Philip Speakman

collaborative moving image
12:25
2021

Developed through workshops with local teenagers, No Flaming House, employs Lakeland philosopher R G Collingwood’s idea of ‘historical imagination' to reconstruct the events around a rumoured plan to burn down a manor house in the English Lake District in the 1990’s.

Employing documentary methods to mine what truths a society expresses in it's rumours, No Flaming House was devised, filmed and performed by local young people through workshops with assistance from Jess Heritage as part of a young persons summer film school at Grizedale Art’s The Farmers Arms.

The film explores themes of national heritage and cultural identity, youth rebellion, rumour and romanticism, and filmmaking’s capacity as a tool for investigations at the boundary of the historical and the romantic imaginary. The work was filmed on location at Allan Bank, a property now managed by the National Trust which was once home to Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, before becoming a film set for Ken Russell and a hippy commune in the 70’s, histories the film wilfully entwines itself within in.

Made by and featuring; Bella Yoeman, Billy Kemp, Joseph Barnes, Francis Morgan, Iris Morgan, Rudy Morgan, through workshops run with Jess Heritage

Title art by Billy Kemp

Filmed at The Farmers Arms, Lowick Green and The National Trust’s Allan Bank, Grasmere

With thanks and support from Emma Sumner, Adam Sutherland, Harvey Wilkinson, The National Trust, Film & Video Unit, Central Saint Martins and Jo Evans & Chris Speakman.