42 three stories from the journals of Stanton Hamer

February 2015
sewn booklet with wrappers
148mm x 210mm
28 pages

A collection of three stories transposed from the travel journals of one Stanton Hamer, unearthed from a box of unsorted papers won at auction. The tales – untitled in the original but which I have named …and They Danced, Sleep and Ribbon Bows – are set in 1950s France, where Hamer evidently travelled independently for some years.

(The stories are in fact fictional, as are the journals, as, for that matter, is Stanton Hamer, but the images – which inspired the book in the first place – are real, albeit scanned at a very high resolution from the 14mm x 12mm original transparencies found on a collection of French sterescope cards.)

cine-series 1-12

February 2015
140mm x 120mm
sewn booklets

Having spent the best part of twelve years writing and podcasting on a diverse range of film for MovieMail, Vertigo, Artesian, Second Run, the BFI and Borderlines Film Festival, I wanted to put together a valedictory series to all that, so I have collected together a few longer pieces written during that time – some previously published in somewhat altered form, others unpublished, nearly all with an element of poetry in their appreciation – and made a small 'cine-series' of 12 booklets. The films range in date from the silent era to the 21st century and are all linked by the single fact that they have touched me deeply in some way – deeply enough for their narratives to interweave with that of my own life, either directly or obliquely. The size and cover design tips the hat to those 1960s-70s 'Studio Vista' books on directors and film movements. The twelve titles in the series are Mother and Son (Alexandr Sokurov, 1997), Into Great Silence (Philip Gröning, 2005), Love (Károly Makk, 1971), Szindbád (Zoltan Huszárik, 1971), Alice in the Cities (Wim Wenders, 1974), Rapture by Tearlight: The Silent Cinema of Frank Borzage, Shame (Ingmar Bergman, 1968), L'Argent (Marcel L'Herbier, 1928), Palms (Artur Aristakisyan, 1994), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog, 2010), Patches of Prepared Darkness: Val Lewton's Cat People, and City Girl (FW Murnau, 1930). The cover image shown here is from Palms.