This is a Festival review of Thomas Dolby's film and performance The Invisible Lighthouse (2013)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
14 October
Even if I knew the career highs or fortunes of Thomas Dolby, it would be of more relevance to knowing what he played before his film and after the Q&A (through the fog of forgetting, I am fairly sure that he set the mood for his film with a couple of thoughtful instrumental numbers), which I cannot now say, than to reviewing the film component.
In fact, I remembered him more from the videos of a younger he that he showed at the end than from any prior associations with his name, but it was clear that he was confident with the event that he was putting on, and happily hosted his own Q&A, usefully prefacing the answers that he gave with a technical run-down of how filming had been carried out.
Lighthouses have not only been a theme for British commemorative stamps, but the recent campaign to save the one at Beachey Head has made them newsworthy, when – after all those Blue Peter visits, and clambers up spiral staircases to look at a lot of mirrors and a very bright bulb – we knew that they had mainly been converted to be automated beacons. I do not know in what way the Beachey Head lighthouse has been ‘saved, but Dolby’s, on an island off Orford Ness that he excitingly secretes himself on, was simply turned off.
We sense his passion at trying to find out what will happen. Since, although it is soon clear that he is very familiar with technology, but not with the grey bureaucracy of Trinity House, which will not give him an answer, frustrations arise.
Not only that, but the land-owner (once the Ministry of Defence) apparently, so he told us afterwards, went back on its arrangement to let him occupy some sort of shelter on the night of the switch-off by suddenly announcing a fee that would have made his entire film’s budget much higher and giving priority to BBC’s Look East (or similar) : Dolby seemed to have become just the nuisance to them that we maybe always thought that they did not conceal suggesting.
A theme that ran through the presentation was memory. The family has connections with the Suffolk coast that go back decades, and Dolby tells us how he remembers the beam of the lighthouse as part of his childhood, just as things such as foghorns can be, because it would shine on his bedroom wall – or that is how he recalls it. I say that, because Dolby draws attention to the discrepancy between having a memory, from home, of seeing the roof ablaze of the building at The Maltings at Snape first used as the concert hall by Benjamin Britten (it was rebuilt, and in record time), whereas his mother says that the family was away in Oxfordshire at the time of the fire.
Then, in Rendlesham Forest on a recce, he wonders how the beam that he can see there could possibly have been said to give rise to stories of an unidentifed craft, because it is so weak, and so clearly from a lighthouse. However, although aware that the beam was brighter then, he evinces extreme scepticism at the stories that are still being told, and the stories tottering on stories, which he finds constructed from previous sources. Applying a principle of doubt, when his own memory of Snape burning is discredited, seems not an unnatural approach to take, but this element did seem like a diversion.
The filming is of very good quality overall, but of varying narrative force, and Dolby talked about the quad-copter and how he was able to use it for his project, including having a fellow user hide in the dunes and film him when he did not think that he could do too many things at once on his expedition. Most strikingly, he showed us (from its perspective) flying it in the Concert Hall, just before introducing the element about memory.
Any notion that the film is a fixed piece of work is belied by what Dolby was quite clear to explain when he spoke, because he adjusts it when on the road in this tour, and can quite easily move things around, so, for example, he might have the question of how reliable his boyhood recollections are set in some other relation.
The moments that the film really built up to were those of sincere and honest quest. Dolby’s problems with the closure have been mentioned : having to film from the mainland and without knowing when it was to be (only that it would be when the daylight sensor switched off the beam), he captures the poignant final flashes from this island undergoing erosion :
All, too, that was involved in the clandestine attempts to get close to the lighthouse, despite unexploded bombs, and take photographs, all very carefully planned with the tide and his visibility, have the same personal energy and interest.
As part of an evening, with musical numbers proceeding, and Dolby’s highly proficient live programming of looping and sequencing software, which he used to synch the videos to the tracks that he was laying down, it had enough to cohere as a whole. What he might plan for the developing the film outside such venues, and without a stated ambition to become a filmmaker in any broader sense, is unclear.
However, it had been a successful project of documenting this history, after Dolby found that he did not like the look of footage that a freelance made of him. Quickly and realizing how relatively cheaply useful equipment can be bought, he has produced this creditable realization, and it ties in with how, at the time of perhaps greater career recognition, he had, as I learnt this evening, been innovative with various technologies.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
14 October
This is a Festival review of Thomas Dolby's film and performance The Invisible Lighthouse (2013)
Even if I knew the career highs or fortunes of Thomas Dolby, it would be of more relevance to knowing what he played before his film and after the Q&A (through the fog of forgetting, I am fairly sure that he set the mood for his film with a couple of thoughtful instrumental numbers), which I cannot now say, than to reviewing the film component.
In fact, I remembered him more from the videos of a younger he that he showed at the end than from any prior associations with his name, but it was clear that he was confident with the event that he was putting on, and happily hosted his own Q&A, usefully prefacing the answers that he gave with a technical run-down of how filming had been carried out.
Lighthouses have not only been a theme for British commemorative stamps, but the recent campaign to save the one at Beachey Head has made them newsworthy, when – after all those Blue Peter visits, and clambers up spiral staircases to look at a lot of mirrors and a very bright bulb – we knew that they had mainly been converted to be automated beacons. I do not know in what way the Beachey Head lighthouse has been ‘saved, but Dolby’s, on an island off Orford Ness that he excitingly secretes himself on, was simply turned off.
We sense his passion at trying to find out what will happen. Since, although it is soon clear that he is very familiar with technology, but not with the grey bureaucracy of Trinity House, which will not give him an answer, frustrations arise.
Not only that, but the land-owner (once the Ministry of Defence) apparently, so he told us afterwards, went back on its arrangement to let him occupy some sort of shelter on the night of the switch-off by suddenly announcing a fee that would have made his entire film’s budget much higher and giving priority to BBC’s Look East (or similar) : Dolby seemed to have become just the nuisance to them that we maybe always thought that they did not conceal suggesting.
A theme that ran through the presentation was memory. The family has connections with the Suffolk coast that go back decades, and Dolby tells us how he remembers the beam of the lighthouse as part of his childhood, just as things such as foghorns can be, because it would shine on his bedroom wall – or that is how he recalls it. I say that, because Dolby draws attention to the discrepancy between having a memory, from home, of seeing the roof ablaze of the building at The Maltings at Snape first used as the concert hall by Benjamin Britten (it was rebuilt, and in record time), whereas his mother says that the family was away in Oxfordshire at the time of the fire.
Then, in Rendlesham Forest on a recce, he wonders how the beam that he can see there could possibly have been said to give rise to stories of an unidentifed craft, because it is so weak, and so clearly from a lighthouse. However, although aware that the beam was brighter then, he evinces extreme scepticism at the stories that are still being told, and the stories tottering on stories, which he finds constructed from previous sources. Applying a principle of doubt, when his own memory of Snape burning is discredited, seems not an unnatural approach to take, but this element did seem like a diversion.
The filming is of very good quality overall, but of varying narrative force, and Dolby talked about the quad-copter and how he was able to use it for his project, including having a fellow user hide in the dunes and film him when he did not think that he could do too many things at once on his expedition. Most strikingly, he showed us (from its perspective) flying it in the Concert Hall, just before introducing the element about memory.
Any notion that the film is a fixed piece of work is belied by what Dolby was quite clear to explain when he spoke, because he adjusts it when on the road in this tour, and can quite easily move things around, so, for example, he might have the question of how reliable his boyhood recollections are set in some other relation.
The moments that the film really built up to were those of sincere and honest quest. Dolby’s problems with the closure have been mentioned : having to film from the mainland and without knowing when it was to be (only that it would be when the daylight sensor switched off the beam), he captures the poignant final flashes from this island undergoing erosion :
All, too, that was involved in the clandestine attempts to get close to the lighthouse, despite unexploded bombs, and take photographs, all very carefully planned with the tide and his visibility, have the same personal energy and interest.
As part of an evening, with musical numbers proceeding, and Dolby’s highly proficient live programming of looping and sequencing software, which he used to synch the videos to the tracks that he was laying down, it had enough to cohere as a whole. What he might plan for the developing the film outside such venues, and without a stated ambition to become a filmmaker in any broader sense, is unclear.
However, it had been a successful project of documenting this history, after Dolby found that he did not like the look of footage that a freelance made of him. Quickly and realizing how relatively cheaply useful equipment can be bought, he has produced this creditable realization, and it ties in with how, at the time of perhaps greater career recognition, he had, as I learnt this evening, been innovative with various technologies.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
