The Falconer, technically, was an advance on The Cardinal and the Corpse. This time there was no industry crew. The shoot was very much free form, going off wherever the story took us, fuelled on cultural appropriation (in the best sense) and creative paranoia. It was always intended as part of a wider project known as ‘The Perimeter Fence’, a recalibration of lives and productions lost in the margins. An alternative (and electively unreliable) series of histories, rewritten and subverted to aim at a higher truth. The progress of the film was scored by a complex network of (provoked) creative tensions: between the ostensible director Chris Petit, for example, and the former director (and self-proclaimed shaman, conman, story-teller, falconer) Peter Whitehead, between the scrupulous editor Emma Matthews and the artist/animator Dave McKean (whose brilliant inserts and interventions were microfilms on their own). As the production evolved, it was taken over by the presence of Whitehead, who always held out one more story to tell, one more startling revelation. Revelations backed up by a buried archive of feature films, documentaries and home-movie footage.
Channel 4, back in the day, responded positively. The Falconer was singled out as a new way of working: distressed and ‘painterly’ textures, hints at conspiracies, basic equipment, no crew to eat up budget. The consequence was more commissions to operate in this way – but not for us, for younger, less bothersome and cheaper hopefuls.
Dr Michael Hrebeniak said: ‘The Falconer is probably the most talked about film ever made among the psychogeography crowd… Maybe we should keep it a secret?’
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)
On Wednesday 8th May at 21:00 at Mediateca Santa Teresa (Via della Moscova, 28) in Milan (Italy), the Docucity Festival of the Università degli Studi di Milano will screen – in preview for the city – Enrico Masi’s The Golden Temple, a narrative documentary film which provides a different gaze upon the recent London Olympics. The film features an interview with Iain Sinclair, “writer and poet, a leading figure of the British Avant-garde of the ’70?s”. Continue reading The Golden Temple with Iain Sinclair to be screened in Milan
BFI Film Fund-backed SWANDOWN will screen in the ACID’s 20th anniversary Cannes selection.
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.
