TRAIN FILM [Work in progress]

TRAIN FILM: (Five minute extract): At the start of 2023, I found myself restless, eager to travel. Then I found myself unable to stop. Addicted to train timetables, I planned each journey with military precision. Yet each time I set off – a wrench. I am aware that this sense of dislocation (of not belonging) is related to my particular (working class) background, an identity usually suppressed in academia or the art world– especially, it seems to me, amongst my generation.

Recently, however, I have found myself wanting to speak about this – or, at least, to speak in this – my 'mother tongue', or darling tongue, as John Berger puts it. In Russian it is rodnoy-yazik, which means “nearest” or “dearest tongue”. At a pinch one could call it “darling tongue”. Mother tongue is one’s first language, first heard as an infant.

I kept travelling, and filming, until late 2024. I am now editing this material together. I am also working on a written text that will be spoken over this film – or appear as subtitles, if I decide to keep the original sound (which I like for its Cagean unpredictability). Either way, I hope to convey something of the rebellious melodiousness, the sheer musicality, of an accent from the city of Birmingham, residing in the (beloved) city of London.

On filming from trains: only when you see it through the lens, as film (and not when you experience it in real life), do you notice the relation of images shot from a train to the flicker and blind spot of early cinema – house of dreams.