Robinson in Ruins, the latest film to come from Patrick Keiller, research fellow at the Royal College of Art, London, will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 4th.
Part funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the film has been produced as part of a research project through the AHRC Landscape and Environment programme.
Photographed, edited and written by Patrick Keiller, Robinson in Ruins is the third of a trilogy that also includes London, 1994, and Robinson in Space, 1997. In those films the highly distinctive narrator, a former companion of the fictional Robinson, was played by the late Paul Scofield; here, Vanessa Redgrave is the new voice for the words.
Patrick Keiller describes Robinson in Ruins as a journey by a wandering, erratic scholar, through landscapes in the south of England, mostly in Oxfordshire and Berkshire.
Vanessa Redgrave’s narration includes references to the deepening economic crisis, food and energy security, climate change and mass-extinction. Despite all these, the film manages to reach an optimistic conclusion.
The film is one element of The Future of Landscape and the Moving Image three-year research project which set out to explore received ideas about mobility, belonging and displacement in terms of landscape and images of landscape, in a context of economic and environmental change.
In addition to appearing twice at the Venice Film Festival this weekend the film will receive its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival in October before having a wider cinema release. The film will also screen at the New York Film Festival, the Viennale (Vienna, Oct 21-nov 3) and the Vancouver Film Festival. The London run begins on 19 November.
The film was made with the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Royal College of Art and the BFI.
Details of the Venice screening - http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/festival/lineup/off-sel/orizzonti/robinson.html
An interview with Patrick Keiller about the film can be viewed here http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-future-of-landscape-patrick-keiller/
Media Contact
Media Contact: Jake Gilmore, AHRC Communications Manager; T: 0797 099 4586,
E: j.gilmore@ahrc.ac.uk
Notes to Editors:
The Future of Landscape and the Moving Image: The project is a collaboration between four researchers – a geographer, Professor Doreen Massey of the Open University; a cultural historian, Professor Patrick Wright of Nottingham Trent University, a film-maker, Patrick Keiller of the Royal College of Art, and Matthew Flintham, doctoral researcher at the RCA – that sets out to locate economic, social and political aspects of the current global predicament in the UK's landscapes.
Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Each year the AHRC provides approximately £112 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and creative and performing arts. In any one year, the AHRC makes approximately 700 research awards and around 1,350 postgraduate awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.
The AHRC Landscape and Environment Research Programme aims to establish distinctive, innovative and engaging arts and humanities research perspective on landscape and environment through projects of the highest quality and international significance. Across the range of its activity, the Programme will draw on a range of disciplinary expertise and resources to produce work which is critical and creative, collaborative and communicative, and seeking to change the ways landscape and environment are understood. The Programme has a budget of £5.5 million and is running from 2005 to 2010.