourself, they’re about other people.

They’re about other people and things that I can’t necessarily have any control over, at least not until a later stage. As I’ve become more confident with my filmmaking, I’ve been more confident to let things take their course during the filming process, the actual shooting, allowing for serendipity. I don’t really think of myself as at a distance. I am in control because I choose – as soon as you choose how to frame something then you’re in some ways controlling the situation and controlling how that person is represented. I spend quite a lot of time in those places, and I become quite immersed in that environment and with those people. I spark a relationship, and talk about the kind of film that I want to make, which isn’t a documentary about facts of their life. I feel I get quite close to them – and that I am present in the films, if that makes sense.

Yes, but there is a sense I think of neutrality, of not interfering. And so the characters remain quite elusive. Because you’re not trying to find out facts about them, but evoke something broader, about what the people you’re interested in represent.

Yes – I’d go along with that, to an extent. I’m not really interested in their personal histories necessarily. I usually try and find, when I first go somewhere, some kind of spark in the situation that is going to guide the film in some way. And then I feel the editing process is a lot more significant in the sense of the what the film actually becomes – that’s when things become much more controlling and much less to do with making a documentary – whatever that is.

Perhaps that’s because, while you follow certain rules of documentary – a respect for your subject – I don’t think we know much more about these people from the films, other than their very existence. There’s a kind of essence of humanity represented. I was thinking how the subjects are eccentrics but your films are, unlike Andrew Kötting, who is a sort of ‘English eccentric’ filmmaker. Your films are utterly not eccentric films, though the subjects are eccentric. Is that something that plays in the editing process? That’s what I meant about the not interfering, there’s a coolness about your approach.

There is a coolness. I’m heartless!

Well I like that!…

That is a lot to do with personality, my own quieter personality – when you think of Andrew, he is like the characters in his films, he’s wild and loud and all over the place!

I Know Where I'm Going (2009)

But what do those people — what do your subjects represent to you?

I don’t even necessarily think they’re eccentric…

Well it’s a relative term isn’t it? A couple of them are explicitly remote from society.

That’s been the the hook or the beginnings. The catalysts for all of those portraits is that they are one step removed from the general populace. And it’s interesting to me why they would do that – their reasons for doing that. And the contradictions involved in that. They’re definitely not eco-warriors, and I’ve deliberately not gone to see people like that. I’m not interested in people who have got a very dogmatic message.

To me they’re much more complex characters. They’ve chosen to live separately in the wild but there are also problems of loneliness. And they’ve had to make this decision – wanting desperately to live in this kind of place, in this kind of environment. But they’re not misanthropic either … I like these contradictions.

It’s a romantic idyll, but in Ah, Liberty! there’s an adult making that choice for children, and while they aren’t exactly feral they are having a wild old time.

Of course – and that’s one of the things that I do as well, I’m exaggerating those things. This is what I meant to say about my neutrality you spoke about – it’s may not be apparent but I’m not so neutral while filming – I am introducing or encouraging elements that I want to exaggerate, like giving masks to the boys in Ah, Liberty!, which totally changes the dynamic of the film half-way through. That film doesn’t give the impression that they maybe go to school everyday..

Do they?

They do, yes. But after the first visit I said to the parents that I didn’t want them in the film, that I wanted the children to seem really wild, like they were up there alone perhaps, that I was going to exaggerate that. And they were fine with that – they thought it was funny. So that was good.

I think that’s a point where your approach departs from documentary – because you’re fictionalising or narrative-ising raw material – you’re transforming it into something which isn’t a story but isn’t a documentary either.

It’s somewhere in between. There have been plenty of examples of people who work in that in-between area but it’s always difficult to say exactly what it is. It’s closely aligned with daydreaming I think.

You were brought up in the rural West Country, and you went to art school…

As far away from London as possible.

Is your interest in the rural something that comes from all that?

I think it must be. I do feel very happy when I go to the wilderness, to the countryside, walking in the woods. And the series of portraits definitely began when I was thinking about this romantic idyll that I have in my mind. And trying to see how real it was and so then I, you know, go and find Jake…

You sort of interrogate it…

Yes – and as the films have gone on I think they’ve become less romantic and more questioning of that environment, and with more of a sense of underlying unease as well.

Well since you mention unease and being in the woods, your film Terror! is made of found footage clips of horror films with people in the woods.. getting slashed. It’s so completely different from your other films. Watching it, at first I comforted myself that you were making a film about horror films which wasn’t going to show the horror… but you don’t hold back and you — I mean there are clips from Driller Killer in it aren’t there?

No

I remember a drill going into a skull!

Ben: Yeah but that’s actually Lucio Fulci who’s much more graphic.

Why did you make Terror!?

It was something that I’d wanted to do for a really long time because that’s really how my excitement with film started – with horror movies. Living in this tiny village in Somerset, my friends and I used to go to this video shop, in the basement of the Methodist Church. There was this guy who wore a big sheepskin coat like Arthur Daley and we’d go in there, 12 or 13 years old, clearly not 18. And he’d bring out the latest VHS from under the counter… you know, “Hello boys, I’ve got I Spit On Your Grave” or Evil Dead or something like that. So that was a very important time for me, watching all these films. Terror! was in a way a thank you to all of that, and trying to have a look at what I loved about horror films, the impending sense of dread atmospheres and the way it’s such a kind of visceral… can be such a physical experience watching them. A love letter!

And you don’t really discriminate do you because you’ve got John Carpenter alongside Dario Argento alongside people the ‘civilised’ world has never…

Yes, there’re some really obscure ones in there and some well known ones, because it was a particular period, late 70′s, early 80′s.

..the video nasty era

Which this guy in the basement of the church had no problems with – lending us these pirate copies, which was great and terrifying at the same time. I’m glad you bought that up!

Hasn’t done you any harm!

No, well you don’t know my private life.

Put the knife down!

I forgot you went to see that, that was really fun at the ICA screening.

It was fun for the first five minutes!

When I first started putting it together I did think about making it just this unending tease. But then I realised that it wouldn’t work, that you needed that kind of pay off. In the same way that you always need it in a horror film but it had to be utterly over the top so that — you know so that I guess by the end it’s just this insane barrage.

There’s what Roman Polanski said -  “You have to show violence the way it is. if you don’t show it realistically, then that’s immoral and harmful. If you don’t upset people, then that’s obscenity.” Though I guess that does have its limits.

I Know Where I'm Going (2009)

You’ve recently done a road movie..

That was quite nerve wracking to make because I decided to start off with just the destination and very little else. The destination and the title came together, so the film’s called I Know Where I’m Going, after the Powell and Pressburger film.  The destination was the Isle of Mull where they based the original film. I had a couple of meetings set up but I didn’t really know what was going to happen along the way. So I just hit the road with George Clark for about a month.

In a Vauxhall?

In a lovely brand new Vauxhall car that they lent me, and quite unsure about what I wanted to get. There was one person I really wanted to see and that was a geologist Jan Zalasiewicz,  who had written a book – The Earth After Us – about the earth in 100 million years time, and what traces there might be of human society in the strata of the earth – as if some other race at that time has geologists. He was the first person I saw and his voice is the only recurring voice throughout the film. He teaches at Leicester University. A really fantastic man – I never thought geology would be so exciting until I met him.

So along the way I also meet some of these people who live and work off the beaten track. And it’s somehow offset by Jan’s voice and what he’s talking about. They look a bit like they could be the last people in Britain, because all the other landscapes, all the shots of road, they’re just empty. There are no cars; the only cars you see are wrecked ruined cars. It’s got a kind of post-apocalyptic feel to it. I’ve been watching lots of post apocalyptic movies from the 70′s and 80′s…

On The Beach?

That rings a bell.

It’s the first post-apocalyptic movie that springs to my mind.

A Boy and His Dog, Night of the Comet, Letters from a Deadman, The Quiet Earth, The Seed of Man by Marco Ferreri who is amazing…

So the film in some ways might be a kind of endpoint, for the time being, for these portraits. Or at least they’re changing. I filmed men and women, but only men ended up in the film, and I think that’s kind of important. They’re even more from a distance than the individual portraits that I’ve made. The meetings are more fleeting – I would be driving and we’d stop at someone’s house and we’d just be there for a few hours or something, so it’s much less immersed.

How did you find the people?

Some by chance. I wanted to see an ethnologist, Thelma Rowell, and she was happy to talk but she didn’t really want to be in the film. She recommended Charlie Parker who lived down the road, so I went to see Charlie, and Charlie is in the film. I revisited Jake who’s in This Is My Land. There’s another Jake who is a real eccentric – that’s his job, Britain’s King of the Eccentrics apparently, but he’s at the end of his career.

So what’s next?

I’m taking the science fiction elements that were in I Know Where I’m Going and going further with that. I’m focusing on those post-apocalyptic themes for a piece I’m making for you [Animate Projects] and Picture This. It’s much more deliberately science fiction and it’s not focusing on characters, it’s focusing on island landscapes. If it all works out there’ll be narratives on the soundtrack.

What about the difference between showing your work in cinemas and festivals and showing it in galleries?

I’m excited about showing in both spaces and seeing how the work changes in both spaces. Now I’m showing more in the gallery I’m not going to stop showing in the cinema – it’s still important.

You don’t change the films themselves, do you – rather, you’ve adapted the way they’re shown.

I like the way that you can have more control over the space in a gallery than in a cinema. The way that the films are shown and what they’re shown with. I’m creating a very particular architectural environment that in some way mirrors the films. And I think it adds something and creates a different kind of experience for the audience.

The only other question I’ve got is about your admiration for Knut Hamsun. I read Hunger when I was a teenager – it features the most miserable protagonist who spends the entire book being hungry…

Licking his cupboard.

And he’s quite a disgusting character. Why does that book hold a special place in your heart!?

I don’t know! It’s actually less Hunger – although all of his characters are kind of similar. Pan and Mysteries are more my books, the ones that had a real effect on me. But again they’re completely socially dysfunctional characters, they mess up all the time. And it’s hilarious and tragic. I don’t think I’m socially dysfunctional! But maybe I am. Maybe it’s just a fear.

He’s from Norway..and I Know Where I’m Going is headed north..is there a particular northern European kind of temperament that you empathise with?

I think it’s partly the space; the further north you go the more space there is, it’s less populated. The more chance there is of actually getting lost – of finding people who live and think differently to the way that I do.

And yet now you’ve just come back from Lanzarote?

A really strange place, it’s like another planet. Another planet with resorts on the edge. A lot of it looks very fake, manufactured, even the natural rocks look like they are made out of fibreglass been placed there. I loved it, and there are all these half-made resorts as well. There was obviously a boom and then they ran out of money, so there are half-finished bunches of buildings. All the buildings are white against this very arid browny, reddy, blacky landscape.

And in looking at science fiction – are there science fiction films that you’re thinking of – from that late 1970s?

I do like that period. I mean a lot of it would be considered maybe a little bit trashy, but I’ve always had a penchant for trash.

You can see Engine’s showcase of I Know Where I’m Going here.