A record of seasonal sightings and a portrait of life under the bank
A FILM SERIES BY BEVIS BOWDEN
ISFRYN which translates from the Welsh as under the bank refers to an area of ancient common land and neighbouring fields in mid Wales. It is a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).
This is an ongoing project that offers an opportunity to capture extended moments - observations - of both wildlife and farming within the landscape they both inhabit.
The project was started in September 2016. There are 11 films to date.
APPROACH
“It makes me feel like I am part of something continuous.
Observations from Isfryn is a filmmaking record of a single location within a working Welsh hill farming landscape - it is a record of day-to-day events. It attempts to bind together all the landscape’s protagonists with the location that holds them.
A single observed event provides the kernel to build each film. This is then followed by a process of focused filming.”
At the top of the bank, at the border with the common land, I found the hare. There are no border guards here, only hazel and stock fences. The gates and barbed wire serve a different purpose.
The Hare, though broadly free from man-made borders, was a timely reminder of the borderlines that exist between countries, between cultures, between people and, within each of us.
Filmed in mid Wales, August 2022
Music by Olan Mill
The wonder here in many ways is the unexpected.
The rain arrived and I was forced to take refuge under a hawthorn canopy of blossoms. It was only then I noticed the Redstarts and their home.
Filmed in mid Wales, June 2021
Music by Chequerboard
It was a quiet day. I was positioned in the shadow of a large Horse Chestnut tree. I had been manoeuvring to be as close to the hare in its form as I dared. To my rear the valley and a view of the day’s farming activities.
I was then joined by one of the field’s more permanent residents. It felt like for a moment the two of us stopped and watched the roundup together.
Filmed in Wales September 2020
Music by Chequerboard
The seasonal ebb and flow of the landscape, punctuated by the familiar, brings a cycle of wonder and discovery every year to this part of mid Wales.
Boxing hares to me are synonymous with spring so it was with surprise that I saw two hares square off and do the rounds in early October.
Filmed in mid Wales, October 2020.
Music by Chequerboard
There have always been Tawny Owls here. Heard but rarely seen, it nonetheless has been a reassuring presence. I have counted six individual owls on a single night calling during the winter months.
Two years ago, I bought an owl box and hung it in the large tree in the corner of the field.
This summer a single owl has spent the day’s high up in the canopy of the large tree.
Little appears to go unnoticed.
Filmed in mid Wales, July to October 2019.
Music by Slow Meadow
"What is?"
"The Kestrel is", I said.
The Kestrel is back.
It's been absent from this corner of the common for two years now. Its return is reassuring.
Filmed in mid Wales, September 2018.
Music by Chequerboard
My journey home takes me across a piece of ancient common land. Until recently my sightings of hares have been fleeting or always a long way off.
By a bend in the track, there it was, and reassuringly this time not running for its life.
Filmed in mid Wales, July 2016.
Music by A Winged Victory for the Sullen
"Speculative", was my answer to the question "what are you filming".
I am not instinctively a species counter. I am a watcher though. Savouring moments.
On my rounds of the field, I noticed the flock gathered at the corner of the common. It's out of the wind here. Winter has been late and there hasn't been room in the sheds for these expectant mothers. Each day their numbers have swelled as their lambs have been born in the open. But unlike those born lower down these lambs have no coloured dye donating ownership. They are optic white and share that colour with the underside of the hares that also live in this corner of the common.
Filmed in mid Wales, April 2018.
Music by Phaeleh
"I have been watching this view since I was a boy".
Filmed in mid Wales, between November 2016 and January 2017.
Music by Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker
"I accepted the invite".
The pool is ordinarily hidden from view. Its existence is a topographical surprise. Lying directly behind the farm, approximately 4 acres of water almost touches the sky. It's the crossroad for many ecologies.
Filmed in mid Wales, November 2016.
Music by Olan Mill
"This is the first story from ISFRYN".
I had always hoped a hare may live in the field. I came across it by chance. I was looking for the tawny owl who had been roosting in a neighbouring horse-chestnut tree all summer and there in the long grass of its shade it was.
Filmed in mid Wales, September 2016.
Music by Lisa Knapp
Raising the Hare premiered at New Networks for Nature.
A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN
"I thought I could almost see myself in the hare’s eye, it was that close.”
The Names of the Hare (written in the late thirteenth century) is attributed to a Shropshire family on the Welsh borders. It lists the 77 names you should say to a hare to avoid bad luck if you happen to come across one.
Raising the Hare describes one such encounter.
The film features two Welsh voices of the landscape - the musician John Cale (founding member of the Velvet Underground) who reads Seamus Heaney's translation of ‘The Names of the Hare’ and Fleece Painter Paul Emmanuel (Welsh Artist of the Year) who describes an encounter he had with a hare from horseback.
The film looks at the entanglement of encounter between a hare, a farmer and the livestock that coexist within a field.
Filmed in mid Wales.
Music by Olan Mill.
Selected for the International Festival of Ornithological Film of Menigoute and Arts à Bord.
A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN
O LAPWING! thou fliest around the heath,
Nor seest the net that is spread beneath.
Why dost thou not fly among the corn fields?
They cannot spread nets where a harvest yields.
by William Blake.
The Lapwing Act 1926, preventing the large scale collection of eggs, reversed the Lapwings UK decline. However, more recent large scale changes in farming practice have further pressured numbers. With recent interventions, and the returning of land to a more natural state will the Lapwing recover to the numbers William Blake observed in his poem O LAPWING?
The Catcott Lows on the Somerset Levels is part of the largest wet meadow system in Britain and forms a part of the Avalon marshes. It is a landscape that is resolutely leaking back into its natural state. During the winter this landscape becomes the home to Lapwings and, the focus of my film.
As you stare across the waterlogged landscape and, watch the Lapwings flock, the origin of their name becomes evident - from the Old English hleapewince 'to leap and wink'. There are reverberations of the past here, the Tor at Glastonbury is a constant reminder of this.
Filmed at Catcott Nature Reserve, Somerset.
Music by Greg Haines.
"I could not recommend this lovely film more highly. Take out five minutes from the hurly burly and bring yourself some joy.
A truly stunning piece of filmmaking. If I could include it in my books of the year I would."
Mark Cocker, Author and Naturalist (Birds and People, Crow Country)
A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN
"What are they hunting?"
The film mediates the experience of a family, the camera and the wildlife as participants of a landscape. This cats cradle, creates the film's torsion as each participant is entwined within the landscape's network.
The film has been made in response to the Somerset Wildlife Trust's campaign 'Rediscovering Somerset'.
Filmed at Westhay Moor Nature Reserve, Somerset.
Music by Gudula Rosa & Haruka Fujii.
"I saw your Westhay Moor film - the photography is just extraordinary - so beautiful to watch. You so obviously have a particular vision of nature and time."
Gavin Bowden, award winning commercials and music video Director
Commissioned for a large-scale projection to accompany a live John Adams musical retrospective.
A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN
Westhay Moor on the Somerset Levels is part of largest wet meadow system in Britain and forms part of the Avalon marshes. Even after years of draining and reclaiming it is still waterlogged. It is resolutely leaking back into its natural state.
I was there to hopefully see otters but on this occasion my attention was also drawn to a pair of Grebes. Over a period of time I watched the pair of Grebes build their second nest, their first had failed. Through a veil of rain the pair of Grebes tried again.
Filmed at Westhay Moor Nature Reserve, Somerset.
Music by John Adams.
Selected for Cannes Lions Festival.
Produced by OGILVY & MATHER, Singapore.
Artist: Tim Knowles.
Music composed by Nick Franglen.
"I love it. It's a seriously beautiful spot, I had to watch it again immediately. You consistently create a great introspective mood with simple compositions, which is no mean feat. You definitely have an eye for natural forces, which is evident in all your work.”
Gavin Bowden, Award Winning Commercials and Music Video Director
FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN
A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN
Music promo to accompany the album Nothing Can Bring Back the Hour by Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker.
Exmoor is an ancient place, heavy with reverberations of the past. My glimpses of the natural world have been random and often haphazard. But what if you were stationary like a tree. What would you see? On this day the stag hunt passed.
Filmed on Exmoor.
Music by Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker.
A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN
Official music promo to accompany the album Illusion of the Tale by Phaeleh.
The track to the old Rhosydd slate mine passes the abandoned Cwmorthin chapel. It was built for workers from the nearby slate quarries. This is certainly a place where you can believe there are greater powers at work.
"Just gorgeous Bevis."
John Cale
Filmed in north Wales.
Music by Phaeleh
A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN
As the light begins to fade there is one final crescendo before nightfall hides it all.
Shapwick Heath on the Somerset Levels is the largest wet meadow system in Britain and forms a large part of the Avalon marshes. Humans have spent generations attempting to tip the balance. Years of draining and reclaiming but it is still waterlogged. It is resolutely leaking back into its natural state. It's a strange and haunting place with reverberations of the past.
Filmed at Shapwick Heath National Nature Reserve, Somerset.
Music by John Lord.
Campaign commercial for San Diego Zoo Global Wildlife Conservancy.
This was a derivative piece made from Dusk at Shapwick.
Music by John Adams.
"The conceptual precision of the piece is very powerful. There is something very poignant about your decision to look at ‘one frame’ with in the infinite possibility of nature and tell the story with that focus."
Melanie Manchot, Filmmaker and Photographer.
FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN