Showing posts with label blue bell hill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blue bell hill. Show all posts

Apostrophe S Project

Apostrophe S is a trilogy of films by Philip Sanderson and Steven Ball made between 1987 - 1990. A follow up piece Called Film of The Same Name was completed in 2017. The project was shot in north Kent on Higham Marshes and Blue Bell Hill and explores 'geopsychological' issues around landscape - in particular Hangway Turning is based on the urban legend of repeated ghost sightings made on Bluebell Hill, Kent, following the death of a bride-to-be in a road accident in March 1964.

 

The project began with a short pilot called Apostrophe S - A Postcard From Boxley Hill made from Super 8 Loops projected onto a wall and then videod. The soundtrack was recorded by Sanderson & Ball at IPS Studios in London with the voice-over by Diana Gordon.

Funding was secured from South East Arts to make Green on The Horizon. This was shot on Cliffe Marshes in Kent and features Angela Staples. The piece was shot on Super 8 and then edited on Umatic video.

 Following Ball's departure to Australia Sanderson completed the next part of the trilogy Hangway Turning with Nigel Jacklin (of Alien Brains fame) taking on the role of psychic investigator Thomas Cubiit and Angela Staples playing the 'ghost'.

 

Twenty years plus later Sanderson & Ball decided to revisit the location and ideas behind the Apostrophe S trilogy in The Film of The Same Name. For Film of the Same Name the Cubitt character was re-presented by BFI archivist William Fowler while the ghost by jeweler Leigh Milsom. Directors Sanderson and Ball portray themselves as the now middle-aged experimental filmmakers – maybe older and wiser but having some difficulty in remembering where the original scenes were shot. 


Green on the Horizon and Hangway Turning have been screened at over thirty venues including: Tate, ICA, Osnabruck, Piccadilly Film Festival. Green on The Horizon has been added to the BFI archive and is available on the BFI player, and was most recently shown at the BFI/NFT in November 2022.



Philip Sanderson - On One of These Bends

 

Side A

A1. Bright Waves

A2. Tale Chase

A3. E for Echo

A4. Viewfinder

A5. Everything He is Not

A6. On One of These Bends

Side B

B1. This is Not a Game

B2. Mixing Drinks & Aeroplanes

B3. Scene of the Crash

B4. Echo Complex

B5. Watertight

B6. Maps

B7. Looking Back

 

All music and lyrics by Philip Sanderson except: Bright Waves (Sleesenger/Sanderson/Tallis), Viewfinder (Sanderson, Denton), This is Not a Game (Sanderson, Ball). Philip Sanderson plays: VCS3, vibraphone, DX7, Roland SH-101, Roland TR-606, Revox tape delay, acoustic guitar, Yamaha FB-01. With: Bright Waves - vocals Nancy Slessenger. E for Echo - voice over Patricia Hosking. Viewfinder - guitar Michael Denton. This is Not a Game - keyboards Steven Ball, voice over Patricia Hosking & Tony Raven. Mixing Drinks & Aeroplanes - vocals Naomi, fretless bass Steve Rose, vibraphone Michael Denton. Maps - vocals Naomi.

 

Credits:

Format: LP, 500 copies

Release Date: 2018

Label: SÈance Centre

Catalogue Number:1SC

Sleeve Design: Alan Brian. Rear sleeve photograph by Philip Sanderson. Front images from various films by Philip Sanderson, and Philip Sanderson & Steven Ball.

Remastered from the original reels by Brandon Hocura

 

Notes:

From the back sleeve: On One Of These Bends is a collection of unreleased songs, soundtrack work and obscure cassette-only pieces from the 1980s which reflect a shift in focus towards film and moving image. It was a departure from the more industrial music Philip Sanderson had been making with his group Storm Bugs, having more in common with Nino Rota and Henry Mancini, albeit as seen through a DIY lens, and with a reel-to-reel orchestra comprised of an EMS VCS3, vibraphone, DX7, Roland SH-101, Roland TR-606, tape delay, acoustic guitar, fretless bass and Yamaha FB-01. On two numbers, Philip jokingly asked an American chanteuse to "sing it like a cross between Streisand and The Shangri-Las", and to his surprise she did. Counterpointing this are tracks such as E For Echo made with just an acoustic guitar, and the very first piece Bright Waves which combines the choral vocal talents of Nancy Slessenger with a Revox tape delay system, originally released on Snatch Tapes under the pseudonymous Claire Thomas & Susan Vezey.

 

These tracks are presented with the "picture turned down" so to speak, and as such the music acts as a kind of memento mori for the absent moving images, and maybe even for the decade itself. Remastered from the original reels, DMM pressing.