I contributed 3 short texts (prose poems) from my very limited edition (10 copies only) of Fifty Catacomb Saints to an anthology (I Transgress) edited by Chris Kelso, and published by Salo Press, Norwich. Chris asked contributors to post phone-recorded readings of their texts for promotional purposes (on YouTube).I don’t (can’t) do phone recordings and, in any case, was on the point of departure for Peru. In Lima, visiting the cathedral previously described by my great-grandfather, I asked Grant Gee to film a softly spoken reading. We had just finished inspecting the bones and monument and mummy (status questionable) of Francisco Pizarro. So it felt like the right place (by smell and sound) for this text. Grant was gathering footage for his proposed feature film, The Gold Machine. He covered our journey all the way. He’d like, if sufficient funds can be raised, to return to Peru next spring, to spend more time on the key locations. (Iain Sinclair)
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Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair’s “playfully absurd” travelogue documentary, Swandown has been selected to screen in the France’s Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema (ACID) section at the Cannes Film Festival, which celebrates innovation and experimentation in filmmaking and aims to giving greater visibility to new talent. The film, which is backed by the BFI Film Fund, is produced by Lisa Marie Russo and executive produced by Kate Ogborn for Fly Film.
A very interesting video; a conversation between Jonathan Meades and Iain Sinclair, held at Oxford Brookes University on 19 March 2013.
‘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.”
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