Richard Skelton

Human beings who have experienced such a strong shock that they are no longer even afraid of death (as it often happens to genocide survivors) sometimes fall into what is known as a feeling of timelessness or a “melancholy”. They live somewhat “outside” time, a mode of extra-temporal existence, waiting for the day on which they will be freed from their suffering. It is the people — almost ghosts having survived the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenians and Azerbaijani that has lasted for almost twenty years — that the filmmaker shows and listens to in his film. Behind them, behind their wandering bodies, behind their frenzies, is what remains of the collapse of the Soviet Union in Caucasus: ruins, uninhabited spaces, tombs, vestiges of war, trenches where soldiers watch for an invisible enemy.

Heavy Water is the latest film by Adam Scovell. Adam’s films plait parallel histories – folk horror, literature, experimental film, experimental music – into relived journeys through super-8 landscapes that are dense with sound, texture and the associations of the occultish underbelly of 20th century British art. This short film explores coastline of the Sizewell B Nuclear power station.

A film adaptation of the Holloway book by Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood and Dan Richards. The film was made alongside Macfarlane who has written and recorded its voice-over, Donwood who allowed the use of many of his Holloway inspired prints, composer Richard Skelton who has recorded an entirely new piece of musical score for it, and sound artist, James Bulley who let us use his Holloway recording project. More info can be found here: https://celluloidwickerman.com/2015/01/19/filming-in-the-holloways/

Guided by the sheepbells of a flock and by the evocations of the lost, this film is a voyage through storms; those of the mountains and winter, those of bodies and souls, those which remind us that which nature has not obtained from our reason, obtaining from our madness.

The simplified black-and-white documentary challenges the viewer to hear the story of the Sahrawi people.