Cornwall UK
English
Sound Kingsley Marshall
This film is assembled from the 16mm bin cuts of a long lost 1978 BBC documentary about the Truro River Oyster Fishery in Cornwall, where ancient laws required dredges to be hand-pulled over the fishery under sail – the only regulated sail-powered fishery in the UK. After the documentary was broadcast a can of randomly assembled 16mm film was given to Dennis Laity, crewman on the working boat George Glasson, as a memory of his late brother Paul, who passed away not long after the original shoot wrapped.
The can of film lay in Dennis’s airing cupboard for 45 years, unseen, before being passed to the director, who lives in the same Cornish fishing village and works as a filmmaker at Falmouth University. A 4K digital scan revealed the beauty captured in the celluloid and Dennis, now 82 years old, gave voice to his memories of the men who dredged the oyster beds of the Carrick Roads and the boats they sailed on. A story emerged – of a very specific place and working methods, and of love and loss, time and memory, dog biscuits and sideburns – these discarded bin cuts growing into this contemporary retelling of a fishery fished by Cornish families in gaff-rigged boats for over 100 years.
The culch is the bed on which oysters grow. Composed of discarded shells, stones and grit – thrown overboard once the dredge has been sifted for marketable oysters – the culch is the fertile ground on which future harvests rely. Bin cuts are the bed on which this film has grown. Composed of discarded shots, retakes and tails – thrown on the cutting room floor once the edit has been sifted for marketable material – bin cuts are the fertile ground on which archival documentaries can flourish.
The filmmakers propose that once discarded moments of aesthetically and narratively undesirable footage are in fact a more fitting container for emotion and memory than the carefully staged and framed footage more common to broadcast documentary.
Their production process was in itself was cathartic and deeply moving, and considered how film is impacted by a desire to remain true to the memory of people, language and place.
The filmmakers followed a technique used by Adam Curtis (Hypernormalisation, Bitter Lack) in their editing decisions, in sound design and score, in interview technique and writing – sought to honour the material, retaining the sense of discovery that comes from opening a can of film whose contents are deemed valueless to some, yet are priceless to others.