Channel Swimmer by Jane Glennie

Poet: | Nationality: | Filmmaker:

This author-made videopoem by British artist Jane Glennie was recently featured at Atticus Review. It’s kind of high-concept, but I think it works. Here’s the description from AR and Vimeo:

Channel Swimmer is a short ‘flicker’ film that examines repetitive and ambivalent relationships in matriarchal cycles through the generations from mother to daughter to mother. The film is inspired by two novels – ‘A Proper Marriage’ by Doris Lessing and ‘National Velvet’ by Enid Bagnold, and their main characters. Martha Quest in ‘A Proper Marriage’ is having her own child and questions the relationship between herself and her mother. While Velvet Brown is quietly encouraged by her mother (who is the ‘Channel Swimmer’ of the title – as those who swim the English Channel to France are known) in ‘National Velvet’, the climax of which is when the protagonist wins the famous Grand National steeplechase. The words in the soundtrack are collaged from these two books. The film is made from hundreds of original photographs taken on location on a racecourse and in the studio.

Atticus Review, incidentally, unveiled a spiffy new site design a month or two back, and the editors are always looking for good mixed media submissions. Be sure to bookmark and check the site regularly.

One Comment

  1. Reply

    […] to explore. In fact this was my route into poetry film before I knew it existed as a genre. Channel Swimmer was my first film, and it was made with texts extracted from two novels. Often a very successful […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.