Trail of the Spider transposes Western genre motifs and the suppressed racial history of the American west (where one in three cowboys were black or Mexican) onto the transforming landscape of East London. Questioning and re-imagining the Western’s portrayal of the “Vanishing Frontier” , the film extends the metaphor to the material and psychological conditions of a present day city increasingly dominated by volatile financial speculations and private interests.
Jan 2008
Sarah Turner's film is a ghost story that explores what we forget and how we remember. The stunning imagery comes solely from the window of the Trans-Siberian train, shot first in 1987-8 and then again in 2007-8. The re-enactment of the journey is a memory work, a re-enactment of the past in the present through the process of filming. But the return journey is haunted by the voices of two dead friends that dominate the soundscape of the 'archive' footage.
Jan 2009
Re-mixes and extends Perestroika (2009) into two sequences. Sequence one constritutes the 2009 version, while the second sequence constructs a new framing narrative that reinterprets and reconfigures both the imagery and the experience of the first. Part psycho-geography, part dream and part environmental allegory.
Jan 2013
2016 marks the 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia. His pioneering account of an ideal society (the original meaning of the word utopia being both no-lace and good-place) set the template for numerous literary, artistic and filmic speculations in the centuries since about the best way to imagine and order the perfect society. Its impact is immeasurable, and while the counter point, dystopia, is perhaps more familiar to our troubled times, the book’s call to imagine a better possible future has never been more relevant or necessary. My version of Utopia speaks with the voices of primary school children imagining their own Utopia. A lesson to us about the world we made for them.
Sep 2017
An intimate work made in collaboration with the filmmaker’s family, Cabbage re-frames language and explores personal agency within an ableist paradigm. It centralises her brothers' digital and rhythmic writings using eye tracking technology, and her mother’s reflections on a life lived having to prove her son’s humanity.
Mar 2023
At home in the north of England, an old woman tunes into the radio. As rain drips into the house, dark manifestations appear in her mind.
Oct 2024
‘My Album’ is a record of all the events in Leckey's life during the twentieth century that he feels were significant. It is a memoir from 1954 until 1999.
Jan 2015