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See examples of Toby's work:
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Can you tell us about a film you have shown at the Electric Palace or at our film festival?
In 2017 I was invited to read a poem or short story which would compliment a screening of my film Mental Space. Made in 2014, Mental Space was a direct attempt to convey the inner workings of the visionary imagination, inspired in part by Coleridge’s Romantic fantasias Kubla Khan (published 1816) and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (published 1798). Mental Space aimed to channel the peculiar atmosphere of these strange poems and their intoxicating vistas of exotic mystery.
The film invites immersion onto a dreamed-up Otherworld where visions of coral-like foliage, fiery chasms, emerald jungles and magic flowers proliferate. To accompany the film’s screening at the Electric Palace I chose to read Byron’s poem Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed From a Skull (1808). The poem offered a different, but complimentary, perspective on the mysterious contents of our cranial recesses.
Do you remember a moment when your love for the moving image was sparked?
Yes, it was watching the film programme Moviedrome, on BBC2. Movidrome, the creation of producer Nick James, began in 1988, and was presented, in its first few seasons, by the film-maker Alex Cox. Moviedrome beamed forth a series of cult broadcasts, showing films that, in that pre-internet age, would have been otherwise inaccessible to many viewers.
After recently unearthing my copies of the old BBC Moviedrome Guides, which the BBC issued to accompany the series, I’m again convinced how fortunate I was to have been able to watch so many of these then obscure films during those one-off television broadcasts. Many of the films that Moviedrome screened I love to this day, including John Boorman’s magical Excalibur (1981) and Ken Russell's delirious Gothic (1986). It was after emerging from Moviedrome that I made the decision to directly engage with the cinematic culture that had so transfixed me.
For more information on Moviedrome I recommend visiting this comprehensive fan site: https://moviedromer.tumblr.com/
Can you tell us about a film that you would have liked to have made?
I’m choosing The Indeserian Tablets, a film by the American artist Peter Rose. To me, this work has the appearance of a documentary made in a parallel universe. In this film unearthly lights illuminate alien architecture whilst fleeting ghost-forms writhe on surveillance footage. Rose’s marvellous images are also coupled with an extraordinarily ominous sound design and some indecipherable, if strangely comic, texts. A masterpiece.
See a version of The Indeserian Tablets online.
What does filmmaking offer you as an artist?
The mechanics for summoning temporal phantoms as airy and insubstantial as a dream.
Is there something you try to subvert, avoid or rebel against in your work?
I’m making work that sits deliberately outside the dominant narrative tradition. Whilst I love narrative film, I’m aware that there are other potentials lurking within the medium and that the mechanics of cinema can be used in all sorts of other ways. For me, it is in the experimental film subculture where these alternative visions are most uncompromisingly conjured.
How do you plan your work – with a script, storyboard or another method?
I don’t plan anything really, the work is made fairly intuitively, guided only by a few jottings in a notebook.
Do you need to collaborate to make your work?
I work with a composer called Abi Fry, who has scored almost all of my films. Abi’s sounds seem to have a symbiotic relationship with the images with which they intertwine, rather than a direct, causal link. They deepen the work immeasurably. To produce this sound world Abi has worked with musical saws, singing bowls, synthesisers, harps, violas and field recordings.
For my film The Loom (2018) Abi employed an Aeolian harp. The Aeolian harp is an instrument played solely by the wind and the sounds that emanate from it seem to issue from another world.
Has living in Hastings influenced your work?
Yes, absolutely. It was only after I moved to Hastings over a decade ago that I began to make the work that, I think, really reflected my imagination. Almost all of my work is filmed in Hastings, either in Blacklands where I live, or further afield, out in the wilds. I suspect I’m not the only filmmaker to have been changed by the town and its surroundings.
A few years ago, at one of Mark French’s regular Hastings Filmmakers screenings, I had the impression that many of the films shown, mine included, seemed like expressions of Hastings itself - as if the the town was actively shaping the films, channelling itself through the medium of the receptive film-maker.
Is there a difference in producing films for a large screen or making work for online viewing?
Whilst I love screening my films at the cinema, I’m also aware that a lot of the people that watch my films do so at home, on a computer screen. For me, the idea of connecting with this anonymous and geographical diffuse audience online has immense appeal. That being said, my work is made with the cinema in mind. It is at the cinema where the true power of the medium is unleashed.
Have developments in camera technology changed the way you work?
Yes, absolutely. Like many filmmakers, it was the advent of affordable, easy-to-use, video cameras that enabled me create my films, along with the ability to edit work over an extended period in my own home. That said, the entry-level digital technology I use can be fallible. In the past, a whole film of mine was cast into limbo after a ill-timed hard-drive malfunction. This temporality seems key to cinema though, as well as to life in general, where everything, no matter how solid or seemingly permanent, will eventually be erased.
Do live audiences in a cinema matter to you?
No amount of home streaming can really compete with the cinema and the sense of occasion engendered by watching films as part of an enraptured audience.
Can you tell us about an unusual event where you have screened your work or attended a film screening?
In 1996 Cronenberg’s Crash hit UK cinemas, its arrival heralded by heated tabloid controversy and panicked attempts to ban the film. The film, an adaptation of the 1973 novel by J.G. Ballard, explores the niche world of car crash enthusiasts, for whom the potent energies unleashed by traffic accidents are linked to the freeing of a new, emergent sexuality.
The screening I attended was on National Cinema Day, a short-lived initiative where all cinemas priced their tickets at £1.00. Inside, the auditorium was crammed with drunken revellers who proceeded to cheer delightedly along with the film’s bizarre sexual imagery. From today’s perspective, Crash might be seen to represent the ecstatic, death-embracing climax of the motor car, a genuine love letter to one of the most iconic symbols of the 20th Century.
What continues to inspire you as a filmmaker or artist?
Back in 2013 I had a dream in which a lizard appeared to me, posing amid a scintillating grove of prismatic shimmering foliage. The reptile emerged from the uncharted recesses of the dreaming mind to impart a message, clearly indicating a direction for my future work. The creature dwelt on matters of time, encouraging me to expand my work into larger time scales.
I’ve subsequently followed the beast’s instructions and stayed true to the dream. Today, the impression created by this nocturnal visitant has yet to dissipate and I suspect it still lurks there, waiting among eternal foliage, abiding beyond the conscious threshold.