This three-minute, wordless black and white short by Edwin Rostron appears in the All the Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2 set from Severin. You can also watch it on Vimeo.

The director says of this, “Our Selves Unknown takes the book Landscape in Distress as its raw material, reconfiguring its photographic illustrations, text and cover design into pencil and ink drawings, using a working process of self-enforced rules and restrictions, obstacles and chance.

Published by the Architectural Press in 1965, Landscape in Distress was written by Lionel Brett, a British peer, architect and town-planner. The book examined 250 square miles of Oxfordshire, recording “in intimate detail the post-war changes and present state of the landscape of a typical section of…Britain.” It described the damage that had been done to the area and tried to alert the reader to “the inevitable damage that lies ahead”, drawing specific attention to the increasing homogenisation of areas on the edges of cities.”

I loved the look of this. Graphite drawings that are intersected with black splotches as bites of words from the story quickly appear. It seems as if the intrusions of man on nature are being called out, as the ruin of man rebuilding after the war leads to something even worse: the same, all over the same, the ancient and unique and mysterious now the expected.

Our Selves Unknown is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.

You can order this set from Severin.