It’s war between the locals and tourists in a once-thriving Cornish fishing village in Mark Jenkin’s dreamlike masterpiece
Cornish film-maker Mark Jenkin’s breakthrough feature is a thrillingly adventurous labour of love – a richly textured, rough-hewn gem in which form and content are perfectly combined. A refreshingly authentic tale of tensions between locals and tourists in a once-thriving fishing village, it’s an evocative portrait of familiar culture clashes in an area where traditional trades and lifestyles are under threat. Shot with clockwork cameras on grainy 16mm stock, which Jenkin hand-processed in his studio in Newlyn, Bait is both an impassioned paean to Cornwall’s proud past, and a bracingly tragicomic portrait of its troubled present and possible future. It’s a genuine modern masterpiece, which establishes Jenkin as one of the most arresting and intriguing British film-makers of his generation.
Fishing-stock siblings Martin and Steven Ward (“Kernow...
Cornish film-maker Mark Jenkin’s breakthrough feature is a thrillingly adventurous labour of love – a richly textured, rough-hewn gem in which form and content are perfectly combined. A refreshingly authentic tale of tensions between locals and tourists in a once-thriving fishing village, it’s an evocative portrait of familiar culture clashes in an area where traditional trades and lifestyles are under threat. Shot with clockwork cameras on grainy 16mm stock, which Jenkin hand-processed in his studio in Newlyn, Bait is both an impassioned paean to Cornwall’s proud past, and a bracingly tragicomic portrait of its troubled present and possible future. It’s a genuine modern masterpiece, which establishes Jenkin as one of the most arresting and intriguing British film-makers of his generation.
Fishing-stock siblings Martin and Steven Ward (“Kernow...
- 9/1/2019
- by Mark Kermode
- The Guardian - Film News
Shot using a 1970s wind-up Bolex camera and on 16mm film, Mark Jenkin’s Bait is somewhat of a glorious visual anomaly in a world dominated by big budget blockbuster action thrillers and endless superhero franchises.
Set within a small community of an undisclosed Cornish fishing village (the shoot itself took place in Charlestown and Penzance), Bait presents an eerily enchanting expressionist aesthetic which owes a lot to the early films of French cinema pioneer Jean Epstein (The Fall of The House of Usher) or even Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc).
Bait tells the story of Martin Ward (played brilliantly by comedian Edward Rowe aka Kernow King), a gruff and taciturn cove fisherman who no longer has a boat at his disposition to fulfil a job he loves. His brother Steven (Giles King) has turned their father’s vessel into a pleasure boat for tourists, and...
Set within a small community of an undisclosed Cornish fishing village (the shoot itself took place in Charlestown and Penzance), Bait presents an eerily enchanting expressionist aesthetic which owes a lot to the early films of French cinema pioneer Jean Epstein (The Fall of The House of Usher) or even Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc).
Bait tells the story of Martin Ward (played brilliantly by comedian Edward Rowe aka Kernow King), a gruff and taciturn cove fisherman who no longer has a boat at his disposition to fulfil a job he loves. His brother Steven (Giles King) has turned their father’s vessel into a pleasure boat for tourists, and...
- 8/30/2019
- by Linda Marric
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
"Losing your temper isn't going to help." "I haven't lost me temper yet!" BFI has debuted an official trailer for an indie from Cornwall, England titled Bait, a modern vintage film shot on actual 16mm stock. Written & directed by Mark Jenkin (Happy Christmas), the film takes place in a harbour village in modern times about a fisherman named Martin struggling with life weighing down on him. It was filmed on a 1976 16mm clockwork Bolex camera, using 100ft rolls of B&w Kodak stock - allowing for a maximum of 28 seconds per shot. "Shot with a single lens for a consistency of aesthetic. A total of 130 rolls or 13,000 ft of film was hand-processed using an antique Bakelite rewind tank. No two rolls come out the same." Bait stars Edward Rowe as Martin, plus Giles King, Mary Woodvine, Simon Shepherd, Isaac Woodvine, and Chloe Endean. This premiered at the Berlin Film Festival...
- 6/16/2019
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
What a difference 85 years can make. In the decades since nonfiction pioneer Robert Flaherty developed the aesthetic that is irresistibly evoked by U.K. experimental filmmaker Mark Jenkin in his 2019 feature debut, the categorization of Flaherty’s films has evolved as his fidelity to what we now accept as documentary truth has been debunked.
But today, the tension that exists in Jenkin’s hand-processed, 16mm, black-and-white “Bait” is not between real and staged — indeed, the archly antiqued technique, from the warm, scratched fuzz of the film’s surface to the beautifully creaky and ever-so-slightly out-of-sync post-dubbing of dialogue and sound effects, consistently reminds us that we’re watching fiction. Instead, the film’s crackling chiaroscuro serves to make “Bait,” which in narrative terms is slight, feel in form and presentation part of the same ongoing conflict as that which cues its story.
A tale of Cornish fishermen whose traditional livelihoods...
But today, the tension that exists in Jenkin’s hand-processed, 16mm, black-and-white “Bait” is not between real and staged — indeed, the archly antiqued technique, from the warm, scratched fuzz of the film’s surface to the beautifully creaky and ever-so-slightly out-of-sync post-dubbing of dialogue and sound effects, consistently reminds us that we’re watching fiction. Instead, the film’s crackling chiaroscuro serves to make “Bait,” which in narrative terms is slight, feel in form and presentation part of the same ongoing conflict as that which cues its story.
A tale of Cornish fishermen whose traditional livelihoods...
- 2/28/2019
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
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