Edith Walks (PG.)
Directed by Andrew Kotting.
Starring Iain Sinclair, Claurdia Barton, Anonymous Bosch, Jem Finer, Andrew Kotting, and Alan Moore. 66 mins.
The age of austerity has been tough on England's Designated Eccentrics. Even in the Thatcher Era, the likes of Derek Jarman and Chris Petit could drum up adequate funding to make full length features. Now the lottery funded largesse of the BFI has been reduced to a meagre trickle. So, they have had to take up their pretensions and walk.
Contemporary British arthouse cinema has been overtaken by the notion of a nice long stroll: Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair's London Orbital, Patrick Keillor’s Robinson In Ruins, Grant Gee's Patience (After Sebold.) The high priest of psychogeography Sinclair is one of five figures Kotting (Galivant) has recruited to join him on a stroll from Waltham Abbey to St Leonards to reflect on the defeat of Harold in 1066 and the figure of his wife Edith Long Neck. Edith is represented by singer (Barton) who does the 66 miles in fancy dress and observes that she was, “a little bit spiritual and little bit nut nut.”
Which is what the film is aiming to be. A psychogeographer; a former Pogue, a pinhole cameraman, all on a madcap quest, what japes will occur? Absolutely none, as it happens. They trudge on, make a bit music, read bits of poetry, it is all shot in a variety of film stock, and they don't come up with enough material to fill out the hour without repeating themselves. The running time is padded out with footage from a school project made in 1966, on the 900th anniversary of the battle, of schoolkids reenacting the battle.
In desperation, after the walk has been completed they decamp to writer Alan Moore's house and he offers up enough insights to give the film value. Alan Moore knows the score as Pop Will Eat Itself once observed, and he delivers a few lines about the nature of time and the recurrent nature of history that reference Harold's mythology and Joyce's Finnegans Wake which are casually mindblowing. You realise that their whole walk has been wasted. At Waltham Abbey they should headed off to Moore's native Northampton – almost exactly the same distance as it was to Hastings.
Directed by Andrew Kotting.
Starring Iain Sinclair, Claurdia Barton, Anonymous Bosch, Jem Finer, Andrew Kotting, and Alan Moore. 66 mins.
The age of austerity has been tough on England's Designated Eccentrics. Even in the Thatcher Era, the likes of Derek Jarman and Chris Petit could drum up adequate funding to make full length features. Now the lottery funded largesse of the BFI has been reduced to a meagre trickle. So, they have had to take up their pretensions and walk.
Contemporary British arthouse cinema has been overtaken by the notion of a nice long stroll: Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair's London Orbital, Patrick Keillor’s Robinson In Ruins, Grant Gee's Patience (After Sebold.) The high priest of psychogeography Sinclair is one of five figures Kotting (Galivant) has recruited to join him on a stroll from Waltham Abbey to St Leonards to reflect on the defeat of Harold in 1066 and the figure of his wife Edith Long Neck. Edith is represented by singer (Barton) who does the 66 miles in fancy dress and observes that she was, “a little bit spiritual and little bit nut nut.”
Which is what the film is aiming to be. A psychogeographer; a former Pogue, a pinhole cameraman, all on a madcap quest, what japes will occur? Absolutely none, as it happens. They trudge on, make a bit music, read bits of poetry, it is all shot in a variety of film stock, and they don't come up with enough material to fill out the hour without repeating themselves. The running time is padded out with footage from a school project made in 1966, on the 900th anniversary of the battle, of schoolkids reenacting the battle.
In desperation, after the walk has been completed they decamp to writer Alan Moore's house and he offers up enough insights to give the film value. Alan Moore knows the score as Pop Will Eat Itself once observed, and he delivers a few lines about the nature of time and the recurrent nature of history that reference Harold's mythology and Joyce's Finnegans Wake which are casually mindblowing. You realise that their whole walk has been wasted. At Waltham Abbey they should headed off to Moore's native Northampton – almost exactly the same distance as it was to Hastings.
