Valtos

Valtos

1987 · 11 min · ★ 6.0 · Drama, Documentary

Valtos is a story told from thirty years hence, in the last moments of its narrator, who awoke one day in 1987 'with the knowledge that I had been duplicated during the night, and that I was an inferior replica of myself'. There follows a relentless, epic, pursuit of an absconding phantom - his 'original' - which ends in catastrophe at Valtos, a place at once ethereal and terrifying.

Directed by Patrick Keiller · Written by Patrick Keiller

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Stonebridge Park

Stonebridge Park · 1981

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A film in two parts. In the first part, the narrator describes the events that led to his impulsive decision to rob his former employer. The camera meanwhile walks about above the nearby road junction, surveying the distracted environment. In the second part, he recounts the anatomy of his panic following the crime, while the walking camera reconstructs his escape route. A final caption reports what happened after that.

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Norwood (1983) continued the 'story' of Stonebridge Park and the technique, in another London suburb. Short films of increasing technical sophistication climaxed in 1989 with The Clouds, a further topographical exploration combining another anxious fictional commentary with imagery derived from a journey across the north of England from Jodrell Bank to Whitby.

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A black and white semi-narrative film, touching on moments in the narrator's life unavailable to his recollection, and a journey through the North of England on the prevailing wind.

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