themselves
Charting the particular, baffled and morbid character of English attitudes to mortality, The Animal Drums depicts the specific influence of urban space on the psyche. Recalling the tableu film-making of Peter Greenaway and the lyrical disjunction of Harold Pinter, The Animals Drums is one of the first significant British feature-length poetry-films of the 21st century. London disappears under the ground of the film’s ambiguous protagonist, who is half victim, half perpetrator. Gently mad, positively lost, we follow our host through the bounds of a changing, money-washed capital city. Fusing documentary technique, montage and theatrical set pieces, the film features appearances from authors like Iain Sinclair and Stewart Home, alongside actors like Edie Deffebach and Lotje Sodderland, The Animal Drums is unique representation of modern London in old England.
Director
English language colour remake of Guy Debord's avant-garde classic from 1952. Like the original this film has no images, but whereas Debord's consisted of black with silence and white with dialogue in French, mine has black with silence and TV colour bars with dialogue in English. The original dialogue is translated and in a number of places also rewritten. However, while Debord had five voices reading his script, I have one voice with an additional spoken indication of which voice is speaking.
Chris Petit & Iain Sinclair's liminal, laminal tribute to underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead, featuring image manipulation by Dave Mckean & reminiscences from various countercultural characters. A fitting epitaph for an English margin walker.
Himself
The bizarre truth behind the enigma of Jim Moffatt, alias Richard Allen, author of the cult classic Skinhead series of novels for the New English Library pulp fiction publishers of the 1970s.
