No Flaming House
collaborative moving image
12:25
2021
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 its 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.
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
Filmed at
The Farmers Arms, Lowick Green
The National Trust’s Allan Bank, Grasmere
Executive producer
Grizedale Arts
With thanks and support from
Emma Sumner
Adam Sutherland
Harvey Wilkinson
The National Trust
Film & Video Unit, Central Saint Martins
Jo Evans & Chris Speakman