[birdsong]
By
William Titley
Still from the film showing screen divided into sixteen individual rectangles, each depicting a participant in the project.
[birdsong] is a film that records the artist’s long term and intimate engagement with people, place and environment.
The project was initiated by the artist asking people what they could remember about an old film called 'Whistle Down The Wind' starring Hayley Mills in 1961, which was filmed around Pendle Hill in Lancashire, UK and involved many local school children. This new film follows over 60 members of the local community as they remember old scenes and imagine new ones, while revealing the ‘majestic’ presence and power of Pendle Hill and the surrounding countryside, and revealing contemporary social issues in the process. The artist explained that at one stage of the project he ‘... put a call out on social media for people to turn up at the foot of Pendle Hill in their Wellies to be in a film.’ He was ‘really surprised when 27 people and a dog turned up including Diane Poole who starred in the original film as Hayley Mills’ sister (Nan)… she just turned up in her wellies, it was a beautiful moment’. Diane’s experience of the original film is merged with footage of the walk up Pendle as a voice-over in the new film. This new film explores local areas of outstanding natural beauty as people walk and talk in different places and then come together for a walk up Pendle Hill: ending up in a shed on an allotment in Colne to discuss contemporary interpretations of the original film and the emergence of social issues. This new artwork, produced entirely without a budget is a testament to the presence of community spirit and caring in a world that appears to not care.
The film was created using a process of chance encounters and an underlying aim of including as much of the context as possible: camera crew, artists, participants, animals, the landscape, the weather, wildlife etc.
To watch the film, click the video below:
