'B. Catling, R.A. (1948-2022) was born in London. He was a poet, sculptor, filmmaker, performance artist, painter, and writer. He held solo exhibitions and performances in the United Kingdom, Spain, Japan, Iceland, Israel, Holland, Norway, Germany, Greenland, USA, and Australia. His Vorrh trilogy and novels Earwig and Munky have drawn much critical acclaim. He was also Emeritus Professor of Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.' I had never heard of B(rian) Catling when I received a review copy of this book , which comes with three intriguing postcards 'featuring photographs by Iain Sinclair and text by Alan Moore' . I was a little puzzled. So I did some Googling and YouTubing and discovered that Catling was a very significant figure in the UK arts scene. I feel slightly ashamed that his work passed me by, but I have tried to dispel some of my ignorance. This book certainly offers a good overview of some of the man's ideas and personal visio...
Comments
Would be better if someone was (or better yet, a whole string of people were) given a commission to knock off a couple of dozen 10 or 15 minute ghost story films for BBC4. No expectations, no big name actors, no big budget.
Some of them, I'm sure, would not work well...but in amongst them, it would throw up some interesting work.
Filmed ghost stories, IMHO, work best when they are short, because one isn't dealing with a lot of false suspense which, unfortunately, seems to be the case with the many of the feature length filmed ghost
stories of late.
Oscar, I agree about walking around scenes. Ironic, given the resources available to film makers, that they end up filming so many inherently dull things.
In watching the classic Night of the Demon, I realized that films of that intelligence in the supernatural field are so far and few between that it's easy to get distracted by design and camerawork in the recent ghost stories that unfortunately rely too much on the tried and true formulas.