London Orbital

A hallucinating essay film, in which the M25 motorway around London is point of departure for a virtuoso selection of poetic and intellectual associations. The film is based on the book by Iain Sinclair, in which the writer tells of his walk along the 120-mile road and the many observations and thoughts that occurred to him in the meantime. Chris Petit did not want to film this book and this walk, but to start from the trance-like state that driving along such a road can evoke in the traveller – like a moon on its orbit around a planet. The road itself receives plenty attention, yet in the film it serves primarily as a metaphor. The road leads us, for instance, to the prophetic work of H.G. Wells and J.G. Ballard – as a monument for a future that already belongs to the past – and gradually turns into a Borgesian labyrinth, in which there is also room for the bloodlines of Bram Stoker’s undead.For Petit, the film also offers an opportunity to examine the fundamental differences in looking and observing between film and video. The ideal characteristics of video for control, security and the undirected registration of time are used in this film, but also put up for debate.