Ann Course and Paul Clark Tell us What they Like and Why…

By Ann Course and Paul Clark

Walkabout, 1971

The film Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor has residing resonance for Paul and me. Her: “What a dump”. His: Burgin joke. Did they ever really make a golden haired boy together? And finally an indicative familiar comfort: I/we get to feel shame by never entirely understanding the plot.

When Wages of Fear was released it became the first film my father went to see at the cinema. The images of that shining black man being dragged from the oil spill, setting an explosion and pissing into the hole which is left induce analogies of my rearing.

Then I guess there is Carrie drooling pubic blood and getting to kill her mother alongside quite a few other irritating individuals on the picturesque route to self-destruction. The final image of which brings me to All Quiet on the Western Front (and I mean the old black and white version, not the one with John Boy Walton in it) as they both end with a hand and dirt.

Ann Course

The films that make the biggest impression on me are those that tell a good story with graceful economy.

The Vanishing
The original version, not its pointless Hollywood remake. The plot develops fugue-like, building slowly and inexorably towards its horrid climax. I enjoy its description of the random quality of misfortune and evil.

Open Water

This ‘feel bad’ classic had me sad and anxious for weeks. My twin terrors: abandonment and being eaten alive, here played out to full effect. The soundtrack is mournful, the scenery is scary and one feels that the whole thing is going to end very badly indeed.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
This is a really enchanting, touching work. A man is lost, then found, then lost again. Everything is orchestrated in such a way as to arouse in me deep – and rare – feelings of love for my fellow humans.

Walkabout (pictured)

It’s hard for me to choose my favourite Nic Roeg movie, but Walkabout is special. Alienation and paradise lost, brutal and tender this story unfolds beneath the blowtorch-scorching sky. I cry at the end.

Paul Clark

Ann Course and Paul Clark are artists based in London.