Silver Street

　　I made this film as a student at Reading University where for two years I lived above an old shop, “Bill’s Bargain Shop” on Mount Pleasant, otherwise known as the Basingstoke road (A33). It’s the first properly shot an...展开d edited film I made. More precisely, it’s the first film in which the camera is pointed at the world, and thus in which framing, considerations of rhythm and duration, and structure come shockingly to the fore.
　　I was struck by the contrasts between the room and the street immediately outside, visible through two relatively large windows, so that the outside seemed to encroach on my personal space. At the same time I understood that the windows were also screens and permeable membranes of a sort. The film arose from these perceptions, and from the question of what strategy to use to make the work, how to organise material. The film turned out to be a template for many of my subsequent films, although it took me at least two years to realise that this could be the case.