Film and the Dartington Experience

Abstract

This project is a study of Dartington under the leading question "What is Dartington?' and comprises a number of interlinked methodological phases of enquiry. The first explores Dartington's use of film as a process of documenting its experimental activities, and as a commercial product in the form of the films made and distributed by the Dartington Hall Film Unit. The second strategy engages with archive film materials in the production of compilation videos, which were then developed into a series of Photoworks designed to facilitate a personal interpretation of its particular history. The third approach resulted in the production of three forty minute videos {After the Facts 2003) which articulate an understanding of Dartington's history of engagement with film, a personal experimental engagement with filmmaking, and an interrogation of the possibilities of applying a particular reading of the experimental ethos of Dartington to a filmic practice. A pervading concern has been with the mythic nature of Dartington during the inter-war years and the function of the filmic form in myth generation and perpetuation. The final part of the project presents an overview of these strategies, assessing their successes and limitations. By the ordering of the visual archive, the creative juxtaposition of historic and contemporary images in the Photoworks, and the interfacing of place and self in After the Facts the intention has been to show the ways in which a creative practice has been able to understand Dartington as a changing and variable experience.