London Orbital
Doing the drive-by filming reminded me of the inspiration I took from London Orbital. But I’m finding it hard to find a version to watch online.
http://www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/filmstobuy/category/6/product/8/vid1/london_orbital.html
‘Maverick British director Chris Petit has produced one of this year’s eeriest and most haunting films, London Orbital, a threnody to the M25.’ Sunday Telegraph
‘It is a mediation on the M25 and gives an intriguing history of the occult archaeology of London that the ring-road discloses … Petit has witty and playful apercus for every mile he covers.’ The Guardian
London Orbital is an extraordinary and visionary film by Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair about the world’s largest by-pass, the M25. London Orbital is a road movie, a cinematic excursion into the futuristic literature of a century past, and a film dialogue between two writers who are also filmmakers (and vice versa).
London Orbital is, among other things, a meditation on the difference between driving and walking. On Bram Stoker’s “undead”, on H.G. Wells and J.G. Ballard. On time and memory. On the difference between film and tape, sound and image. On trance states and the terror that lies beyond boredom; on shopping and terrorism; on Kabul and the leisure mall. On the invisible triangle of Thatcherism (covert arms deals, Essex gangsters, and drug dealing). On Pinochet and Thatcher as vampire lovers.
Iain Sinclair is the author of London Orbital, a book about his walk around the 120-mile road. Chris Petit elected not to make ‘the film of the book’ and chose instead to drive, and to capture in images the peculiar hallucinatory state that driving provokes.
(Just incase I can’t find a copy to watch…)
From what I remember, the shots in London Orbital have always stuck with me. I make the commute from Coventry to London almost every weekend, so the M25 is an old friend. The ugly, grotesque portrayal of the M25 in London Orbital stood out, the view-from-car-window shots really intrigued me = this is what I see when I am on the M25, I feel like I am there, I remember the smells, the noise, the speed, I can relate totally to this shot. I have always kept this imagery at the back of my mind from seeing this in the first year. So when I came to think about shots needed for my documentary, which is about a part of London, all I could think about was these long, real life out-of-car-window shots. This is such an effective, artistic way of showing London, or any area, by making it relate-able to the viewer. It is a lot more visually effective than static shots of streets and land marks. I hope this is what comes across in my film. I think it will work best with the shots I got coming in from the generic motorways, passing through the Olympic (2012) site, and arriving in Hackney.
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Tags: Chris Petit, Inspiration, London Orbital, M25, Research
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