Swandown released as DVD and Blue-Ray

‘Swandown’ has been released in DVD and Blue-Ray and can be ordered from Cornerhouse website.

“Swandown is a travelogue and odyssey of Olympian ambition; a poetic film-diary about encounter, myth and culture. It is also an endurance test and pedal-marathon in which Andrew Kötting (the filmmaker) and Iain Sinclair (the writer) pedal a swan-shaped pedalo from the seaside in Hastings to Hackney in London, via the English inland waterways.

With a nod to Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo and a pinch of Dada,Swandown documents Kötting and Sinclair’s epic journey, on which they are joined by invited guests including comedian Stewart Lee, writer Alan Moore and actor Dudley Sutton.

This was a perilous journey, akin to the river voyage of Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen. It was also, for Kötting, a tribute to the legendary performer, traveller and conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, who in 1975 was lost at sea attempting to cross the Atlantic in a pocket cruiser.

This dual edition DVD and Blu-ray release includes caption subtitles, and 43 minutes of extras including the short films  Glitter and Storm by Rebecca E. Marshall, Random Acts and Bunhill Fields, an excerpt from the Filmmakers’ Q&A, and the film trailer.

‘Swandown is utterly funny, deeply lyrical, wholly winning, unchallengeably unique. It converts Kötting at a stroke from an acquired taste to a required one.’   *****  The Financial Times

‘Swandown is a puckish, gently abstract, playfully absurd travelogue.’ **** The Daily Telegraph

Swandown was commissioned by the Abandon Normal Devices (AND) Festival and premiered at Cornerhouse, Manchester, 2012.”