At the moment the sea off Torbay and Teignmouth is filled with cruise ships parked up waiting for Covid to pass. These ghost ships are manned by skeleton crews, behemoths at anchor on the horizon.
https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/cruise-ships-stay-torbay-over-5071384
This reminded me of filming for a project in Teignmouth in 2008. At that time, tankers could be seen anchored out at sea for long periods in the sheltered waters of Babbacombe Bay, waiting for the price of oil and petrol to rise before discharging their cargo at refineries and storage depots.
I had filmed around the town but the project came alive when some home movie footage came to light, beautifully shot by a family member, of successive summer holidays in the town in the years running up to WW2. I imagined the last holiday as tensions were rising in Europe prior to Hitler’s invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939.
The outcome of the filming, Teign Spirit, is an archive film – in Jaimie Baron’s terminology/taxonomy – a found footage film. I made no attempt to reveal the context of the cine film, leaving it to audiences to decipher the interleaved footage that alluded to the gathering clouds of climate change that threaten Teignmouth.
The film demonstrates Baron’s ‘archive effect’ in both ways: intentional and temporal disparity. Intentional disparity as the Brown family’s home movies weren’t intended to be seen in Tate Modern in 3/12/2009 Starr Auditorium introduced by Stuart Comer – Tate’s Modern film curator. Teign Spirit also has had screenings all over the world and can be viewed online. Temporal disparity as the old black and white footage appeared on screen mixed-in with modern-day colour digital video.
Teign Spirit – pronounced teen spirit, yes like in the Nirvana song. It was a the name of a racing pilot gig we filmed on the water.
River Teign – river teen
Teignmouth – tin muth
Kingsteignton – kings tane tun