Gideon Koppel

Set in a small farming community in mid Wales, a place where Koppel's parents - both refugees - found a home. This is a landscape and population that is changing rapidly as small scale agriculture is disappearing and the generation who inhabited a pre-mechanised world is dying out. Much influenced by his conversations with the writer Peter Handke, the film maker leads us on a poetic and profound journey into a world of endings and beginnings; a world of stuffed owls, sheep and fire.

Filmmaker Gideon Koppel's precursor to Sleep Furiously, A Sketchbook for the Library Van is, indeed, a preparatory rough-draft of the extraordinary feature-length documentary (which, at the time, was tentatively entitled The Library Van) addressing identical themes and featuring several of the same individuals. Sketchbook presents a rare and fascinating opportunity to see a film in its formative stage.