We have an anchor… Arcadia (2018) out now on BFI DVD

"It’s a country which for centuries has enjoyed a special fame, there’s nowhere else like it on Earth…"

A few seem to have confused this film with a conservative view of old England but the more I view Arcadia the more it’s clearly a call to ground ourselves: the answer being “in the soil” and not the rituals and hierarchies that have developed around ownership and those who work on the land.

Paul Wright’s Arcadia is interpretable as a political film and definitely a post-Brexit one, but it’s deeper than even that as it references people being disconnected from the land by aggressive owners for whom sentimental connections are to profit and not place.

But Arcadia is subtler than propaganda and allows the viewer to make their own mind up – would you rather be dancing on the rocks by yourself or in the city amongst the crush; would you rather be dancing in a crowd or charged by police on a march? The film is full of stark juxtapositions but always with the reservation that “olden times” were often ‘orrific times, there’s always a chilling moment to pop the rose-coloured bubble.

Arcadia is not a gentle compilation of nice old images but there’s undoubtedly hope amongst the oft-quoted folk-horror. How can there not be with the uncanny power of Anne Brigg’s glorious vocals demonstrating the purity of honest human expression and a score from Will Gregory and Adrian Utley that is so well referenced tonally. I love the sequence where three young tykes roll down a slope on their favourite trespass spot and suddenly we have a glam rock beat - it’s 1972-cheeky!

“Does your mum know you play down here?”

“She will do wi’you lot showin’ this on telly!”

Gregory (from Goldfrapp) and Utley (Portishead) have experience of lengthy composition from their magnificent work on Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and with a song-track from Wright to guide them, set about interpreting his film with a mix of modern and traditional instrumentation along with found sounds and music. As I’ve said before, Anne Briggs’ songs are the soul of the score and Uttley was able to contact her through contemporary Norma Waterson (wife of Martin Carthy and Eliza Carthy’s mum!) in her rural Scottish retreat, she hasn’t performed since the early 70s but gave her permission for three songs to be used.

Apart from sending a chill down my spine every time I hear her sing, Briggs gives Arcadia a deep connection all of her own – few have channelled folk spirit like she has. But the composers wanted to respond to what Utley calls a “sensory journey” with a variety of styles and genres and so, whilst we also have Becky Unthank’s modern folk purity there’s also Daniel Avery’s stunning Drone Logic – techno/IDM or whatever you kids call this stuff nowadays – accompanying raves of all ages.

The dance is a key part of Arcadia and whether it’s acid house, punk, Morris or psychedelia we all love to move, hitting down on the ground in eternal rhythms, a little faster here and there but essentially the same animal celebration. Sometimes we dance for the May Queen, or we fling burning barrels at the Beltane fire festival, we dance in protest but mostly we dance to connect.

Wright says he always tries to use images from “all angles and even from different states…” he didn’t want to show just filmed theatre. His source material was a mix of documentary and drama with films like Herostratus (1967), Winstanley (1975) and Anchoress (1993) mixed in carefully so as not to drag the narrative off course. Literally thousands of films were considered and around 100 made the film with Cecil Hepworth’s Alice in Wonderland (1903) and A Day in The Hayfields (1904) being amongst the earliest. Hippies old and younger are featured from Pioneers of Nudism (1938) to Tribe of the Sun (1972) and there are dark tones indeed from An Untitled Film (1967) and The Watchers (1969).

Whilst Arcadia is, as the BFI’s Archive Projects Co-ordinator, Simon McCallum says, “…one of the most ambitious and painstaking exercises in archival repurposing to date…” it also makes you want to seek out more of these source films.

I’ve already ordered the BFI DVD of Chris Newby’s The Anchoress (1993) which is used to bookend Arcadia – it’s a tale of religious ecstasy in 14^th century Surrey and stars Natalie Morse, Toyah Willcox, Pete Postlethwaite and Christopher Eccleston buy it!

Natalie Morse in The Anchoress

In short, Arcadia is *exactly* the kind of thing you’d hope the BFI would do: a film that highlights the wealth of content in its archive and which makes something bold, beautiful and new. It’s challenging and sometimes disturbing but if we’re not disturbed we’re sometimes only sleeping.

Arcadia is available now on BFI DVD and comes complete with a handsome illustrated booklet featuring writing by Simon McCallum, Stanley Donwood and Adrian Utley, director Paul Wright interviewed by Adam Scovell, and film credits – fascinating for those trying to play spot-the-clip although it doesn’t list them all.

There are some fascinating extras too including the trailer, a post-screening Q&A at BFI Southbank with Paul Wright, Adrian Utley and Will Gregory, some great silent shorts including ''Oppin' Makes You Earty!' (1925) about hop-picking in Kent and coverage of Shetland's Up Helly Aa in Old Norse Vikings Festival (1927).

Also featured is Once We Were Four... (1942) a potential Watership-downer for young rabbits plus Peter and Ruby (1973) traditional Dartmoor farmers facing up to modern life: what happened after them?

You can and must order it from the BFI Shop online or otherwise!

“She realised that answer lay within her all along… everything is connected… the past is gone, the future’s unwritten…”