Sail the Summer Winds

Alf Bower’s A Mysterious Devotion evidences several decades of wildly creative and experimental filmmaking in Yorkshire. The ambitious 16mm cinemascope film is an oblique narrative following several members of a family as they experience and process a traumatic death. There is no dialogue but the camera stalks its actors around the house and at the seaside, at times claustrophobically close and others in wide shots at the sea. The black and white, proto-gothic imagery is rendered with painterly beauty, as reminiscent of iconoclastic Dutch filmmakers like Frans Zwartjes and Adriaan Ditvoorst as the experimental arthouse of Japan’s Art Theatre Guild. In its first screening in several decades, A Mysterious Devotion will be complemented by two equally distinctive films by Shūji Terayama and Dore O, both of which similarly eschew dialogue and compose visually potent scenes of actors at the sea.

Post-screening discussion with Alf Bower.

Films
A Mysterious Devotion
Alf Bower, 1973, UK, 47 mins, digital

The Eraser
Shuji Terayama, 1977, Japan, 20 mins, 16mm

Alaska
Dore O, 1969, Germany, 17 mins, 16mm

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Part of Artists’ Moving Image Network Screening Weekend, Presented by Pavilion
Guest curated by Herb Shellenberger
5–7 July 2019, Leeds

Image: The Eraser, Shuji Terayama, 1977