All This Can Happen
9 – 15 June
2012, 50 mins, HD, 16:9, colour, sound
SYNOPSIS
“I have to report that one fine morning, as the desire to take a walk came over me, I put my hat on my head, left my writing room or room of phantoms and ran down the stairs to hurry out into the street…”
All This Can Happen is constructed from archive photographs and footage from the earliest days of cinema. Based on Robert Walser’s novella ‘The Walk’ (1917), the film follows the footsteps of the protagonist as a series of small adventures and chance encounters take the walker from idiosyncratic observations of ordinary events towards a deeper pondering on the comedy, heartbreak and ceaseless variety of life. Juxtapositions, different speeds and split frame techniques convey the walker’s state of mind as he encounters a world of hilarity, despair and ceaseless variety.
One important inspiration is the nineteenth-century scientist Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904), whose work represents one of the earliest attempts to record movement photographically. “Each individual frame in a Marey sequence has its own character” says Siobhan Davies. “This led us to much experimentation with the tension between the stillness of a single frame and the movement in a sequence of frames. The constant interplay between stillness and movement is a distinctive aspect of the style of our film.”
“What interests us most of all is counterpoint: creating different rhythms and meanings through the juxtaposition of one thread of sound or imagery against another. We want to show how observation and fantasy, memory and speculation can all co-exist in the same mind at the same time, so that we create a ‘psychological 3D’ or ‘cubist’ portrait of a mind.” David Hinton.
EXTRACTS FROM THE WALK
Courtesy of Profile Books Limited
Public Houses – “Later I arrived at all sorts of public houses, which produce consequences which everyone knows. Even the most virtuous person cannot dispute the fact that he is never master of certain improprieties. Luckily, however, one is of course, human, and as such easily pardonable.”
An Inexpressible Feeling for the World – “I stood and listened, and suddenly there came upon me an inexpressible feeling for the world, and, together with it, a feeling of gratitude, which broke powerfully out of my soul.”
Every Smallest Living Thing – “With the utmost love and attention the man who walks must study and observe every smallest living thing. The highest and the lowest, the most serious and the most hilarious things are to the walker equally beloved, beautiful and valuable.”
All This Can Happen – “Do you think it quite impossible that on a gentle walk I should meet giants, do business with booksellers, dine at noon with intelligent ladies, stroll through woods, dispatch dangerous letters, and come to wild blows with spiteful, ironic master tailors? All this can happen, and I believe it actually did happen.”
All Things Must Pass – “So then everything, everything, all this rich life, the friendly thoughtful colours, this delight, this joy and pleasure in life, all these human meanings, family, friend and beloved, this bright, tender air full of divinely beautiful images, houses of fathers, houses of mothers, and dear gentle roads, must one day pass away and die, the high sun, the moon, and the hearts and eyes of men.”
DIRECTORS’ BIOGRAPHIES
Siobhan Davies
A British choreographer, founder and artistic director of Siobhan Davies Dance. Siobhan has created over 40 works to critical acclaim (having twice twice an Olivier Award, and amongst others, Digital Dance Awards and a South Bank Show Award). She began dancing while a student at Art College and soon joined London Contemporary Dance Theatre, founding in 1982 the influential company Second Stride with Richard Alston and Ian Spink. Her curiosity has led her to extend her work through relationships with film, visual arts and crafts. She has commissioned films by dance and visual artists including Idris Khan and Sarah Warsop, Marcus Coates and Henry Montes and Lucy Skaer and Gill Clarke. Siobhan Davies Dance was formed in 1988 and in 2006 moved to the RIBA award-winning Siobhan Davies Studios.
David Hinton
A British film director who has twice won BAFTA awards for his documentaries. His dance films have also won many awards, including a Prix Italia, an Emmy and the IMZ Dance Screen Award. He worked for ten years on the ITV arts programme The South Bank Show, where he made documentaries about artists of all kinds, including painter Francis Bacon, film-maker Bernardo Bertolucci, writer Alan Bennett, and rock and roller Little Richard. He has also made films about Dostoyevsky, visual comedy, and the Cultural Revolution in China. He is well known in the dance world for Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men and Strange Fish, his film versions of stage shows by DV8 Physical Theatre. He has also directed television films with Adventures in Motion Pictures, the Alvin Ailey Company and the Royal Swedish Ballet, and he has collaborated with several choreographers to create original dance works for the screen. He teaches dance film workshops all over the world.
THANKS
Robyn Cabaret, Siobhan Davies Dance.
The production of the film was supported by Arts Council England and the Siobhan Davies Commissioning Fund, in partnership with the British Film Institute.