Rurality In Folk Horror And The Films of David Gladwell.

This paper was originally given at The Alchemical Landscape conference at Girton College Cambridge, 07/07/2016.

Though more well known for work as a film editor associated with the Free Cinema Movement of the late 1950s, and for cutting work on several films by Lindsay Anderson including If…. (1968) and O’ Lucky Man! (1973), David Gladwell is a director in his own right; a cinematic outsider who distils interests in agricultural life, the urban/rural divide, and uncanny landscapes into heady, oneiric forms of short and feature length film.  In this presentation, the concept of “rurality” – the term I use to denote sideways tipping of reality in fictional media through the hyperactive inclusion and obsession with rural aesthetics and themes – will be addressed chiefly within Gladwell’s 1976 feature film, Requiem For A Village.  By assessing the themes of Requiem, a film that presents an essayist cine-poem examining the…