photo: Marc Vallée
AT 3AM THESE SECRETS EXPIRE
Precursor, 2013
'You couldn’t really not dig it. Last month I went to the first London screening of James Batley’s Kneel Through the Dark. It was at the Bunker, Dalston, which was a fair bit better than it might sound. For a start, the Bunker is (or was) an actual WWII bunker, with stinking rotting walls lined—for the occasion—with guttering sputtering candles. Then there was the rain, a mighty downpour above ground that the ceiling only filtered through its filth, so that it sluiced dirtily down, refilling drinks gratis and forming such large puddles about the film gear that the nerves of the sodden audience were soon getting quite lustily strummed by the dual threat of flood and fire. Meanwhile Batley himself—great name!—flitted (or flapped) hither and thither in a splendid black cape.
'As for Kneel Through the Dark itself, the short, Crowley-inspired film left an impression more physical than mental. A bassline clawed nastily at your stomach, while the images—a turning torso of technicolour smoke; a submerged face; a boy crowned with antlers—flashed by.'-- Thomas McGrath, Dangerous Minds
Kneel Through The Dark Trailer
Kneel Through The Dark Excerpt for Dangerous Minds Blog
'A short film; more of a half-remembered dreamscape.
A feeling that you just can’t shake throughout the day, leaving you with a sense of foreboding for the coming of a new night.
The glimpse out of the corner of your eye, the movement in the shadows. Just out of reach, like every yesterday; but as tangible and familiar as the taste of blood from a bitten tongue.
An ancient incantation, a call to arms.
A swooning, balletic and menacing opus to the power of memory, the ambiguous search for meaning… and the triumph of hope?'
Bad Owl And The Fox Boy - Trailer
'A short experimental film using animal totems and occult magick to exhibit and effect transformation “as above, so below” augmented by a jarring ritualistic soundtrack.'
The subterranean chamber for the Kneel Through The Dark screening in Dalston, London. Friday 13th September 2013
Thomas McGrath: Loved the screening. I found the atmosphere and setting to be a part of the film, rather than extraneous to it. How important is it to you where you show a film?
James Batley: Ah thanks. The environment definitely adds an extra dimension. When I first walked down those stairs and saw how the bunker sucked in light, the stale air choked my lungs and rancid water dripped through my eyelashes. I was like… this is perfect
Thomas McGrath: Could you think of some kind of ideal setting or circumstance?
James Batley: I’d love to do a screening in a burning building.
Thomas McGrath: Tell us a bit about Kneel Through the Dark?
James Batley: It’s my second short film shot on Super 8 that features an Aleister Crowley magick ritual but it’s about a lot more than that. It’s a bit like a spell that buries into your subconscious and pushes your whiskers to the ether.
Thomas McGrath: Go on, unpick its symbolism for us a bit…
James Batley: I don’t like to break it down too much. I hate going to an art show where the plaque on the wall tells me more about the art than the piece does or just spells it all out arbitrarily. Why’d you create something when you could have told me on a postcard? I don’t like to be lead around and told what to think. Art is ultimately subjective anyway. Anything you connect with is because it relates to your own experiences or self in some way, no matter how coded or buried in your subconscious it is.
Thomas McGrath: Would you draw any distinction between ritual and art?
James Batley: Art is magick in the Crowley sense. When you listen to a piece of music, watch a film or whatever, it is momentarily possessing you, directing your mood and bending you to its will.
Thomas McGrath: How did you come to make films?
James Batley: I I just see it as a way of communicating. Language can be clumsy and fraudulent so I threw up some sound and light to try and express something that gets lost in words. I tried photography for this but found it wasn’t enough. Sound is better but put them together and you have something really potent.
Thomas McGrath: Tell us about the Crowley influence.
James Batley: He made his own way in. I’m an aerial for this stuff. It’s important to be a conduit.
Thomas McGrath: I understand you’re very fond of your cat. How would you describe your cat in five words?
James Batley: Nippett. Will. Eat. Your. Brains.
Thomas McGrath: Crowley has a bad reputation among cat lovers usually, right?
James Batley: Well, yea. He has a bad reputation generally.
Thomas McGrath: Got a new project in mind/motion?
James Batley: I’m planning out my next short at the moment. It involves a boy who buries dead bees in the park and draws maps to their corpses. It’s autobiographical. It has meteors too.
satan is boring, 2008
^^^, 2011
er, 2008
glossy mew, 2010
"Glimpse Of An Untamed World" Test Footage (NSFW-ish)
Kneel Through The Dark Premiere at Cannes Film Festival 19th May 2013 at 15:15
'Self-taught British filmmaker James Batley's first short Bad Owl and the Fox Boy screened at Cannes in 2011, and he recently went back with his second Kneel Through the Dark. His colour-drenched experiments - shot on Super 8 - elegantly lace together oneiric soundscapes, animal totems and occult motifs with an instinctual understanding of rhythm.
'"When I started I didn't even have a computer to edit with” he says when we meet at his east London home. “I'd just record onto VHS and film it back through the TV." His room teems with subtly discernible animal forms, from a door-stopper cloaked in cats' faces to a pink bedside pigeon-lamp and a stag's skull on the record-player. A creature on the wall inspired his first film: "My friend brought back this amazing postcard of a badly stuffed owl from the Florence Nightingale Museum - an owl Florence had rescued that had fallen out of a tree. She kept it in her pocket and when she went to the Crimean War it died. If Florence Nightingale leaves you you're pretty fucked."
'Kneel Through the Dark references legendary English occultist and libertine Aleister Crowley. "I'm not really into his religion or philosophy but I find him an appealing character," Batley says. "All ‘the occult’ means is ‘the hidden’. If you deconstruct the sound it turns into something else."'-- Dazed & Confused
James recommends:
Blank City (dir Celine Danhier, 2010)
A documentary about New York's 70s No Wave filmmakers.
Batley: "To film a Roman scene, they'd arrange a viewing for an apartment with big columns, undo the windows, and at night come back and shoot. I really appreciate that sensibility!"
Possession (dir Andrzej Zuwalksi, 1981)
Cult '80s Berlin-set horror about a demon-possessed wife. "I love the camera shots,” Batley says.
Night of the Hunter (dir Charles Laughton, 1955)
The lyrical ‘50s classic about a reverend-turned-serial-killer. "Everything about it is perfect."
777 - teaser trailer
prr prr -- a bunch of videos i made way back in 2003. they were simpler times.
Hey James, how are things?
Ace
I heard you were running a Halloween night this week – what’s the plan? How scary is it?
Yeah. On the 31st we are taking over the Red Gallery in Shoreditch. There will be live music from Crows (on Savage’s Pop Noire label), DJs, macabre photography, sound installations, blood stained walls, projections, free communion shots and in the basement I’m showing my short film Kneel Through The Dark on a loop, which features an Aleister Crowley ritual that caused all kinds of weirdness the last time I screened it. It’s BYOB and cheap entry too.
We intend to open the gates of hell.
So you’re a self-taught film maker. How did you teach yourself? Or did you watch an awful lot of YouTube?
I got a Super8 camera and started waving it around. Cut the footage and got a feel for what worked. It’s just about rhythm really.
How important are animals in your work? There seems to be some kind of theme there…
It’s more about what they represent. They are messengers.
What’s your favourite bit/part of London and why?
There is a bank of the Thames by St Paul’s that, when the tide is out, is full of bones left over from when the carcasses of dead animals were dumped in the river over the centuries. You can find teeth, jaw bones and other gnarly skeletal remains. It’s great for a first date.
What’s next for you?
I’m planning out a new short. It’s in the early stages but it involves meteors and a boy who buries dead bees in a park.-- from Le Cool
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p.s. Hey. Oh, the superb writer and longtime d.l. Mike Kitchell has written a great review of my 'The Weaklings (XL)' @ HTMLGIANT, if you're interested. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Russell's stuff is all over the place. Very uneven, if you ask me. Crazy, fascinating things and just god awful but kind of train wreck things that are still fun to watch mostly. Singular, for sure, and what more can you ask? That's great that you've made 'HOSPITAL' available, and I can imagine the emotional difficulty there, but, yeah, I'm really glad you've done that. Everyone, Thomas 'Moronic' Moore has a gift that you should accept for the sake of the glorification of your literary input, I think. Here he is to explain: 'I've decided to make my old HOSPITAL book available for a little bit. For whatever reason, I had a few people ask me about it recently, and although I have very mixed feelings about the project now (for probably obvious reasons) I thought I may as well let people get it if they want. So, yeah, for a short while people can but it as an eBook from here if they're interested.' It's a powerful, beautiful book, and you are highly advised to do the little-to-nothing that it takes to acquire it. Thank you, Thomas! ** Kyler, Hi, K. I'm trying imagine that mash-up, and I think I can, and I'm certainly glad that I'm trying 'cos my presumption rocks. ** Keaton, Hi. Wow, that's interesting: the new blog thing. I'm glad it's my day off so I can pore over it. Everyone, a very seductive looking and slightly, super-interestingly different bit of stackage is now up on Keaton's presentational work space. I don't even know how much someone would have to pay me to sit through that new 'Spiderman'. The P. Bowles is amazing, yeah. Especially his short stories for me. I watched 'Altered States' on acid. It worked. In fact, just remembering that is giving me a flashback. The shooter guy's manifesto is interesting, but his videos were much, much more so. Shame, in a way, that they got removed. Bon Wednesday to you! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Ha ha. 'Savage Messiah' is one of my favorite Russell films, for sure. I don't think any of the text squibs re: the Russell films that I found much less chose mentioned their screenwriters, which I guess is par for the course in those sorts of things. ** Kier, Hi, Kier. Did the rhubarb field look like this? Did you have to wear high topped boots or something to protect your ankles or something? My day was good. Zac and I rehearsed with the performers all day, and it went so well that we ended early. So, it was good, and we're all set to go/shoot on Friday almost. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. In your future Russell viewings, I personally would advise avoiding 'Lizstomania' like the plague. It's been a while since I saw it, but it leapt to the near-top of the worst films I have ever seen at the time. Sorry about the crawling pace on the Art101 front. But it'll be like the break never happened when you get restarted. Funny how that works. ** Steevee, Hi. 'The Devils' really might be his very best. I need to watch 'Tommy' again. I haven't seen it since its original theater release, and it drove me crazy in the bad way at the time. But time and the changing/evolving of pop culture fashion has that magical 'camp' adding power. ** Derek McCormack, Hi, Derek! I'll wait a little while on the Musée des Arts Forains just in case you do come to Paris because it would be so much fun to go with you! There's also a circus museum in Grenoble that's supposed to even better, if you come over and are feeling ambitious enough for a train trip. Wow, that's crazy. I actually went to Boekhandel van de Moosdijk once. Or .. I'm pretty sure I did, if it's been around a long time. Huh. I'll have to check my memory and notes or something. The website looks heavily explorable. Thank you! I don't think I know Le Coupe Papier, but I've walked by A Livr'Ouvert dozens of times. In fact, I'll be spending Thursday, Friday, and Saturday right by it since our film is being shot at two apartments down the street from it, so I'll definitely venture in. And I'll let you know the scoop. Very cool! The huge treat of our talking is heavily mutual! I've really missed you, D. Like I told Kier, my day was good. All film stuff. Today is my day off, sort of. And then tomorrow it gets amazing and crazy busy for three days. Making this film has been really magical so far. I can't wait for you to see it! How was your day? What did you do? ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Thank you about the post. And thanks for finishing the gift, very much, of course! Oh, wow, the photo of it! It's stunning! The mail had better be unusually adept and thorough when it gets its systematic 'hands' on it or I'll be a serious snail mail pooh-pooher. Gosh, thank you again! ** Aaron Mirkin, Hi, Aaron. Start with 'The Devils', I think. You know, someone alerted me to that Brendan Healy thing, and I can't for the life of me remember if he got in contact with me about doing that or not. Either way is fine, and it's obviously very cool that my stuff fueled his. If you go, I would be very, very interested to hear what it is, of course. Thanks a ton, man! ** Armando, Hi, Armando! I'm doing great, thanks! And you? I'm working on a bunch of projects at once. Yeah, I'm working on a novel. It's going very well, I think. It feels like it is, anyway. Uh, it's really different from any of my earlier novels. Very personal. The film: I wrote the script about six years ago. Then Zac and I went back and revised/rewrote it together, so we're co-authors of it. Zac is directing the film. Michael Salerno aka Kiddiepunk is the Director of Photography. It's in five sections that are interconnected by theme and concerns but are autonomous in terms of the narratives and the performers in the sections. Zac is my dearest, best friend in the world and my soulmate. He's a very brilliant visual artist. This is his first film, but he's made a number of video works. He and I are also co-writing a feature film that Gisele Vienne is planning to direct next year. And I'm working on a new theater piece for her. And on a book about Scandinavian amusement parks, again with Zac. So I'm very busy, and it's all great. I'll probably say more about the film and novel and stuff as they happen and develop. Thank you a lot for asking, my friend. Love and hugs back, and have a sweet day. ** Okay. I'm a really big fan of the films of the young UK-based filmmaker James Batley, and I thought I would put my blog where my tastes are in that regard. Explore and enjoy, thank you. See you tomorrow.