By Our Selves
Synopsis
By Our Selves documents a four-day walk made by the English Poet John Clare. Toby Jones, Iain Sinclair and a Straw Bear follow in his footsteps exactly 150 years after his death. En route they bump into Macgillivray, Dr Simon Kovesi and the wizard Alan Moore. Meantime the journey is narrated by Toby’s father Freddie, a maverick actor who featured in numerous David Lynch films.
John Clare's escape from Epping Forest; an epic march through hunger and madness, is an English journey to set beside 'A Pilgrim's Progress'. Andrew Kötting, hyperkinetic camper-van captain of Gallivant, sets out in hot pursuit, dressed as a Straw Bear. Father and son, Freddie and Toby Jones, are possessed by the spirit of Clare, and locked in Beckettian embrace: one all-voice and one all-mute.
The writer Iain Sinclair watches from the shadows, Alan Moore waits like a bearded figure of fate, in Northampton and Dr Simon Kovesi hands out the medicine.
Captured in lustrous black and white photography, they discover the only truth of the road; whatever our hopes and delusions, we are always By Our Selves.
Inspired by Iain Sinclair’s Edge of the Orison and John Clare’s Journey out of Essex.
Details
- Year
- 2015
- Type of film
- Features
- Running Time
- 83 mins
- Format
- HD, Super 8mm
- Director
- Andrew Kötting
- Producer
- Andrew Kötting, Edward Fletcher
- Executive Producer
- Gareth Evans
- Editor
- Andrew Kötting, Cliff West
- Screenwriter
- Andrew Kötting, Iain Sinclair
- Director of Photography
- Nick Gordon Smith
- Sound
- Philippe Ciompi
- Music
- Jem Finer
- Principal Cast
- Iain Sinclair, Freddie Jones, Toby Jones, David Aylward, Eden Kötting, Simon Kovesi, MacGillivray, Alan Moore
- Voice
- Macgillivray
- Downside - Up rig
- Tony Hill
- Quadrocopter and additional aerials
- Damian Daniel
- Additional cast
- Anne Caron Delion, Gareth Evans, Marcia Farquhar, Leila McMillan, Kristin O’Donnell, Jim Roseveare, Tom Sangster, Vigo, Andrea Luka Zimmerman
Production status
Complete
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Last updated 26th October 2015
