In the Gloucestershire Archives, Dan Guthrie finds a single line devoted to a mysterious Daniel, buried in 1719 and described as “a black, a stranger”. The artist imagines, as in a mirror, the life experiences of his namesake, evoking his existence through treading burial ground in Nympsfield, and imagining the troubles he encountered because of the social alienation they both share. The film offers a creative version of historical empathy, built on compassion and identification.
– Adrian Martin
Also in this combined programme
-
Transformation by Holding Time (Landscape)
The staging of a beguiling visual paradox: photographed images gradually blot out a real landscape. -
Scrub Solo 1: Soloneliness
A dancer’s unusual motion is “scrubbed”: transformed by a stuttering manipulation of image and sound. -
Scaling
IFFR regular Mike Hoolboom offers a beguiling presentation of cinematic impermanence in photographic double exposure. -
Smoke & Mirrors
Artist Tris Vonna-Michell delivers a free-associative monologue about audiovisual archives and personal experiences. -
The Ghost of Wittgenstein
A little Wittgenstein goes a long way in this playful tussle of words and images. -
Am I Mourning What I Never Lost?
A biting, stylised reflection on the experience of being Deaf in a bureaucratic, medicalised world. -
Virtual Spectres
A digitally animated, sci-fi warning about digital living through screens, trapped in technological hell. -
Late August 1993
Old, degraded video footage is manually manipulated in playback, revealing wonders of deformation and abstraction. -
(for once I dreamed of you)
A dreamlike reverie takes motifs from Romantic poetry (nature, light, loss), subjecting them to fragmentation.
Film details
- Country of production
- United Kingdom
- Year
- 2022
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2026
- Length
- 8'
- Medium/Format
- DCP
