Dark Days represented Wales at the 53rd Venice Biennale.
Commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales.
A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN
Dyddiau Du/Dark Days is a reflection of Cale's personal relationship with Wales, the Welsh language and wider issue of communication, and the uniqueness of the bardic tradition of his home nation.
"The images in Dark Days are lucid and exact. In effect, Cale has created a filmed concept album and called it an artwork. It is utterly compelling, deeply felt. Cale has created a magnificent allegory of migration and loss, a poem of memory and distance".
Jonathan Jones, The Guardian
Article | review by Jonathan Jones, The Guardian
Dyddiau Du / Dark Days has since screened at the inaugural MONA FOMA Festival, Hobart; National Museum, Cardiff; National Waterfront Museum, Swansea; National Slate Museum, Llanberis; Theatre der Welt, Essen (live music performance); Het Huis, Middelheim Museum, Antwerp.
Other films made with John Cale include: LOOP>>60Hz: Transmissions from The Drone Orchestra
A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN
These Hills Are Ours: Roseberry Topping and Clougha Pike were made in collaboration with the writer and performer Daniel Bye, who wrote:
"With my friend and colleague Boff Whalley, earlier this year I led two separate projects in which a choir walked from the centre of a city, to the top of the peak overlooking that city. Along the way we sang an original song about the relationship between that place and its peak.
The rights-of-way routes were chosen to maximise the sense of collective ownership over the terrain. Almost every foot fell in the steps of a whole history of struggles for ownership, use, and access. Bevis made short films of both journeys.”
Daniel Bye.
“I have to say, watching them, without sounding too much like a film critic the cinematography is just beautiful. I was struck even by some of the what you might call dilapidated areas – the old railings and stuff, I actually thought that was actually beautiful. I don't know how you managed to do it, but every single shot in it seems beautiful.
Steve Royal, BBC Radio Lancashire
Article | Review in Lancaster District
Other films made with Daniel Bye include: Learning to Fly (Again) | The Wild Tour
The second film, A Song for Clougha Pike, documents a journey from the sea’s edge at Morecambe, to the summit of Clougha Pike.
The first film, A Song for Roseberry Topping, documents a journey from Stockton-on-Tees to the summit of Roseberry Topping.
The Halstow Wassail recently screened at Cecil Sharp House.
A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN
The Halstow Wassail takes place each year on a Devon cider farm that has been in the Gray family since the late 1600s.
Featuring singer- songwriter Jim Causley, Dartmoor folk singer Bill Murray, and the shanty crew Mariners Away, the film in a single uninterrupted camera shot documents this traditional event.
Unlike other wassails, The Halstow Wassail is a celebration of the microbial life of cider-making, with each verse acknowledging the importance of the yeasts and other fungi, bacteria and moulds, that live on the orchards and apples, in the barns, press and barrels, and in the cider itself.
The Halstow Wassail is one of several artistic experiments with local folkways associated with cider-making made by the artist Simon Pope in collaboration with singer-songwriter Jim Causley.
Further information about the project can be found on the Here’s to Thee website.
Article | BBC Radio 4 Front Row interview with Simon Pope and Jim Causley
Other films made with Simon Pope include: Primary Agents Of A Social World | What Cannot Be Turned Aside | Memory Marathon
Artist: Melanie Manchot
The post-industrial city of Marl in Germany carries the scars of the economic depression that followed the fall of the mining industry. City squares are filled with public sculptures and bear witness of the past growth of the town. In Cornered Star, a horse stands alone on the main city square.
Early morning lights progressively illuminate the brutalist concrete architecture. The horse is almost static but in spite of his relative fixity, it remains the only source of life present in this deserted urban environment. The work looks at the archetypal forms of equestrian public sculptures and more broadly questions the use, codes and authority of public space artwork.
Cornered Star formed part of Open Ended Now at MAC VAL, Paris.
FILMED BY BEVIS BOWDEN
Other films made with Melanie Manchot include: Stephen | Flotilla |Out of Bounds |The Gift |Twelve | Tracer | Dance (All Night) Paris | Walk (Square) | LEAP
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Commissioned and produced by Film and Video Umbrella, London.
Artist: Ruth Maclennan
Filmed among the desert expanses of Kazakhstan the film introduces three iconic characters: a historian, a prospector and an archaeologist; each of them methodically journeying across this apparently empty but symbolically charged terrain.
Copyright of the artist. Courtesy of Film and Video Umbrella
FILMED BY BEVIS BOWDEN
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Lesions in the Landscape was shortlisted for the 2016 Jarman Award.
Commissioned by the Wellcome Trust.
Artist: Shona Illingworth
Lesions in the Landscape is a powerful multi-screen installation, exploring the impact of amnesia and the erasure of individual and cultural memory. The film reveals the devastating effects of amnesia on one woman and the striking parallels with the sudden evacuation of the inhabitants of St. Kilda in the North Atlantic in 1930. It examines the profound effect and wider implications of memory loss on identity, space and the capacity to imagine the future.
Lesions in the landscape was filmed on Hirta, the main island of the St. Kilda archipelago, and in the seas around the island of Boreray and Stac Lee - the highest sea stack in Britain.
Lesions in the Landscape was first screened at FACT, Liverpool and CGP Gallery, London. It has since toured to Sydney, Australia and Toronto, Canada.
FILMED BY BEVIS BOWDEN
Other films made with Shona Illingworth include: 216 Westbound |Balnakiel
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Commissioned by Great North Run Culture.
Artist: Melanie Manchot
Tracer features ten North East parkour runners, or traceurs, making their way along the course of the Bupa Great North Run.
"Of all the artists in this show, Baudelaire would surely have preferred the German-born photographer and film-maker Melanie Manchot. Manchot goes straight for the transient and contingent with a three-screen installation that moves through the modern city like a high-speed flaneur. Set in different parts of Newcastle, this epic film follows a group of free runners practising parkour, running through streets, along ledges, across bridges and roofs – tracing the lineaments of the city with their feet.
Manchot has been shortlisted for this year’s Derek Jarman award for art films and it’s no surprise. This study of mankind’s movement through the modern city – as the crow flies, and with absolute freedom – mesmerises."
Laura Cummings, The Guardian
Article | review by Laura Cumming, The Guardian
Go behind the scenes on Melanie Manchot's film Tracer in this short making of film.
FILMED BY BEVIS BOWDEN
Other films made with Melanie Manchot include: Stephen | Flotilla | Cornered Star | Out of Bounds | The Gift | Twelve | Dance (All Night) Paris | Walk (Square) | LEAP
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Commissioned by Turner Contemporary, Margate.
Artist: Hamish Fulton
Unlike his contemporary Richard Long, Hamish leaves no formal mark or intervention on the land through which he travels.
"As far as I know, Fulton has never made a film before (too full, too revealing). But now he is showing the people of Margate walking round one of the famous boating pools on the beach. Slow, silent and equidistant, each figure files round the edge: a line, a stitch, a tooth in a comb. The effect is extraordinarily potent."
Article | review by Laura Cumming, The Guardian
Margate Walking formed part of Walking In Relation To Everything at Galerie Tschudi, Switzerland 2020.
FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN
Commissioned by The Round House and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Artist: Ori Gersht
Offering confronts the glamorous and treacherous world of bullfighting, its dazzling spectacle and often-gruesome outcomes.
Originally screened at the Round House, London as part ofRon Arad’s Curtain Call. A circular screen became the viewers own corrida.
FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN
Other films made with Ori Gersht: History Reflecting | Evaders | The Forest
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Commissioned by the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam.
Artist: Susan Stockwell
The film explores the sculpture Territory Dress and juxtaposes it with archival film of past seafaring imagery. It is as if the figure is remembering her history and making imaginary connections. Concerned with claiming female territory, mapping the body and exploring memories, traces and stories of colonial and social histories both the film and sculpture are about our colonial past and its contemporary significance.
Music by Rafael Anton Irisarri.
Article | Elephant: The British Artist Tackling the Long, Dark Shadow of Colonialism
Territory Dress is in the Tropenmuseum’s permanent exhibition Our Colonial Inheritance.
FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN
HYMN TO LONDON BRIDGE
Commissioned by The Mayor's Thames Festival.
Conceived by Nick Franglen.
"I am going to be playing a theremin under London Bridge for 24 hours in a slowly developing collaboration with thousands of pedestrians who will unwittingly cut a hidden beam on the bridge that will momentarily mute the music I'm making".
Article | A man, a theremin and a horde of London Bridge commuters
FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN
HYMN TO THE MANHATTAN BRIDGE
Commissioned by the Make Music New York Festival.
Conceived by Nick Franglen.
Cyclists crossing the bridge became the unwitting producers of silence, momentarily muting the music being performed below.
“The photography is a hymn to the bridge in its own right. Highly recommended.”
New York Times
FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN
3RD STREET BLACKOUT, a feature directed by Negin Farsad and Jeremy Redleaf, used footage from Hymn to the Manhattan Bridge to create story telling interludes throughout their film.
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Commissioned by the Barbican.
STRAVINSKY’S PETRUSHKA
Go Beyond the Concert Hall promotional films highlighted the Barbican's innovative ongoing classical music programme and was part of the Barbican’s rebranding programme.
The excerpt shows Stravinsky’s Petrushka performed by the genre-bending production company Giants Are Small with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN
