No Place solo exhibition Multi Media Installation writer/director/performer 2005

No Place comprised two single screen works-

LOOKING BACK 19m 4s and LOOKING FORWARD 12m 30

screened simultaneously at Kings Lynn Arts Centre and the Courtyard Theatre Kings Cross Commission Film and Video Umbrella ACE touring and Film London

2006 Nomination Rotterdam IFFR tiger award;

2006 Best experimental film Syracuse IFFR

2006 In A Sacred Place Japanese Tour with Image Forum.

‘An elusive collage of real and fictional characters who all live in a kind of temporary limbo a long way from home but still looking for a sense of belonging.’

THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF GIRLS

audience member Image Forum Tokyo

‘Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz grown up into Judy from Vertigo.’

Faye Castleton Norfolk Anne Larrson London

Poppy Chancellor plays Orphan Girl

CREDITS
CAMERA NICK GORDON SMITH
CAST NATHALIE PRESS NATSUME SHIROYAMA JANET TARA SCOTT POPPY CHANCELLOR
MAX EMBLEM

NO PLACE publication Writer ISBN 190427 019 0 FVU

It reminded me of a quote that I like very much, which was a critique (by Elbaz) of Malraux’s book Antimemoires:

“Clearly, it is not a story of a life, although here and there we encounter fragments of biographical data; nor is it a transcription of historical data since there is no obedience to historical fact. It cannot be a pure work of fiction: many characters in the book are real people… A careful scrutiny of the text leaves us with the conviction that this chaos is intentional, that it is conditional to the meaning of the text. Indeed Malraux seems to be postulating that autobiography, the story of the self, is a combination of a number of disorders.”

STEVEN HORNER https://www.steven-horner.com/ essay filmmaker and movement performer

In No Place (part 2 19m 54s) a woman (Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz grown up into Judy from Hitchcock’s classic Vertigo…) looks back, from the apparent sanctuary of a church, following the yellow brick road to a seedy hotel near Kings Cross station the spirit of Dorothy is manifest in a multitude of incarnations in the city, leading to a curious intercession. You can’t love a wild thing.

Comments

‘No Place conjures a feeling of contemporary character’s footsteps being not only shadowed by traces of the past but also prefigured and reflected in the language and mythology of cinema.’ Steven Bode commissioner FVU

An artistic tour de force IFFR

 ‘A new spin on Dorothy’  ‘Mulholland Cross’ ‘Looking awry’ ‘You can’t love a wild thing.’

DIRECTOR’S NOTES NO PLACE (Kings Cross)  ‘A girl who worked in a cinema; a boy who lived in the same hotel; the daughter of a friend and her half sister; my son and a guy he plays football with; a neighbour; a dancer; a girl whose sister was my ex boyfriends best friend; a tailor; a lecturer; a woman who worked the checkout at Safeways; a prostitute I met doing outreach…..’

NO PLACE (Kings Lynn) I did an open casting for a 21^st century Dorothy in the cinema in Kings Lynn and decided to democratize the process by casting all the girls instead of the ‘one girl’

This work continues the work I’ve been doing going into the unknown beyond documentary and beyond fiction closer to the transpersonal.