William English
2021City
William English
A sequence of shots from a fourteenth floor flat in the City of London, starting with a building shattered by the IRA, focusing on a crane and its driver, roadworks, a building site, passing seasons. The last minutes of the film pass into abstraction accompanied by sounds which could be fireworks or gunfire. Footage dates from the 1980s up to 2015. Soundtrack composed by Daniel R. Wilson in 2018.
City
What Did You Eat Today? Rose Lowder
William English, Sandra Cross
Rose Lowder
The latest in an ongoing series of portraits including inventors Maurice Seddon and Hugh de la Cruz. Here, filmmaker Rose Lowder prepares a macrobiotic meal in her tiny flat in Paris in October 2005. As Rose describes what she is cooking and why, we hear about Rose's childhood spent in Peru through to her current life in Avignon and glimpse a singular creator.
What Did You Eat Today? Rose Lowder
Passages
William English
Originally silent but now with sound by Daniel Wilson composed for this film in 2019. A series of images, some double exposed, some in negative. Reeds moving in the wind in Suffolk. A now obsolete car wash near to Smithfield. The metallic prows of gondolas in Venice at night. A detail of a Victorian dam in the Elan valley, Wales.
Passages
Heated Gloves
William English
Captain Maurice Seddon was a British eccentric who preferred to heat his body than his house, and so he invented electric clothing. This curious portrait is also a striking piece of media history, as it partly comprises Seddon’s countless TV appearances, for instance in the David Letterman Show.
Heated Gloves
Untitled 1985
William English
Originally filmed on standard 8mm Kodachrome, double exposed and stretch printed. Virtually abstract imagery shot from a basement looking upwards via a pavement level window towards the side of Southwark Cathedral through dayglo ribbons which were part of some roadworks. A consequence of absorbing Peter Gidal’s theory of Structural Materialist film which I first encountered in 1975 in the issue of Studio International devoted to Avant-Garde Film. It was suggested that I should make more films like this, but it was unrepeatable for reasons hard to define. Apart from the technological issues, the film is very specific to a particular time and place. Passages was something of a sequel.
Untitled 1985
