Winter – the fourth film in the Season’s series was based around an early amateur tinted nitrate narrative film called “Lost in the Snow”. The film was shot in 1906 in Yorkshire and I felt it made a truly inspiring starting point from which to work.
The winter sun rises over a crisp, cold Yorkshire landscape. Children skate on a frozen River Ouse, all ruddy cheeks, flailing limbs and bruised behinds. Elsewhere in the mill towns – Batley, Dewsbury, Bradford, dark figures shuffle in unison, flock-like huddled in heavy wool coats against the cold, black shapes against the snow, toward the billowing, pluming chimneys of the distant mills. Somewhere, alone in the dark woods a girl is lost in the snow…
Part of a 4 part narrative woven together beautifully by Ed Torsney from amateur archive film from the past 100 years. “An absolutely Unique and beautiful Film Experience”
As I conceived Seasons as a whole to be a cyclical narrative you will notice that the girl that is saved from the elements in this section (by angels/fairies) appears later in ‘Spring” being woken from her dreams by the angel…. The image above is from my Steps In Time film “Lori” – I shot this at a rehearsal of The Nutcracker in Manchester in 2009.
As well as featuring at many film festivals the films were also screened as trailers to main features in most independent cinemas in Yorkshire for a year with an estimated total audience of over 300,000 cinema goers.
Below is a screen shot of the regional screen agency website promoting one of my Seasons films (Summer) at The Magic Loungeabout film festival.
By Ed Torsney
