Sarah Miles

Three blondes from another planet land on earth to conduct research into romantic love

An organic documentary. Girls experience and women remember being twelve years old, jammed together in a menstrual hearse (a white Talbot lined with red velvet). The body remembers what the mind forgets, going forwards towards the past. Each woman’s memory is reflected in her representation: Stella as an angry, haggard Tinkerbell; Emma made up as Marilyn, headbanging in the forest of dreams. My mother asks for a bag over her head.

‘Walking is good for untangling a tangled heart.’ Inspired by the final shot of Modern Times Charles Chaplin in which the gamine girl and the tramp walk away from the camera. Commission by Guy Mannes Abbott and Celine Condorelli for Walking 1 to 10.

Magnificent Ray explores the western by focusing on gender relations in a confluence of the dream movie genre and everyday life. Filmed on location in Bridport and Portland in West Dorset, and featuring locals as extras and principal players, Florence encounters Ray a subtle souled girl slipping into forgetfulness. Their journey from showdown to slowdown explores the nature of dreams whilst sensing a narrative. Miles teases out the glamorous cowgirl/boy image in teenage girls through music and costume as they adventure through a rich, wild, western landscape. - Jo Lanyon, Director of Picture This Moving Image from the catalogue to the show

Intrigued by the desire to have been a Bunny Girl, the director takes a look at what it meant. Interviewing several of the original Bunnies she learns the rules and expectations on the girls as well as the more sinister side of a 1976 murder.

No Place, set in King's Cross, London, represents the point of view of a woman (Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz grown up into Judy from Hitchcock's classic Vertigo) looking back, from the apparent sanctuary of a church, contrasting her memories of the countryside with a loss of innocence, and of childhood illusions, following her arrival in the Emerald City. An elusive collage of real and fictional characters who all live in a kind of temporary limbo a long way from home but still looking for a sense of belonging.

"A meditation of the heartbreaking performance of identity. Inspired by material shot during a visit to Mike Wade studio on the Jurassic coast as he finishes a waxwork of Marilyn Monroe for a Hollywood Museum. This material provided the canvas for an intimate embroidery exploring her life, her work, her self. One American Woman, a speculation on disbelief. Additional layers all emotion and abstraction include a window overlooking the remnant tombs of a graveyard garden adding a haunting and introspective atmosphere. A correspondence with KE Jung Korean Psychoananlyst leading to thoughts about the connections between childhood sexual trauma and Hollywood and wax. It becomes Kind of a gift to her And a homage to my grandmother’s textile talents."

A Family Odyssey Ophelia’s Version is a poetic experimental film exploring the hidden systemic powers of identification within a family constellation through four generations. Ancestors haunt the landscape like screen memories and family members collaborate to perform aspects of themselves. A collage of family album; the filmmaker’s father’s photographic archive; Hollywood narratives including Apocalypse Now, Badlands and Breakfast at Tiffany’s reflect a complex layering of narratives.