FILMS
ABOUT THE FILMS
Twirl
HD Video, 1 minute 12 seconds, 2021
A woman walks and starts to turn. She continues to turn in different places as we follow, impossibly locked on to her body. Finally floating above her as she turns and walks away.
Passing Time
HD Video, 1 minute 2 seconds, 2020
A short lockdown film. The soundtrack was recorded at 3.00pm in a clock museum.
Bounce
HD Video, 1 minute 5 seconds, 2018
The chance to ‘free fall’ up and down from a bounce is surely one of the main attractions of using a trampoline. This film celebrates that feeling, of both using and defying the force of gravity.
Spin
HD video, 3 mins 31 seconds, 2015
Appearances by Chris Williams, Heidi Dorschler, Miles Williams, Jake Fytton, Richard Hainsworth, Daniel & Claudia
A spinning camera finds new perspectives on some portraits and other things. Strangely the world does not become an abstract blur but flickers, distorts and merges. Live action somehow becomes animation.
Screened at London Short Film Festival; Japan Media Arts Festival: BEEF, Bristol.
Bike
1 minute 16 secs, HD video, 2013
‘Bike’ explores some different ways of looking at riding a bicycle. A form of visual relativity is created by fixing the camera inside the wheel, to the pedal and floating above the head of the rider. With these new perspectives this simple activity is transformed.
Screened at FLEXIFF, Sydney; Cornish Film Festival; London Short Film Festival.
Sea
1 minute 15 secs, HD video, 2013
SEA is a meditation on the constancy of the rhythms and ever-changing movement of the sea as waves break on the shore at different locations in Cornwall. It is a hypnotic new perspective on a timeless manifestation of the forces of nature.
Screened at FLEXIFF, Sydney; Short Nights Festival, Exeter; London Short Film Festival
North Cross
Video, 5 mins, 2008
Sound by Gavin Huck
This film is inspired by the calm oasis at the centre of North Cross roundabout in Plymouth and the contrast between the activity of walking and the relative high speed chaos of traffic. It highlights the curious physical movements that are walking and celebrates the successful complete separation of pedestrians from vehicular traffic that the roundabout achieves. Made as part of the Cafe Concrete Plymouth City Project.
Screened at Weiterstadt Film Festival and at venues in the south west of England and in Cinema Digital Seoul Film Festival
Laban Manoeuvres
Video, 10 mins, 2006
Piano Tim Jones
Shot during a workshop at the Laban Dance Centre in London, the film explores some of the visual opportunities offered by the architecture and participants without dwelling on formal dance movement. The ‘Framework’ section uses a 4×3 space frame to create a ‘camera space’ which plays against the architecture and movement of performers. In ‘Window’ performers are both illuminated and reflected as they move beside the translucent window. ‘Tour’ explores the building with a performer captured in the space frame and ‘Oof’ sees things out of focus.
Screened at Weiterstadt Film Festival and at venues in the south west of England and in Cinema Digital Seoul Film Festival
Greenwell Barn
Video, 7 mins, 2004
Sound Hannah Standen
A tour of an old barn narrated by the farmer, Arnold Cole, who has known it for over 50 years. Redundant barn spaces and features serve to prompt the story of changes in farming practice. From milking by hand through the coming of electricity to developments in baling and feeding methods, the transformation from farming as a way of life to farming as agribusiness is charted.
Screened in the ‘Focus on Farmers’ touring exhibition at venues in the south west of England.
Farm Film
Video, 41 mins, 2004
Part intimate portrait and part observational documentary, this film looks at how a Dartmoor farming family relate to the land and their animals. Closely observed and beautifully captured over a period of 6 months in 2003, it gives a privileged insight into the world of farmers perceptions, their knowledge and skills accumulated over generations and their sensitivity to working with nature.
Screened in the ‘Focus on Farmers’ touring exhibition at venues in the south west of England.
A Sense of Place
with Sally Goode
Audiotape, 5 minutes, 2003
Sally Goode has been blind from birth. Tony Hill took her to a location unknown to her and recorded her describing what she found. By touch and sound she learns about the place and, with imagination, simplicity of expression and a joyful openness she articulates her findings. The sighted must see through her hands to experience this place. Objects, normally recognisable at a glance, become stranger and less identifiable when described by touch and without the vocabulary of vision.
‘A Sense of Place’ was originally produced for the Audible Picture Show, a programme of short audio works curated by Matt Hulse and made for presentation in a darkened cinema.
Broadcast on the US network radio show ‘This American Life’.
Geometry and Gravity
35mm, 3 mins, 2001
Saxophone Jan Kopinski
An experiment with orientation movement and shape combined with musical improvisation. A continuous rolling, tumbling motion determined by a geometric shape creates a visual rhythm and images that roll, dip and soar with the improvised soundtrack.
Screened at many festivals and in touring programmes.
Camera Obscura
35mm, 16 mins, 2000
An experimental documentary which draws sounds and images from the Dartington Hall Estate and constructs an idiosyncratic portrait. Verbal and textual definitions attempt to pin down what it is and play against elusive images. Archive material and re-invented historical events evoke the ethos of the past and combine with stories and contemporary details to illuminate the spirit of the place.
Screened at many International Film Festivals and in touring programmes.
Role Play
A live projected performance for camera crane and audience, CD Audio, first performance 1997
The crane is set up at the front of the cinema with a camera connected back to the projector with a live feed. Viewers are both audience and subject as they watch themselves flying and rolling on the screen.
Presented at the Metro Cinema, Derby, Tate Britain and Plymouth Art Centre.
Laws of Nature
35mm, 25 mins, 1997
An experimental film that looks afresh at landscape by using the medium to explore its time and space in ways other than ‘eye view’. A rich, sensual, densely textured film poem that sets out to challenge perceptual habits without being drawn into the seductive trap of the picturesque.
Winner of the Silver Plaque for Experimental Film at Chicago Film Festival.
Broadcast by Channel Four in the UK. Screened at many international film festivals.
Holding The Viewer
16mm, 1 min, 1993
A cinematic roller-coaster ride at the hands of a performer who is literally holding the viewer on the end of a pole. Swoop above his head on a rooftop then fall to his feet. Watch him strain to lift you up and swing you round. Balance precariously above his head as he hurries to get back before the magic wears off.
Winner of the Audience Prize, Chateauroux. Broadcast in France, Holland, Germany, Canada, Spain
and the UK. Screened at many film festivals and in touring programmes.
A Short History of the Wheel
16mm, 1 min, 1992
An exercise in visual relativity in the form of a journey through space and time with the wheel. Starting with a primitive hand-drawn cart and moving through horsepower and machine age tractor and car to the ultimate wheeled transport, the bicycle.
Winner of the Deutscher Videokunstpreis 1993 & the Audience Prize at Chateauroux.
Broadcast in Germany, Finland, Holland, Australia, France, Spain and the UK. Screened at many festivals worldwide and in touring programmes.
Striking Images
16mm, 1 min, 1990
Big Ben strikes twelve while rotating around its own clockface as day turns into night. Twelve shots from twelve locations in one minute, the images fading with the bell chime at each strike.
Broadcast in the UK and France.
Expanded Movie
16mm, 12 mins, 1990
An experimental anamorphic film with optically squashed and squeezed images which raises some questions about the perception of shapes. From the longest cow to the shortest car, the film contains bizarre and sometimes hilarious images. It weaves a path between home, street and playground, finally meeting with its own musical ending.
Broadcast by Canal Plus in France. Screened at many International Film Festivals.
Water Work
16mm, 11 mins, 1987
A sculptural film which explores the space on and just below the surface of a swimming pool. It plays with orientation, weightlessness and particularly the surface itself, that peculiar boundary between worlds that is both window and mirror, visible and invisible.
Best Experimental Film at Melbourne Film Festival. Screened at many International Film Festivals.
Broadcast by Channel 4 in the UK.
Downside Up
16mm, 17 mins, 1984
A film which, by the use of a simple camera movement, explores and reviews some relationships to the ground. The viewpoint continuously orbits places, objects, people and events. The observations gradually speed up to reveal a double sided ground flipping like a tossed coin, then slow again to oscillate about the earths edge.
Best Experimental Film at Melbourne Film Festival and Audience Prize at Hamburg Short Film Festival.
Screened at many other International Film Festivals. Broadcast on TV in Holland, Germany, France and by Channel 4 in the UK.
To See
2 screen, 16mm, 15 mins, 1982
Sound by Steve Marshall
Film eyes open, blink and see, looking about with all-round vision. Shapes, lines and spaces are not constant but ebb and flow with the camera movement. This spherical view of things redefines geometry creating an almost four dimensional appearance which ultimately seems to turn space inside out.
Screened at the London Film-makers Co-op; Museum of Modern Art, Oxford;
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Arts -7, Rennes and the Festival of Franco British Cinema, Cherbourg.
Point Source
Performance piece, 8 mins, First Performed 1973
A small bright light is the projector, several objects are the film and the whole room is the screen. A spatial exploration of the objects with the light projects them as big as the room encompassing the audience.
Performed at the ICA, Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery and the National Film Theatre in London and at many European International Film Festivals.
Clip from a performance at BFI Southbank March 2016 filmed by Lynn Loo
100 Heads
16mm, 1 minute version, 1971
A multiperson head, on the border between live action and animation, struggles to assert itself against the rapid succession of personal appearances. Made while I was a student at St Martin’s School of Art and featuring a lively collection of students from the time.