Unique film-maker Andrew Kotting's latest psycho-geographic journey across the British Isles is both quest and mission - with a merrie band of travellers including Eden Kötting, Iain Sinclair, Philip Hoare, Dr Helen Paris, Macgillivray, Kyunwai So, Ceylan Unal and Steve Dilworth. Part history, part myth, part fiction part documentary - but always a fascinating and original cinematic experience.
A whalebone box found washed up on the shore. Is it an enigmatic object containing a secret? A survivor from a shipwreck? It was given to Iain Sinclair, Kotting's walking companion on his latest jaunt themed film. They set out on an expedition to take this box to its place of origin, a beach on the Isle of Harris in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. Artist Eden Kotting helps shape the film, and in many ways it’s an ode to her indomitable spirit. Shot using mainly super 8 and super 8 apps and incorporating elements of archive and pinhole photography, The Whalebone Box celebrates the notion of the home-made but is also an idiosyncratic road map.
"You can feel the ghost of Derek Jarman in Kotting's work: the use of collage; the investigation of memory; the allusions to Shakespeare's The Tempest; the deconstruction of cinema itself. Yet, The Whalebone Box has something even more personal in its subtle exploration of the bond between father and daughter, an expression of love that had me laughing one moment and crying the next. With such a tender, beating heart, this is in some ways Kotting's most unexpectedly accessible work. And, as Eden says more than once in her subtitled voiceover: "It's true!" Mark Kermode - The Guardian. Pre-order at the link above.
