RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
A1 Nightingale, Jennifer
T1 Knitting on Location: The Norfolk Knitting Pattern Film Series
JF Iluminace
YR 2026
VO 37
IS 3
SP 43
OP 48
DO 10.58193/ilu.1821
UL https://iluminace.cz/artkey/ilu-202503-0001.php
AB This audiovisual essay and written statement unpack two films from the Norfolk Knitting Pattern series, which I created in 2023. The 16mm landscape films discussed here aim to translate Norfolk fisherman gansey knitting patterns. The films were shot and edited on location in two Norfolk fishing villages, Sheringham and Cromer, in the UK, where the patterns have been historically produced. The production of the films creates a structural relationship between a stitch of knitted textile fabric and a frame of film. In this methodology, gesture, landscape, and film are "knitted together" as a material object, re-embedding the knitting patterns into the location and landscape that inspired them. The essay and statement unpack the methods used for translating the knitting patterns. These have included the use of filming charts, a single-frame shooting technique that creates a self-instigated time-lapse, and a location-as-editing-system. The films build on the legacy of single-frame modes of filmmaking in the context of experimental cinema and produce new visual phenomena and motion effects. The project asks what it would mean and look like to translate a knitting pattern into a filming chart, and what kind of audiovisual reflection would allow me to communicate the methods and process of my filmmaking. These questions are explored using photographs, notation, and interviews collected during the films' production and the project's research. In doing so, both the audiovisual essay and the statement highlight the project's relationship to the rich history and culture of gansey knitting in Sheringham, and to the nature of my film project as handmade and craft-oriented.