The Harvest Film Festival, where medieval cosmology and folklore collides with climate shocks and social transformation
Local arts collective Chasing Cow are curating a one-day festival of films, talks and music at the beautiful Lower Hewood Farm, themed around ‘Apocalyptic Visions’, on Saturday 14th November.
The festival is a revival of the Harvest Film Festival, which ran at the organic smallholding and arts venue between 2014 and 2019, and was set up to explore the relationship with farming, food and land through fiction, documentary and art films.
The revived festival sees Chasing Cow offering a hand-picked selection of classic and cult films, live music and talks. Members of the group are developing their first feature film (a cli-fi road movie called Elecampane) and the programme is designed to reflect the world of the script, where medieval cosmology and folklore collides with climate shocks and social transformation.
This includes screenings of Roberto Rossellini’s gently poetic The Flowers of St Francis (1950), the independent historical drama Winstanley (1975), and the little known British sci-fi The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), as well as Chasing Cow’s own dark folk comedy, Brink by Brink (2020).
Guest talks meanwhile will include Facing Fear in the Medieval Painted Church by medievalist and art historian Dr Miriam Gill, and What It Feels Like When Worlds End by anthropologist Dr Susannah Crockford, drawing on her work with climate activists. The novelist Raffaella Barker will also be introducing The Day the Earth Caught Fire, and live music will be provided by Dorset poet-singer Aidan Simpson.
Films and talks will be running throughout the day, including films from previous Harvest Short Film Competitions showcased in Lower Hewood’s Survival Library. Lunch and dinner made with local produce will be available to purchase on site, as well as a bar in the evening. Festival goers are welcome to drop in or stay for the whole day.
Fred Warren from Chasing Cow said, ‘It’s been great fun bringing so many influences into one place. While apocalypse runs through many of the films, there is also a joy to many of them; a sense of political and cultural horizons opening amidst crisis—from the faltering efforts of medieval monks in 12th-century Italy to a radical woodland encampment mushrooming in civil war England.
These films all have a real sense of landscape and (sometimes extreme) weather, and Lower Hewood farm, as a site of practical landwork and artistic sharing, is the perfect space’.
Director of the Survival Library at Lower Hewood, Alexa de Ferranti, said, ‘Lower Hewood joyfully welcomes the return of the Harvest Film Festival with a visionary programme of films, talks and music curated by Chasing Cow Productions—filmmakers with eyes for the future and fingers on the pulse of history. We are also excited to announce the return of the Harvest Short Film Competition’.
Harvest Film Festival: Apocalyptic Visions is on Saturday 14th November, 11am-10pm (arrivals from 10.30am). See the full programme and buy tickets at harvestfilmfestival.com. All-day festival pass £15 (£10 concessions).
