From the Sea to the Land Beyond

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MichaelB
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From the Sea to the Land Beyond

#1 Post by MichaelB » Fri Oct 26, 2012 12:08 pm

From the Sea to the Land Beyond – renowned filmmaker Penny Woolcock creates a lyrical portrait of Britain’s coastline and seaside resorts, with rich and varied archive footage and a specially-recorded soundtrack by Mercury Music prize nominees, British Sea Power.
Confirmed as an early 2013 release.

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antnield
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Re: From the Sea to the Land Beyond

#2 Post by antnield » Mon Oct 29, 2012 12:22 pm


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MichaelB
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Re: From the Sea to the Land Beyond

#3 Post by MichaelB » Mon Oct 29, 2012 12:51 pm

I love that cover - as I told the head of BFI DVD Publishing when he sent me a larger version last week, it manages to be both quintessentially British (the greys, greens and very occasional blues of our weather) with a distinct hint of Hokusai. And also the Shipping Forecast.

I know nothing about the film other than what's in this thread, but I'm immediately hooked.

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Re: From the Sea to the Land Beyond

#4 Post by MichaelB » Tue Nov 20, 2012 4:17 am

The sneak preview on BBC4 has triggered a load of rave reviews on Amazon.

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Re: From the Sea to the Land Beyond

#5 Post by MichaelB » Tue Dec 04, 2012 8:29 am

Full specs announced:

From the Sea to the Land Beyond
A film by Penny Woolcock
With music by British Sea Power

This fascinating and moving film by award-winning director Penny Woolcock is a lyrical portrait of Britain’s coastline, created through an exquisite combination of evocative archive footage – drawn from the BFI National Archive – and stirring music. Brighton-based band British Sea Power set the course for this cinematic voyage with an original score that ebbs and flows with the natural sounds of seagulls, ships and just the occasional snippet of speech. Uplifting and inspirational, From the Sea to the Land Beyond is released on DVD on 21 January 2013.

Travelling from 1901 through both World Wars, into peacetime and the modern age, From the Sea to the Land Beyond shows our coast as a place of leisure, industry and wild nature. With an emphasis on the romantic and the ritualistic, the archive footage used in the film’s assembly is rich and varied. Both film and music incorporate themes of work, play, childhood, romance, melancholy, hope, transportation, wilderness, the power of the elements and the beauty of wildlife.

Amongst many memorable and poignant images are those of a woman scaling a sheer cliff face to collect eggs, a group of Edwardian gentlemen playing beach combat games on the verge of World War I, bathers in top hats, a troupe of dancers on a pristine beach, the arrival by ship of émigrés from the Caribbean and India, the building of the Channel Tunnel, and present-day holidaymakers battling the wind and rain in Blackpool.

The film is comprised mainly of clips from four major BFI National Archive collections: the world-famous Mitchell and Kenyon films; Topical Budget (British silent era newsreels); public information films from the COI collection; travelogues from the British Transport Film Unit.

In her introductory essay in the DVD booklet, director Penny Woolcock (Tina Goes Shopping, The Principles of Lust) writes:

"In these days of formatted, factual entertainment and docu-soaps, tabloid television is created with twitchy fingers on the remote control in mind. Filmmakers find it hard to resist demands for commentaries that inform the viewer what they are about to see and reminding them of it as soon as it is over, and shovelling all the best bits in the film into the first couple of minutes and repeating later. The opportunity of making something without these attendant anxieties was irresistible."

Included amongst the DVD’s special features are some of the archive films which were used in From the Sea to the Land Beyond. One of them, Beside the Seaside, directed by Marion Grierson in 1935, is a wittily observant documentary that shows Londoners flocking to the coast to enjoy themselves during a heatwave. This, and the other archive films included as extras, feature newly recorded introductions by Penny Woolcock.

From the Sea to the Land Beyond was conceived and produced by Heather Croall, director of Sheffield Doc/Fest, and Mark Atkin, director of Crossover Labs. It premiered in Sheffield's Crucible Theatre with a live score – to a standing ovation – in June 2012. The project was funded by The Space, an initiative of the BBC and The Arts Council. British Sea Power, a band famed for their live shows, have subsequently performed their original score at further screenings of the film.

Special features
Making the Sea and the Land Beyond (2013, 25 mins): documentary with interviews with British Sea Power, Penny Woolcock and producers Mark Atkin and Heather Croall;
S.S Saxonia in Liverpool (James Kenyon, Sagar Mitchell, 1901, 3 mins): passengers and crew boarding the SS Saxonia;
Cunard Mail Steamer Lucania Leaving for America (James Kenyon, Sagar Mitchell,1901, 3 mins): early footage of the Lucania passenger liner;
Beside the Seaside (Marion Grierson, 1935, 23 mins): Londoners flock to the South Coast to enjoy themselves by the seaside during a heatwave;
Worker’s Weekend (Ralph Eaton, 1943, 13 mins): the workers of the Vickers Armstrong factory in Broughton assemble a Wellington Bomber in the record time of 24 hours;
Caller Herrin' (Alan Harper, 1947, 20 mins): the story of the herring fisheries in the North Sea;
• Introductions to all the short films by Penny Woolcock;
British Sea Power in rehearsal (Ian Potts, 2012, 6 mins): footage of the band working on the film score;
• Film and location identification track;
• Illustrated booklet with an introductory essay by Penny Woolcock, film notes and credits.

Product details
RRP: £19.99 / cat. no. BFIVD967 / Cert U
UK / 2012 / black and white, and colour / English language / 73 mins / Original aspect ratio 1.33:1 DVD 9 / PAL / Dolby Digital stereo audio (320 kbps)

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MichaelB
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Re: From the Sea to the Land Beyond

#6 Post by MichaelB » Wed Dec 05, 2012 6:48 am

Rave review by Caitlin Moran reproduced here, though you have to scroll down more than halfway.
I had no idea it was on, until I saw people live-Tweeting it, with little, breathless “Oooooh”s — or, more-urgent “You MUST stop watching I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here and put on BBC Four NOW!” Easily led, I herded over to BBC Four, and fell down a dream. From the Sea to the Land Beyond really was something else.
...though I particularly liked this bit:
At 5.45 minutes in, I was going, “Where is the voiceover? When is the voiceover beginning? WHERE IS THE VOICEOVER?” At six minutes in, I realised: “I am the voiceover. I am the voiceover to this.”

For the idea of From the Sea to the Land Beyond was to let you sit there and ask your own questions; provide your own narrative.

No need for a script when you see battalions of over-eager boys appearing, being drilled on a beach, blithely swinging their guns in synchronisation, like it was Babes on Broadway. 1914. Boats with a town-full of men, going off to be turned into coffins. I can see that. I don’t need anyone to tell me that.

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Re: From the Sea to the Land Beyond

#7 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jan 09, 2013 3:57 pm

I now have a final copy, and can expand on the "Film and location identification track" - it's essentially an optional subtitle track that briefly notes the film title and year of filming on one line and, if this doesn't already make the location clear, a second line spelling it out (where known, of course - some of the early clips were clearly impossible to pin down).

It's an absolutely wonderful film even on a second viewing: I'm playing it now as I write this. And it's exactly the kind of thing more archives should be encouraged to do. After all, conventional fiction feature films make up a distinct minority of the BFI's collections, and there's far more in the way of actualities, newsreels, random snippets, even dull productions that nonetheless contain one or two amazing shots that can be extracted for projects like this.

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antnield
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Re: From the Sea to the Land Beyond

#8 Post by antnield » Tue Jan 22, 2013 4:03 pm

To coincide with this week's DVD release The Quietus looks back over Penny Woolcock's prolific output.

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antnield
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Re: From the Sea to the Land Beyond

#9 Post by antnield » Thu Jan 31, 2013 12:42 pm


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MichaelB
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Re: From the Sea to the Land Beyond

#10 Post by MichaelB » Tue Mar 05, 2013 6:08 am

Mondo Digital:
A sprawling, nonlinear depiction of the British coastline since 1901 might sound like something that only a niche audience could enjoy, but From the Sea to the Land Beyond turns out to be a real shocker in the most positive sense: a dazzling, emotional collage of captured, unscripted cinematic moments from Britain's relationship with its omnipresent coastline, culled from hours and hours of footage preserved in the BFI archives (with a couple of extra outside additions).

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