Philip Speakman
 

No Flaming House

collaborative moving image

12:25

2021

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Developed through workshops with local teenagers, No Flaming House, employs Lakeland philosopher R G Collingwood’s idea of ‘historical imagination' to reconstruct the events around a rumoured plan to burn down a manor house in the English Lake District in the 1990’s. 

 

Employing documentary methods to mine what truths a society expresses in it's rumours, No Flaming House was devised, filmed and performed by local young people through workshops with assistance from Jess Heritage as part of a young persons summer film school at Grizedale Art’s The Farmers Arms.

 

The film explores themes of national heritage and cultural identity, youth rebellion, rumour and romanticism, and filmmaking’s capacity as a tool for investigations at the boundary of the historical and the romantic imaginary. The work was filmed on location at Allan Bank, a property now managed by the National Trust which was once home to Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, before becoming a film set for Ken Russell and a hippy commune in the 70’s, histories the film wilfully entwines itself within in.

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Made by and featuring

Bella Yoeman

Billy Kemp

Joseph Barnes

Francis Morgan

Iris Morgan

Rudy Morgan

 

Through workshops run with

Jess Heritage

 

Title art

Billy Kemp

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Filmed at

The Farmers Arms, Lowick Green

The National Trust’s Allan Bank, Grasmere

 

With thanks and support from

Emma Sumner

Adam Sutherland

Harvey Wilkinson

The National Trust

Film & Video Unit, Central Saint Martins

Jo Evans & Chris Speakman

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Workshops at the Farmer's Arms, Lowick Green, and Allan Bank, Grasmere.