Tim Cawkwell
Writer, Film-maker, Photographer
1948-2022
Embedded Files
This website contains a selection of Tim's work:
Essays on Robert Bresson
Essays on Guy Sherwin
Other Film Essays
Tim Cawkwell's Films (including Light Years)
Tim Cawkwell's Books
Essays on Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson lived from 1901 to 1999. From the 1940s to the early 1980s he made 13 feature films that vividly define a view of France in the period, that deal with Catholic and philosophical narratives about free will and redemption, and that develop a narrative style that is both crafted and imagined more seriously and more successfully than any other film-maker of the twentieth century. In the Sight and Sound 2012 poll of 850 critics and film-makers for their top films, Bresson had more films in that top 250 - seven (three in the top 100 and one in the top twenty) - than any other film-maker.
As well as the essays below, Bresson is one of the quartet of directors around which I built my book Filmgoer’s Guide to God (2004) and the revised version The New Filmgoer’s Guide to God (2014).
Explores the idea of confession as it is analysed in Rowan Williams’ book on Dostoevsky’s novels. Bernanos made a Dostoevskian confessional scene central to The Diary of a Country Priest, realized in Bresson’s film of the novel. The link between Dostoevsky and Bresson is then explored. Mention also of Greene’s The Quiet American and Simenon’s Inspector Maigret.
Review of Bresson par Bresson: Entretiens (1943-1983) edited by Mylène Bresson.
Review of Robert Bresson Revised edited by James Quandt.
A series of notes on his style, his influences and his importance
An essay on Bresson's Un Condamne a Mort S'est Echappe and Pascal’s Ecrits sur grace first published in Theology 2002.
Powell and Pressburger's The Small Back Room and Bresson's Pickpocket
Introduction to Un Condamne a Mort S'est Echappe
Essays on Guy Sherwin
Guy Sherwin's Light Cycles at Christine Park Gallery, London 2016
Review of Guy Sherwin's optical sound films
Review of Guy Sherwin's Short Film Series
Other Film Essays
A short essay drawing on a parallel between the assassination of Don Ciccio in Godfather 2 and that of King Eglon in the Book of Judges.
Lights, Camera, Action and the Poor Bloody Infantry
Touch, Focus, Memory: Robert Beavers and his first principles of film.
Robert Breer Interviewed by David Curtis at the Aurora Film Festival 2007
Stan Brakhage and the Melies Way
An essay on the Powell and Pressburger film A Canterbury Tale, first published in Theology 2008
Interview with David Curtis 2014
Brexit from Dunkirk and Christopher Nolan’s Time Labyrinth: notes from my blog entries for 2017 when the film came out
Ten Short Thoughts about Eric Rohmer, prompted by news of his death in 2010
Films about Cloistered Life.
In the early 1990s, I day-dreamed about what Wagner’s opera The Ring of the Nibelungs might look like were it to be filmed.
In praise of Die Grosse Stille/Into Great Silence: a 2008 essay on the finest of the current wave of ‘cloister films’, documentaries about daily life and expanded time in the monastery.
Ken Jacob's Optic Antics and his Apparition Theatre of 1973
Short note on We need to talk about Kevin and The Tree of Life
The Making of a Metaphysical Film-maker: an essay on Krzystof Kieslowski’s remarkable documentaries made between 1967 and 1980
Leviathan, an appreciation.
Encounters with Nick Collins, Films and Film-maker 2012-13
A 2009 essay comparing Cormac McCarthy’s novel of 2005 and the Coen Brothers’ film made from it in 2007
An essay on Carl Dreyer’s Ordet first published in Theology 2001
The origins of Tim's own film Sforzinda
The shocking world of Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon: where does it come from? Where is it going?
Andrei Zvyagintsev’s The Return and The Banishment
Tim Cawkwell's Films
Pride of place goes to Light Years: The Film Diaries of Tim Cawkwell 1968 to 1987. This DVD was made from the extensive diary footage I shot on Standard and Super 8 mm film over that period. It is 193 min long, and the DVD is encoded for all regions.
The work is personal and experimental in tone, i.e. a diary not a documentary, and achieves a single narrative arc. In its way it is unique in British cinema. Here are some reactions: “The implicit and explicit poignancy of those intertwining threads, personal, aesthetic, topographical.” “Other spaces unexpressed beyond the frame . . . subtly impacting on the obsessions with skies or trees or waves.” “The best example of a film diary piece I’ve ever seen. The form is wonderful, both stylistically and visually. . . A wonderful blend of diary pieces and abstract pieces.” “The mix of footage, occasional location sound, music, voice and silence works very well. . . I liked the consistency of the preoccupation with light. . . Some passages are particularly magical. . . The ending is redemptive.”
Tim's daughter Katy has made Light Years freely available to view in 4 parts on YouTube. Click here to view. Click here to access the booklet that accompanied the 2018 DVD.
I also have a few items on my Vimeo page. These are a Light Years trailer/ 'Came Bluefly Power'/ River of Fire 1 & 2/ Sketches for the Creation.
In the 1970s and 80s I made several films on 16mm:
Sforzinda 1977 8 mins
Personal Triumphs 1977 6 mins
Inside the Museum 1978 4 mins
Ring of Endless Fire 1978 3 mins
The Art of Prophecy 1979 13 mins
Six Short Pieces 1979 12 mins
Coast View with Aeneas and Cumaean Sibyl 1981 30 mins
Fish Variations 1982 9 mins
Carn Ingli Common 1983 4 mins
Diverse Motions 1984 7 mins
Parables 1986 5 mins
Around 1984, I made the following statement as part of a promotional document for experimental film-makers in the UK:
“Animation and film are usually put in separate compartments; I am interested in removing the walls. In exploring with the camera a film language that uses shots measured in frames rather than feet, I was led to work directly on the film itself – frame by frame – with paints, chemicals and pens. I still use a camera and seek in many of the films to combine ‘animated reality’ with ‘photographed reality’. I am attracted to uncomplicated forms (silhouetted landscapes, abstract pattern, schematic drawing), the use of texts in juxtaposition with images, the relation of film to music, poetry and painting. My cinema is a visionary one: the films seek to express those moments when the charged image rises to the surface from historical, cultural and religious layers of consciousness.”
I also contributed an article to ‘Undercut’, the magazine of the London Film-makers’ Co-operative, entitled ‘Beyond the camera barrier’, issue no. 13 (Autumn 1984), which has been collected in the ‘Undercut Reader’, ed. Michael Mazière and Nina Danino, published in 2002.
Frame capture from Carn Ingli Common below.
Tim Cawkwell's Books
Poetry
Infelicities (2020), including Making Acquaintance with Decline and Fall (ISBN 978-1-83853-589-6)
In These Torrid Times (2021), poems made in and out of the pandemic (ISBN 978-1-9169062-0-4)
The Battle of Trafalgar Square (2022), a pamphlet excoriating the inverted ice- cream on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square (ISBN 978-1-9169062-1-1)
Books on Film
Film Past Film Future: An Enquiry into Cinema and the Imagination Contains Into the Inferno, my extended essay on Holocaust films. 220 pages.
The New Filmgoer's Guide to God: from the Passion of Joan of Arc to Philomena 234 pages.
Books on Cricket
Cricket's Pure Pleasure – an account of a remarkable four-day game between Middlesex and Yorkshire in September 2015. 58 pages, 65 photographs.
The Tale of Two Terriers and the Somerset Cat – the superb climax of the County Championship 2016 season between Middlesex, Yorkshire and Somerset to see who would be crowned the winner. 98 pages, 60 photographs.
Compleat Cricket – in 2017, the most exciting contest in the County Championship was that between five teams to avoid the drop from Division One to Division Two. The last two rounds showed off cricket’s thrilling capacity for snatching victory from defeat and triumph from disaster – and vice versa. 110 pages, 112 photographs.
Cricket on the Edge – 2019 was one big year for England cricket: an extraordinary World Cup win in July; five Ashes Tests against Australia, of which the Third produced one of the greatest innings in the history of the Ashes, namely Ben Stokes’s 135 not out; the one-day cup; the T20 Blast ending in a cliff-hanger on Finals Day; the County Championship title contest between Essex and Somerset coming down to the last session of the last game of a long season. 216 pages, 36 photographs.
Other Books
A Tivoli Companion – an illustrated essay about the Italian hill-town of Tivoli near Rome, famous for its garden and fountains at the Villa D’Este, for the natural Parco Villa Gregoriana with its arresting round temple, and for Hadrian's Villa, the grandest of its kind in the Roman world. 78 pages, 42 photographs.
Bittering, Norfolk, Lost and Found – a memoir, derived from extensive interviews, of Joan Norton’s childhood and upbringing in a small, remote village in Norfolk, including her time in service at Bittering Hall. 68 pages, 25 illustrations.
Most of the books are available from Tim's Amazon page or ordering by ISBN from bookshops. If there is a book you would like to read but you cannot get hold of an affordable copy this way (in particular The New Filmgoer's Guide to God), you can contact katycawkwell@gmail.com
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