News

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Andrew Kötting's Edith Walks (2017) is playing June 29 - July 29, 2017 on Mubi in the United Kingdom.The faster we walk, the more ground we lose.—Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the TerritoryIf there's a single date in English history that most of the country's population would know, it's 1066: the Battle of Hastings. They would hazily recall from wooden modular classrooms, stifling on a warm summer's afternoon, as they gazed out at heat rising from the tarmac playground, the tale of King Harold II, his cross-country march to war, and the Norman Conquest of the Anglo-Saxon realm. Perhaps the image of Harold as depicted on the Bayeux tapestry, an arrow protruding from his eye, would emerge from the palimpsest of history and linger on the fringes of their memory. The memories are much more immediate and painful for Edith Swan-Neck,...

Andrew Kötting recreates scenes of the fascinating and melancholy 90-mile walk undertaken in 1841 by the nature poet John Clare, in a bizarre documentary

Film-maker Andrew Kötting again takes inspiration from that great psycho-geographer Iain Sinclair – with whom he recorded an unclassifiably strange journey by pedalo in the 2012 film Swandown. Now he has been inspired by Sinclair’s book Edge of the Orison, about the fascinating and melancholy 90-mile walk undertaken in 1841 by the nature poet John Clare, from a mental asylum in Epping to Northampton, on a pilgrimage to find Mary Joyce, the woman with whom he believed himself to be in love.

Kötting has Toby Jones recreate the scenes of Clare’s great journey or ordeal, often amid bizarrely alienating and alienated scenes of modern life. Jones recites some of Clare’s work in voiceover, and Kötting also asks Jones’s father Freddie Jones to recreate his performance as Clare from a 1970 Omnibus documentary,...

Exclusive: UK deal in place for Andrew Kotting’s film from Salon Pictures.

UK production outfit Salon Pictures has entered pre-production on Andrew Kötting’s feature adaptation of Hattie Naylor’s stage play Ivan and the Dogs.

Written by Naylor and produced by Nick Taussig and Paul Van Carter of Salon, Soda Pictures has boarded UK distribution of the experimental film, which is based on the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who in 1996 walked out of his Moscow apartment at the age of four and spent two years living on the city streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs.

The shoot is due to get underway in early 2015 and will take in London, Moscow and Chile with casting currently underway.

Funding comes from the BFI - who also gave development support - and Seis Salon Workshop.

Artist and filmmaker Kotting previously directed 2012 doc Swandown, which played at Cph: Dox, and 2009 drama...

Exclusive: UK deal in place for Andrew Kotting’s adaptation of play.

UK production outfit Salon Pictures has entered pre-production on Andrew Kötting’s feature adaptation of Hattie Naylor’s stage play Ivan and the Dogs.

Written by Naylor and produced by Nick Taussig and Paul Van Carter of Salon, Soda Pictures has boarded UK distribution of the film, which is based on the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who in 1996 walked out of his Moscow apartment at the age of four and spent two years living on the city streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs.

The shoot is due to get underway in early 2015 and will take in London, Moscow and Chile with casting currently underway.

Funding comes from the BFI - who also gave development support - and Seis Salon Workshop.

Artist and filmmaker Kotting previously directed 2012 doc Swandown, which played at Cph: Dox, and 2009 drama...

Experimental British filmmaker Andrew Kötting returned to select cinemas earlier this year with his latest outing Swandown (2012), a typically boundary-pushing blend of styles and tropes that challenges our own perception of 'Britishness' as the eyes of the world descended on the city of London for the 2012 Olympic Games. To celebrate the Dual Format release of Kötting's new film next Thursday, we've kindly been provided with Three copies of Swandown to give away to our loyal readership, courtesy of Cornerhouse. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue before answering the question below.

Read more »...

★★★☆☆ British psycho-geographer Iain Sinclair was one of the more vocal opponents to the London 2012 Olympics because, to quote one of the contributors of Andrew Kötting's Swandown (2012), "he [Sinclair] doesn't think anything is allowed to happen in Hackney without his permission". At least that is the opinion put forward by comedian Stewart Lee in the gentle chiding he gives him during a brief stint in an avian pedalo in Kötting's latest visual oddity. The film, born partly of a desire to make an anti-Olympic statement, is a surreal and experimental travelogue through the waterways of southern Britain.

Read more »...

The Dark Knight Rises (12A)

(Christopher Nolan, 2012, Us/UK) Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine. 164 mins

As big and dark and serious as The Avengers was big and light and fun, the climax to Nolan's Batman trilogy ticks most of the boxes it was demanded to – which is quite an achievement. There's an Occupy-style theme to baddy Bane's Gotham City lockdown, which forces Bruce Wayne to consider his 1% financial status and Batman to revive his punching and growling skills (prompted by Hathaway's slinky cat burglar). Some cheesy cliches (and questionable politics) are needed to tie it all together, but it's still the solid, epic finale you'd hoped for.

Something From Nothing: The Art Of Rap (15)

(Ice-t, Andy Baybutt, 2012, UK/Us) 111 mins

The well-connected director calls on the biggest names in rap (Eminem, Q-Tip, Melle Mel, Snoop Dogg, etc), asks them a...

Cocking a snook at the Olympic torch procession two men have plotted their own epic journey – along the waterways from Hastings to east London in a giant fibreglass swan

'Ahoy there!" shouts film-maker Andrew Kötting to a dredging vessel on the Lee Navigation canal, just outside London's Olympic Park. The man on the boat gives us a grudging wave. Kötting explains that the same man wouldn't let him pass any further up the canal yesterday. Nor would the Gurkhas who guard the Olympic site.

This could have something to do with our mode of transport. I am sitting beside Kötting in a two-person fibreglass pedalo in the shape of a giant swan. Or it could have something to do with my co-pilot: Kötting is wearing mirrored shades and a shabby, dark blue suit on top of a cardigan embroidered with swans. He hasn't washed the suit for the past month,...

It’s perhaps not that surprising that Ice Age 4 shot straight back up to the top of the Box Office chart theatrical release this week, but the sheer volume by which it eclipsed The Amazing Spider Man is really quite something. Spidey took in a still respectable £4mllion but this was dwarfed by Ice Age’s epic £10 million haul. I guess one should never underestimate the all-round family appeal of these Ice Age movies, and it looks set to be one of the highest grossing movies of the year. If the figures keep looking this good, it won’t be much of a surprise when Ice Age 5 : The Neanderthal Strikes Back gets green lit in a few years’ time.

This week of course, that £10million take by Ice Age could appear like pocket change as The Dark Knight Rises finally arrives on the big screen. After months of trailers,...

★★★☆☆ Following hot on the heels of last year's French fancy This Our Still Life (2011), visual artist Andrew Kötting returns to selected cinema screens with Swandown (2012), a very British travelogue following the filmmaker and an assorted band of associates as they make their way from Hastings to Hackney, via the Olympic site, in a swan-shaped pedalo. Taking its cues from Kötting's 1997 piece Gallivant - where he toured Britain's coastlines with multiple generations of his family - this unique filmmaker manages to squeeze vital meaning out of the most bizarre of means.

Read more »...

Swandown

Featuring: Andrew Kötting, Iain Sinclair, Alan Moore, Stewart Lee, Marcia Farquhar, Dudley Sutton | Written by Andrew Kötting & Iain Sinclair | Directed by Andrew Kötting

Two men stand waist deep in the ocean, trying to launch a swan-shaped pedalo – the kind you’d find at a local park – on a journey that will take them from Hastings to Hackney via rivers and canals, meeting people of varied experiences and philosophies, a journey that appears to be the very antithesis of the upcoming olympics their final destination – the still-being-built stadium – represents. It takes them more than a day to get the pedalo out there.

The two men are avant-garde filmmaker and performance artist Andrew Kötting and regular partner in crime, writer Iain Sinclair. The film is called Swandown, and the voyage is much more compelling than I just made it sound.

The film is hard to define, even to make a distinction...

Magic Mike (15)

(Steven Soderbergh, 2012, Us) Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Cody Horn, Matthew McConaughey, Olivia Munn. 110 mins

The roles are reversed but the themes are familiar in this rise-and-fall tale of male strippers, making and losing their way in a (sort of) woman's world. It's like a cross between The Full Monty, Boogie Nights and Showgirls, sketching a landscape of exploitation and desperation – even as it participates in it by serving up the barely clad Tatum and other beef products.

Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World (15)

(Lorene Scafaria, 2012, Us) Steve Carell, Keira Knightley, Patton Oswalt. 101 mins

Do passion and the apocalypse mix? Or Carell and Knightley? This faltering effort tries anyway.

Detachment (15)

(Tony Kaye, 2011, Us) Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden. 98 mins

No provocation left behind in this scathing schoolroom drama with a starry cast.

Ice Age 4: Continental Drift (U)

(Steve Martino, Mark Thurmeier, 2012, Us) Ray Romano, Denis Leary.