Scouring 100 years of footage from the BFI National Archive, BAFTA-winner Paul Wright constructs an exhilarating study of Britain’s shifting – and contradictory – relationship to the land.
Wright (For Those in Peril) crafts a dense poetic essay of wonder, hope, horror and decay – drawing on inspiration from The Wicker Man to Winstanley. Through an intoxicating array of material, we follow an unnamed protagonist from the future as she travels through the metaphorical ‘seasons’: Spring’s romantic agricultural idyll long gone; Summer’s innocence of a village fête side-by-side with dark earthy folk rituals and eruptions of Britain’s Pagan past; Autumn’s abandonment of the land, the emergence of urbanisation and the creation of new towns; and Winter’s political turmoil, extremism and division, as nature reacts with violent storms.
Set to a grand, expressive score from Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Will Gregory (Goldfrapp), Wright’s captivating film essay was conceived before Brexit, but it’s impossible not to see the film through the prism of it.
Tricia Tuttle, Deputy Head of Festivals, BFI
