2010
Video HD 7 minutes
Pro Res 422(HQ) Size HD 1920x1080 – 16/9
London. With a backdrop of Canary Wharf and the new city skyline we look down upon a May Day Bank Holiday Fun Fair.
All of humanity is at play and we are reminded intermittently of timesgone as well as of times soontocome.
No film at the festival will have more relevance to current global events than Andrew Kötting's An History of Civilisation
(2011), in which the typically idiosyncratic director juxtaposes long
static shots of a children's May Day funfair in the shadow of the
skyscraping financial buildings of Canary Wharf with a soundtrack of
spoken readings of Mao Tse-Tung quotations interspersed with fairground
music. It is a piquant combination, and given the current apparent
crisis of capitalism, invites speculation about what kind of future
these children will inherit, or indeed take part in shaping themselves.
Brief Encounters Film Festival - Bristol
Camera Gary Parker
Sound and Edit Andrew Kötting
Quotations Mao Tse Tung read by Martin Donegan
