12 mins, Super8 transferred to DVD
Sound by Alex Gifford & James Telford
Shown as part of the film season Memory, War & Film Part II, at the Imperial War Museum, London, January 2006
Killing Fields is based on six minutes of super 8 film shot within the Picardy landscape, by the N44 between Reims and Laon. The camera eye follows the waving wheat fields set within the chequered historical landscape of Northern France. Literally a mirror image, the film starts with its end, and ends with its beginning.
Two sound tracks provoke two types of emotional response. Propellerheads’ Alex Gifford’s piano score leads us though the grassy swathes into seductive fields of poignant lyricism. Jamie Telford’s sound track, based on recordings of the Eurostar and Lille train station, offer another interpretation of the same subject. The waspish buzz and staccato crispness of rolling stock lend a malevolent air. The two halves together form a reflexive whole, a kind of abstract self-portrait as the artist’s mother is French, from Picardy. The undulating landscape forms an elegant visual narrative incorporating two opposing sound tracks. The endless life loop reflected through generations of genetic cocktails: rhythmic reiterations.
Sound Credits:
Alex Gifford, Take me down? © 2004 Chrysalis Records
Jamie Telford, Klangfarbenmelodie © 2004 Published by Luxury Noise