Edith Walks

The future of human­i­ty will be okay as long as artist, film­mak­er and gala­vant­i­ng bohemi­an, Andrew Kötting, just keeps on keep­ing on. He’s Chaucer with an iPhone, cap­tur­ing the bruised land­scapes of Olde Albion and keep­ing record of his ram­bling, sham­bling pil­grim­ages, all in mem­o­ry of fall­en eccentrics.

This lat­est pays homage to one Edith Swan Neck, a melan­cholic damsel who made the jour­ney of 108 miles (as the crow flies) from Waltham Abbey in Essex to the south­ern coastal town of St Leonards-on-Sea. She was the wife of King Harold who, at the bat­tle of Hast­ings in 1066, famous­ly caught an arrow in his eye.

Among his mer­ry band of trav­ellers are: Clau­dia Bar­ton, a tat­tooed
torch singer who assumes the role of Edith; Kötting acolyte, psy­cho- geo­g­ra­ph­er and racon­teur, Iain Sin­clair; druidic com­ic artist Alan Moore; sound recordist Jem Fin­er; and drum­mer David Aylward.

Along the trail, yarns are woven, songs are sung, chants are chant­ed, stunts are pulled, mon­u­ments are revered and hand-stitched gar­ments are worn. Past and present clash in the dig­i­tal moment as Kötting has to explain the din he’s mak­ing to a pair of pass­ing bob­bies, both of whom seem gen­uine­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by him and the hand craft­ed rel­ic he’s wear­ing around his neck.

The dearth of rhyme or rea­son is what makes this film so cap­ti­vat­ing, but Kötting gen­er­ates mean­ing as he push­es towards his goal. His­tor­i­cal con­text is nudged to the fore, and the trav­ellers under­take the fun par­lour game of attempt­ing to sec­ond guess Edith’s mys­te­ri­ous moti­va­tions. As a sub­ject she remains as enig­mat­ic as she was before, maybe even more so.

As with all his films, Kötting cre­ates home­spun visu­al flour­ish­es though the choice of film stock (an 8mm film smart­phone app) and the sound design, which draws on archive tapes and lots of crack­le and hum. As a film it’s per­fect­ly imper­fect. Won­der if Kötting has ever con­sid­ered doing tours?