Rare chance to see trio of films by groundbreaking Hastings director Andrew Kotting

There is a rare opportunity to see back to back work by Hastings based film-maker Andrew Kotting this weekend.
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The Towner Art Gallery cinema at Eastbourne, is screening Kotting’s acclaimed Earthworks trilogy. The films plot an extraordinary twenty-year journey from the muddy moors of the Yorkshire Dales through the spooky forests of the French Pyrenees and

out into the arid deserts of the Atacama in South America.

SEE ALSO: Hastings Herring Fair: Everything you need to knowThis Filthy Earth is screened at 11am, followed by Ivul at 2pm and his latest film Lek and the Dogs at 4.30pm.

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This Filthy Earth is a tragic tale of rural passion and survival, inspired by Emile Zola’s novel La Terre and John Berger’s Pig Earth. The film tells the story of sisters Kath and Francine, whose lives are disrupted by two men – a brutal villager greedy for the girls’ land and a gentle stranger who offers the possibility of escape. Amidst a landscape of rural hardship and a community consumed with superstition, events unfurl which threaten their sibling bond.

Set in the French Pyrenees, Ivul is an intriguing family drama in which the intense relationship between teenage siblings Alex and Freya incurs the rage of their authoritarian father. After a huge quarrel, Alex climbs onto the roof of the house and vows never again to set foot on the earth. He lives out a brief and dramatic life in exile looking down upon a family that he loves but is too stubborn to return to.

Lek and the Dogs is based on the award-winning play by Hattie Naylor and inspired by the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who walked out of his apartment at the age of four and spent two years on the city streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs. With trace elements of Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape.

Kötting’s spellbinding and utterly original story of survival draws on home movies and archive to produce a montage essay on the state of the world.

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The trilogy of films played in Switzerland earlier in the year to great acclaim.

Andrew Kötting released Gallivant, his first feature-length film, in 1996. It premièred at the Edinburgh Film Festival, where it won the Channel 4 Best New Director prize.

His film Edith Walks centred on King Harold’s wife Edith Swan Neck and featured Hastings people in the cast. Andrew also set off from Hastings, on a swan pedalo with writer Iain Sinclair for the film Swandown in 2015.

Andrew will be in in conversation with the curator and critic Jason Wood at the end of the film marathon.

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For more information on the screening and films being shown, visit www.townereastbourne.org.uk/event/andrew-kotting-earthworks-trilogy/

Andrew commented: “The day will be dedicated to Dudley Sutton - a dear friend who died recently - see attached image - and who gave me the confidence to work with ‘proper’ actors.”