BURNING LAND (1978-80)

BURNING LAND
Film: Nick Emery
Sound: Robert Donnachie/Nick Emery
11' 21"
16mm Black & White
1978-80
'Burning Land' is a narrative film with an overt structuralist influence, an ethos which was inescapable when working out of the London Film Maker's Co-Op in the mid-to late 1970's. My own interpretation of Structuralism was about understanding the theory of film making and the rules and grammar surrounding composition, montage, etc.. then having learnt those rules being confident enough to break them and strike out on your own.
Basically, the film is: lonely girl who, for an unknown reason, is haunted by her past through looking at old photographs and journeys back overnight to her childhood home only to discover that it is now a derelict wreck. On her return she destroys the photographs in a cathartic destruction by fire with the intention of eliminating her past from the present and moving on with her life. The underlying inference of the narrative, if there is one: burn your bridges and don't look back. I have lived my life by this principal and have never regretted it.
'Burning Land' was particularly influenced by two films that I first saw as a first year student in 1976: Chris Marker's 'La Jettee' (1962) and 'Meshes Of The Afternoon' (1943) by Maya Deren and Alexander Hamid. I have images from both films and the subliminal effect they had on me at the time permanently burnt into my subconscious.