Andrew Kötting

Gallivant (1996)

Andrew Kötting was born in Kent in 1958 and is one of the most influential and celebrated contemporary artists using film today. His work is often compared to that of the late Derek Jarman, and includes experimental shorts and feature length pieces.

A 6,000-mile journey zig-zagging around the coast of Britain, Gallivant is both an experimental travelogue and an intensely personal story. Filmmaker Andrew Kötting begins the journey to bring Gladys, his 85-year old grandmother, and Eden, his 7-year old daughter, together. Gladys’s stamina is limited, and Eden has Joubert’s syndrome: she’s not expected to live to adulthood. Both are fragile, and the journey is an opportunity which may not be repeated.

The film follows their journey chronologically, but the film is far from naturalistic. Kötting uses different film and video stocks, timelapse photography, and macro shots. He also inserts found footage and non-synchronous sound. Sometimes this is ironic: tourists looking through pay-per-view telescopes at a cliff’s edge ‘see’ what-the-butler-saw footage. Sometimes it’s dramatically beautiful: the tide rapidly sweeping out towards Lindisfarne. Unable to see through Gladys’ or Eden’s eyes, we see that the journey itself has many viewers, each with their own eyes. Eden can’t speak, but uses a limited-vocabulary sign language, and the film subtitles her commentary on the journey.

Kötting looks not for an essential quality of British life, but for its symptoms: folk culture and songs. He cajoles two old men at Port Carlisle into singing ‘Do ye ken John Peel?’, one accompanying the other on his mouth organ. At Robin Hood’s Bay, folk musician Martin Carthy gives a more professional rendering of ‘Sailing over the Dogger Bank’. In Goathland, a sword dancer explains the dance’s pagan Viking roots, and in Hastings a man tells how the Jack-in-the-Green festival has exploded in popularity.

Andrew Kötting won the Channel 4 Best New Director prize for Gallivant.


_{Image: Gallivant (still) © Andrew Kötting}