Textile artist Allan Brown spends seven years making a dress by hand from locally foraged stinging nettles. We follow Allan's painstaking journey through seasons and years, foraging, spinning, weaving, cutting, and sewing the cloth. Finally, he experiences the fulfilment of seeing the dress worn by one of his daughters back in the woods where the nettles were picked. “Hedgerow couture”, the greenest of slow fashion this may be, but it is also an act of meditation, a labour of love in the truest sense. A hymn to the healing power of nature and slow craft, it’s a single story that chimes with a huge groundswell of people rediscovering the joys of making.
+ JILL, UNCREDITED (at Presteigne Screen)
Jill Goldston has graced more films than virtually any other actor in the history of movie-making – more than 2,000. And she’s worked with a huge range of directors, including Ken Russell, John Schlesinger, Alfred Hitchcock, Lindsay Anderson and David Lynch. The secret of her success? Disappearing into the crowd and making up the numbers as an unnamed and uncredited extra. Look hard and you’ll find her in franchises such as the Bond films and the Carry Ons. Ballroom scenes, street, battlefield and café scenes were all professionally and anonymously populated by stalwarts such as Jill, and that’s what Jill, Uncredited focuses on and celebrates in this 18-minute short.
