On Landguard Point

If you wanted to parody a very British sort of essay-cum-experimental film – the sort that nods awkwardly to Derek Jarman and Patrick Keiller and juxtaposes windy coastlines with bare breasts – you might arrive at ‘On Landguard Point’. To be fair, this probably shouldn’t be a film at all. It’s an oblique, frustrating record of a whole series of art performances and events that took place in 2012 across Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex as part of the Cultural Olympiad – all of them no doubt exciting at the time. There are scarecrows, clowns, electronic messageboards planted in the sea and a naked shaven-headed woman walking out of the waves like one of those Anthony Gormley sculptures coming to life. The place referenced in the title is a fort that helped defend Britain in 1666, but the historical reconstructions inspired by it sit uncomfortably with the rest of the film, and the abstract voiceover, which flows in and out, is properly purple and awkward. You probably had to be there.