A Black Country Verse

A Black Country Verse from Black-Country Cinema on Vimeo.

I shot this a while ago, but I was so unhappy I made a Vlog out of the footage instead. Just under a year later I've come back to the footage and stripped it down (using about 30% of the actual footage shot). The film was originally meant to run about 10 minutes and I think this was the problem I was having. My minimalist routes came out again and it seemed the less I used the better it came out.




A visual adaptation of an old saying by the American consul to Birmingham Elihu Burritt, he famously said “The Black Country is black by day and red by night”. The Black Country which is located in the middle of the West Midlands (England) was once the industrial heart of the United Kingdom and was famous for the black smoke produced from the factories that filled the streets in a dark haze. Then as the sun set when the foundry furnaces were opened the sky would light up in crimson red. This film was shot on one of the many Black Country canal routes, which used to be the primary method of transportation for the factory goods and furnace coal. The Canals are one of the few inanimate parts of the Black Countries industrial identity that still stand. After the lorries and the rejuvenated rail routes became the preferred method of product transportation by local companies, the canals became futile. Like the Black Countries industrial Identity the canals stand as a shadow of what they used to be. If it was not for it simply being too expensive to remove the canals there would be no reason to keep them, they stand in a state of nostalgic limbo.