{"id":19054,"date":"2019-03-14T01:02:43","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T01:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=19054"},"modified":"2019-03-14T01:40:30","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T01:40:30","slug":"sundial-and-mile-end-purgatorio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2019\/03\/14\/sundial-and-mile-end-purgatorio\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundial and Mile End Purgatorio"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blacktower.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Black Tower.<\/em><\/p>\n

I ought to have devoted this post to The Black Tower<\/em><\/a> (1987), John Smith’s short and sinister film which I linked to at the weekend. It was good to watch it again after seeing a TV screening (no doubt the only one) on the UK’s Channel 4 in 1988. It also reminded me of the two shorter films linked here, both of which were also shown on Channel 4 a few years later in Benjamin Woolley’s excellent Midnight Underground<\/em> series. All three films are linked by their London locations and their different solutions to the perennial problem of the micro-budget filmmaker looking to make the most of limited resources.<\/p>\n

\"sundial.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sundial.<\/em><\/p>\n

Smith’s film is the more substantial work, and of particular interest to those looking for examples of weird (or horror) cinema that avoids Hollywood cliches. The Black Tower<\/em> combines static views of an unusual building with voiceover and sound effects to turn a mundane piece of architecture into a growing menace. Using a voiceover to craft a narrative from unrelated shots has always been a useful and flexible technique, especially if money is limited; Peter Greenaway did this with all of his early films, and it’s an approach also favoured by Patrick Keiller and Terrence Malick.<\/p>\n

\"mileend.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mile End Purgatorio.<\/em><\/p>\n

Guy Sherwin uses the same technique for Mile End Purgatorio<\/em><\/a> (1991), an East-End riff on Dante, Hamlet<\/em> and the Bible, with words by Martin Doyle. William Raban’s Sundial<\/em><\/a> (1993) has no voiceover but it follows The Black Tower<\/em> in making the Canary Wharf tower the centre of its attention, the fixed point in the passing of a single day. Sherwin and Raban also show how much can be done with a single minute of film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Black Tower. I ought to have devoted this post to The Black Tower (1987), John Smith’s short and sinister film which I linked to at the weekend. It was good to watch it again after seeing a TV screening (no doubt the only one) on the UK’s Channel 4 in 1988. It also reminded … Continue reading “Sundial and Mile End Purgatorio”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,7,22,19],"tags":[2705,1807,9962,1808,9963,3511,866,9964],"class_list":["post-19054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-film","category-horror","category-television","tag-benjamin-woolley","tag-guy-sherwin","tag-john-smith","tag-martin-doyle","tag-patrick-keiller","tag-peter-greenaway","tag-terrence-malick","tag-william-raban"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-4Xk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}