Christopher Morris’ A Year in a Field (trailer), which world-premiered in Sheffield and which documents, over the course of a year, a standing stone in a Cornish field, embarked September 21 on a UK tour that will eventually take in 23 cities between Cornwall and Glasgow. Many of the screenings will include a Q&A.
The film was produced by Bosena Films in partnership with Stone Club (a club and community dedicated to ‘our prehistoric friends’) and Falmouth University’s Sound/Image Cinema Lab. The film is released in the UK by Anti-Worlds Releasing, an independent film distribution company set up in 2021 by publicist Zoe Flower and film producer Andy Starke.
In the film, “BAFTA-winning documentarian Christopher Morris invites us to slow down, as he films for a year in a West Cornwall field; to immerse ourselves in this quiet, direct-action of stillness, to take a breath and reflect on the planetary impacts of our brief human existence, under the watchful gaze of the Longstone, an ancient monolith that predominates this elemental landscape,” says Anti-Worlds Releasing.
As Morris told Business Doc Europe in Sheffield before the film’s world premiere, when it came to photographing the field, he set himself a few simple formal rules. He would shoot in a square format for Instagram and made sure always to have the stone in shot. He ended taking “hundreds and hundreds” of images but no two were ever the same. The changing seasons and shifts in weather patterns ensured he was always depicting something new.
“I can’t describe why but there is something about that field, something about the position of the stone in relation to the sea and the surrounding landscape,” the director observed of the uncanny power of the place.
For more information on the film’s UK tour, click here.
About Christopher Morris
Christopher Morris worked for the BBC in London and Cardiff (1989-2003) as a documentary director, factual producer and executive producer. His career in radio and television encompasses drama and commercials but primarily documentary. Recurring themes include the changing nature of childhood, faith and social justice, often working with marginalised communities.
Since leaving the BBC in 2003, he has been working as an academic, freelance documentary maker and story consultant for feature documentaries. Morris worked as an academic at Newport Film School (2003-2015) setting up and ran the first three-year BA documentary film course in the UK. He was director of Newport Film School (2009-2011) and was awarded a chair as Professor of Documentary Film Practice (2011). Morris was director of the School of Film & Television at Falmouth University, Cornwall (2015-2020). Since 2020 he has returned full time to making films.
