Documentary in the Digital Age by Baker Maxine

Author:Baker, Maxine [Baker, Maxine]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Simon Armitage

The film opens with a montage of drugged-up young people, partying. A male voice-over explains how he loves taking drugs. The man then appears, in close-up, telling us the drugs he takes. Up comes the title, over an exterior shot of a pub at night. So far, so conventional. The next shot is the first of the cityscapes and it is daylight. A male voice with a strong northern accent then cuts through the background electronic music. The delivery is short, staccato, with the greatest emphasis always on the name of the town. This is the poet Simon Armitage with his very personal view of the Yorkshire capital:

Leeds. Where the M1 does its emergency stop

And the lines of houses fall into line and number off – acting their age.

And the roads go round in rings

Or spider off like varicose veins.

The poem continues over a variety of images of the city and develops into an imaginary world which the poet develops from the unrelated images that are presented in montage form. Brian Hill picks out this section as being the unique combination of montage and poetry, a reality which Armitage interprets, purely from his own imagination. Shots of ordinary-looking houses are followed by a woman walking with a child up a hill. A cat wanders into the undergrowth. A boy plays with his dogs. More traffic. A kid rides a bike by a playing field. The poet says:

Leeds on a Saturday afternoon, beginning to cool

Leeds in a different light

A Leeds of the mind.

Where a woman drags a kid up the north face of the great pyramid

And a Bengal tiger disappears into the foliage

And a boy trains dogs for the Chinese state circus

A motorcade speeds down the Avenue of the Americas

And a boy rides a bike through the goalposts and out of the known universe.

The film shows us an evening in the life of four characters. They are all introduced with poetic voice-over. We first saw the druggie, Ian, in the pre-title sequence. Now we meet Jackie, a middle-class southerner who ‘came up from the smoke and can't get the hang of it’. She is preparing for a dinner party and ‘making a meal of it’. The third character is Mike, who owns a carpet-selling business. He is ‘a household name in the parish of Leeds’. He is a millionaire with a mansion and indoor swimming pool. Finally we see a transvestite, preparing for a night out. In a parody of the Kinks' classic song, Armitage says, ‘She's not the world's most passionate guy, but there's more to Lola than meets the eye.’

The film follows the lives of the four characters through a typical weekend evening. At the end a complex, skilfully edited sequence brings together the ideas and emotions which have previously been expressed, including the highly atmospheric, non-human presence, the city of Leeds itself. This is a visually complex montage, owing something in its editing style to the pop video. Super8 film footage is mixed with 16 mm and an air of unreality prevails.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.