Film: Secretly sharing the landscape with the living
/Secretly sharing the landscape with the living: A film by Martin A. Smith
Filmed on The Icknield Way, The Chiltern Hills, Buckinghamshire
Following in the footsteps of Edward Thomas
In 1911 Edward Thomas walked The Icknield Way, an ancient pathway that he called “a shining serpent in the wet”. It runs from the Dorset coast to Norfolk, although as Thomas declared “I could not find a beginning or an ending to The Icknield Way. It is thus a symbol of mortal things with their beginnings and ends always in immortal darkness.”
This film shows a stretch of The Icknield Way that runs through the Chiltern Hills, near Princes Risborough. It is an area I know well, the path passes by a village where I used to live, and was filmed in the Winter of 2016.
Martin A. Smith is a composer, artist and curator whose work is concerned with the spirit of place and the creation and reflection of atmosphere. He creates immersive, multi-layered pieces that reinterpret or enhance our emotional response to the nature of place, memory and environment. He has created gallery installations and has written music for film, television, theatre and contemporary dance and is currently working on an audio/visual study of a small village in the South of France and a sound exhibition reflecting the English countryside.