An Invention for Radio 3: Amor Dei (1964) by Barry Bermange and Delia Derbyshire.

From the second of the Bermange/Derbyshire Inventions:

Other parts: Conceptions of God and There is a God! 

An Invention for Radio 2: The Dreams (1964) by Barry Bermange and Delia Derbyshire.

The first of the eerie, cult classic Inventions for Radio produced by dramatist Barry Bermange and the brilliant and beguiling Delia Derbyshire:

Not Really Now Not Anymore: Alan Garner's Red Shift (1978).

 

Nominally a historical fantasy for young adults, Alan Garner's Red Shift is an unconventional and "difficult" book by any standards.  Partially inspired by an oblique piece of graffiti (Not really now not anymore) which the author noticed at a railway station, it interweaves three separate narratives taking place in Southern Cheshire over a period of some three thousand years: a motorway and a caravan park in the 1970s, a besieged church during the English Civil War, and finally back to a troop of lost legionaries during the Roman period.  A stone axe head persists through each period, providing an explicit link between the stories, while at times the fates of the most troubled and alienated characters seem somehow mystically interwoven.  Garner's novel offers us not so much a present haunted by the past, as a sense of time as being somehow synchronous and indivisible, with past, present and future all haunted by the threads which weave the whole together: not really now anymore.  It's not a easy read - Garner's books (this one in particular) demand a great deal of creative input from the reader, and his vision is unsentimental and even brutal at times.  But Red Shift is the work of a stubborn and uncategorizable craftsman who respects his readers in a way that publishers rarely do, and whose affect has often been compared to that of a long prose poem.

In 1978, Red Shift was adapted by the BBC's Play for Today (the series which produced the incredible Penda's Fen which I blogged about here).  The director was John Mackenzie, best known in the general cinema world for 1980's The Long Good Friday, but remembered by connoisseurs of the Public Information Film as the director of that Friday the 13th of farm accident prevention Apaches.  It's a noble and largely successful attempt to translate a very difficult and complex book to the screen.  Watch it on youtube here. 

Hat tip to feuilleton 

screen grabs from Alan Garner on the Television at Sparks in Electric Jelly.

Weird Ephemera: APACHES (1977).

Produced in 1977 by the British Central Office of Information, Apaches is the most notorious of all the Public Information Films, regarded by connoisseurs as being even more traumatizing than 1973's legendary Dark and Lonely Water.  Accidental deaths on farms had been on the rise during that period, and Apaches was designed to terrify children into being more prudent and careful.  Directed with considerable flair by John Mackenzie (who later made The Long Good Friday), the film raised both the artistic quality and body-count of the Pif, maintaining a slightly eerie and surrealistic mood throughout.  The six children who star were not credited, and have never been identified to this day.

Belbury Poly - Unforgotten Town.

Great fan-made video to a track from the 2012 Ghost Box record The Belbury Tales:

Revolt from the Monolith, Come back to the Village: Penda's Fen (1974)

I've had Penda's Fen on my radar to try and hunt down for quite some time, and finally got a chance to watch it today thanks to a post at found objects. It was first broadcast by the BBC in 1974 as part of the Play for Today series, written by the playwright David Rudkin and directed by Alan Clarke, who remains more widely known today for gritty and politically volatile works of social realism. It has never been released on DVD, and only shown once more on television in 1989, but has in recent years developed a growing cult following among enthusiasts of hauntology and British folk horror. I don't want to say too much about it, other than to heartily recommend watching; it's a beautiful poetic masterpiece, and it seems almost criminal that it has yet to receive a DVD release:



Read more here.