An eagerly-awaited follow up to the Cornish hit movie Bait, which was produced by a Bristol company, is to be screened at the Watershed next week - with a sell-out preview featuring the director on Saturday. Mark Jenkin’s follow up to Bait is called Enys Men - which means Stone Island in English - and again has been co-produced by the Totterdown-based production company Early Day Films.
The new feature film is set in 1973 on a remote and uninhabited island off the Cornish coast, and details a wildlife volunteer’s daily trek to observe a rare flower.
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But, in a film with minimal dialogue and shot on Jenkin’s own 16mm colour film, the wildlife volunteer, played by Mary Woodvine, time on the island takes a dark turn into the strange and metaphysical, which blurs the line between real and a nightmare.
The film premiered in Cornwall this week, and the Bristol preview on Saturday is the first in England. Filmmaker Mark Jenkin will take part in a Q&A session after the screening, which is sold out, at 5.30pm. The film itself will be screened daily at the Watershed from its formal cinematic release next Friday, January 13.
Mark Cosgrove, the Watershed’s cinema curator, said: “With his award-winning film Bait, Cornish director Mark Jenkin established himself as one of the most exciting and distinctive British filmmakers. His latest film Enys Men continues that promise with a haunting and haunted tale set on a remote island of the coast of Cornwall. We are delighted to host a preview with Mark on January 7 and to open the film on the January 13.
“Enys Men is a mind-bending Cornish folk horror tale shot on grainy 16mm which observes the slowly unsettled routine of a woman alone on an island off the coast of Cornwall as she monitors the growth of a rare plant. The stark sense of isolation leads to a blurring of her reality as the island’s past seeps into her present.
Enys Men review: Haunting new film by Bait director Mark Jenkin stars a weirder Cornwall
“Shooting on 16mm colour film stock and using post-synched sound, Jenkin's boldly experimental work set against his native Cornish landscape is an eerie, almost dialogue-free throwback to the British folk horrors of the 1970s; an ode to Cornwall's rich folklore and natural beauty; and a look at how, when alone, we are at the mercy of our memories, dreams, and fears,” he added.
Bait, which told the story of a fisherman’s struggles to keep going in a Cornish fishing village being filled with second home owners and stag parties, won BAFTAs and critical acclaim across Europe and the US. Enys Men continues Mark Jenkin’s cinematic style of using the sound of the movie prominently, but with more of a strange and disturbing horror take.
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