The Kestrel at Caught by the River

CAUGHT BY THE RIVER

OBSERVATIONS FROM ISFRYN | THE KESTREL

A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN

"What is?"

"The Kestrel is", I said.

The Kestrel is back.

It's been absent from this corner of the common for two years now. Its return is reassuring.

Filmed in mid Wales, September 2018.

Music by Chequerboard.

The music can be bought here:
chequerboard.com

ISFRYN which translates from the Welsh as 'under the bank' refers to an area of ancient common land and neighbouring fields in mid Wales.

This is an ongoing project that offers an opportunity to capture extended moments - observations - of both wildlife and farming within the landscape they both inhabit.

You can visit ISFRYN here.

FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN

LAPWINGS AT CATCOTT TOURING WITH ARTS À BORD ALONG THE CANAL DU MIDI, FRANCE

Arts à Bord

LAPWINGS AT CATCOTT

A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN

"I could not recommend this lovely film more highly. Take out five minutes from the hurly burly and bring yourself some joy."

Mark Cocker, Author and Naturalist (Birds and People, Crow Country)

O LAPWING! thou fliest around the heath,    
Nor seest the net that is spread beneath.    
Why dost thou not fly among the corn fields?    
They cannot spread nets where a harvest yields.    
 
by William Blake.

The Lapwing Act 1926, preventing the large scale collection of eggs, reversed the Lapwings UK decline. However, more recent large scale changes in farming practice have further pressured numbers. With recent interventions, and the returning of land to a more natural state will the Lapwing recover to the numbers William Blake observed in his poem O LAPWING?

1, TWO, III at CAUGHT BY THE RIVER

CAUGHT BY THE RIVER

OBSERVATIONS FROM ISFRYN | 1, TWO, III

A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN

"Speculative", was my answer to the question "what are you filming".

I am not instinctively a species counter. I am a watcher though. Savouring moments.

On my rounds of the field I had noticed the flock gathered at the corner of the common. It's out of the wind here. Winter has been late and there hasn't been room in the sheds for these expectant mothers. Each day there numbers have swelled as their lambs have been born in the open. But unlike those born lower down these lambs have no coloured dye donating ownership. They are optic white and share that colour with the underside of the hares that also live in this corner of the common.

Filmed in mid Wales, April 2018.

Music by Phaeleh.

The music can be bought here:
phaeleh.co.uk

FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN

RAISING THE HARE AT CAUGHT BY THE RIVER

CAUGHT BY THE RIVER

RAISING THE HARE

A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN

"I thought I could almost see myself in the hare’s eye, it was that close.”

Featuring two Welsh voices of the landscape: the musician John Cale, who reads Seamus Heaney's translation of The Names of the Hare and the artist Paul Emmanuel who describes an encounter he had with a hare from horseback, the film looks at the entanglement between a hare, a farmer and the livestock that coexist within a field.

The Names of the Hare (written in the late thirteenth century) is attributed to a Shropshire family on the Welsh borders. It describes itself as the 77 names you should say to a hare to avoid bad luck if you happen to come across one.

My observations of hares are often fleeting. I would be lucky to say only one of the 77 names before it bounded away through the grass and ringed the hill.

Filmed in mid Wales, between June and September 2017.

Music by Olan Mill.

FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN

LAPWINGS AT CATCOTT SELECTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ORNITHOLOGICAL FILM OF MENIGOUTE 2017

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ORNITHOLOGICAL FILM

LAPWINGS AT CATCOTT

A FILM BY BEVIS BOWDEN

"I could not recommend this lovely film more highly. Take out five minutes from the hurly burly and bring yourself some joy."

Mark Cocker, Author and Naturalist (Birds and People, Crow Country)

O LAPWING! thou fliest around the heath,    
Nor seest the net that is spread beneath.    
Why dost thou not fly among the corn fields?    
They cannot spread nets where a harvest yields.    
 
by William Blake.

The Lapwing Act 1926, preventing the large scale collection of eggs, reversed the Lapwings UK decline. However, more recent large scale changes in farming practice have further pressured numbers. With recent interventions, and the returning of land to a more natural state will the Lapwing recover to the numbers William Blake observed in his poem O LAPWING?

The Catcott Lows on the Somerset Levels is part of the largest wet meadow system in Britain and forms a part of the Avalon marshes. It is a landscape that is resolutely leaking back into its natural state. During the winter this landscape becomes the home to Lapwings and, the focus of my film.

As you stare across the waterlogged landscape and, watch the Lapwings flock, the origin of their name becomes evident - from the Old English hleapewince 'to leap and wink'. There are reverberations of the past here, the Tor at Glastonbury is a constant reminder of this.

Filmed at Catcott Nature Reserve Somerset, February 2017.

Music by Greg Haines.

FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN

FILMED BY BEVIS BOWDEN | MELANIE MANCHOT'S TRACER

Tracer forms part of the Transient Spaces exhibition at Parafin, London and marks Melanie's Manchot's debut at Parafin.

"Of all the artists in this show, Baudelaire would surely have preferred the German-born photographer and film-maker Melanie Manchot. Manchot goes straight for the transient and contingent with a three-screen installation that moves through the modern city like a high-speed flaneur. Set in different parts of Newcastle, this epic film follows a group of free runners practising parkour, running through streets, along ledges, across bridges and roofs – tracing the lineaments of the city with their feet.

Manchot has been shortlisted for this year’s Derek Jarman award for art films and it’s no surprise. This study of mankind’s movement through the modern city – as the crow flies, and with absolute freedom – mesmerises."

Laura Cumming, The Guardian.

observations from ISFRYN | the view

"I have been watching this view since I was a boy".

Filmed in mid Wales, between November 2016 and January 2017.

Music by Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker.

FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN

observations from ISFRYN | the pool

"I accepted the invite".

The pool is ordinarily hidden from view. Its existence is a topographical surprise. Lying directly behind the farm, approximately 4 acres of water almost touches the sky. It's the cross road for many ecologies.

Filmed in mid Wales, November 2016.

Music by Olan Mill.

FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN

observations from ISFRYN | the hare

"This is the first story from ISFRYN".

I had always hoped a hare may live in the field. I came across it by chance. I was looking for the tawny owl who had been roosting in a neighbouring horse-chestnut tree all summer and there in the long grass of its shade it was.

Filmed in mid Wales, September 2016.

Music by Lisa Knapp.

FILMED AND EDITED BY BEVIS BOWDEN