A Tale I Know Nothing About: Jennet Thomas's Unusual Film Premiere
Jennet Thomas’s new film A Tale I Know Nothing About makes its debut in the window of Tintype on the 9th December. Thomas is one of eight artist-filmmakers commissioned for this year’s Essex Road III project, which invites contemporary artists to make a short film connected to the mile-long north London street on which the gallery is situated. After Nyne spoke to Jennet, to learn a little more about the background of the making of film, which is inspired by the famous former Carlton Cinema.
Did you know Essex Road, were you familiar with it?
I only knew Essex Road through journeys by bus or car. I had never walked it. When I started walking it I realised I hadn't known it at all- there is so much detailed variety of human- urban life there.
What made you focus on the on the cinema?
It immediately spoke to me - it's a building that reaches out. It is beautifully gaudy in a strange, classy way. With its art deco neo Egyptian style it seems to me like a time-traveling building. When I discovered it had been a very early music hall/ cinema, bingo hall and evangelical church its sense of a being generator of magical desire increased.
How did the ideas for the film coalesce?
I was inspired by the name of the church that owns the building, ' Resurrection Manifestations'. I was interested in colliding the themes of Resurrection and entertainment because of the building's history, and because they are a nicely provocative combination.
I saw a beautiful stuffed pigeon in the Get Stuffed Taxidermy shop, and met many living pigeons on my walks, I wanted to involve pigeons but make them god-like, dignified, resurrected. Time-lapse sequences and the sense of fragility and intensity this brings is also an essential 'idea' in the film.
I have been researching playground rhymes, clapping songs that get passed down through generations like memes, and wanted to work with a found text- something that grew out of the city - and this one 'Two Dead Boys' seemed to echo the themes. So the rhyme grew it all together.
Who or what are the figures on the cinema based on?
The figures are tiny plastic people for placing in architect's model buildings. I only got them a few years ago but their clothing is very dated. They seem to come from the '50's. I used them to evoke the cinema age, there is something fragile and romantic about them, and I admire the skill they were crafted with even thought this is almost invisible to the naked eye as they are so tiny.
Where does the rhyme originate from?
The rhyme is a mystery. I think I have a memory of it, but I found it spoken about on Mumsnet - there was a thread of parents discussing their children's playground rhymes, clapping songs that get passed down through generations like memes. Then I found it all over the internet, but I couldn't find anyone who knew its origin, except that it is from the UK, and seems to be very old (though bits of it have been changed and updated over time).
The music seems very important to the film - the way it creates and sustains a carnivalesque mood - yet there are two elements - the more moody theme. How do you work on the soundtrack? Does it come after the image, before - or simultaneously?
I knew I wanted to work with a pipe or barrel organ theme, something that is quite breathy and breathless, to match the pace of the time lapse sequences, that enhance the mood of a slightly crazy and nostalgic folk entertainment . Something of the streets.
The moody theme comes from experiments I have been doing with extreme slowing down of sections of music that composer Leo Chadburn has made for my previous films- a kind of recycling - if you slow certain things down all sorts of curious details and textures emerge, a little like looking through a microscope. These two elements worked well as a kind of mood-dialectic.
What’s the little black box on floor?
Well it's not really a box, it's the bottom part of a toy railway carriage that Paul Tarragó purposed into a device to present the card-substitution sequence - part of his fabulous animations of the rhyme. Paul generally inputs work on all my films, he's a great film maker in his own right- but his input on this film was more key than most.
How do you situate this short film in relation to your previous or current work?
It's quite different thematically from my current work, which often takes on elements of recognisable 'contemporary' themes, and uses my own very honed and painstakingly re-written texts. It was great fun to use a found text to riff off, and have the constraint/challenge of taking inspiration from a specific place. It feels a bit like a work from an earlier part of my film making life, when I showed all my work at the Exploding Cinema, used super 8 and themes of the carnivalesque and methods of improvisation inspired by found objects led my way.
Essex Road III screens from dusk until midnight daily, from 9 December 2016 until 14 January 2017.
Eight commissioned films by: Susan Collins, Lynne Marsh, Jennet Thomas, Amikam Toren, John Walter, Alice May Williams, Joby Williamson, Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Tintype: 107 Essex Road London N1 2SL
Jennet Thomas: http://jennetthomas.wordpress.com/
On 14th December there will be a special opportunity to view some of the previous Essex Road films at the former Carlton Cinema (from 5pm, with films screened at 5.30pm).
