Iluminace 2025, 37(3):43-48 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1821

Knitting on Location: The Norfolk Knitting Pattern Film Series

Jennifer Nightingale ORCID...
The Royal College of Art and Anglia Ruskin University, United Kingdom ✉

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.

Keywords: textile cinema, landscape film, location-as-editing-system, single-frame production, 16mm film

Received: April 29, 2025; Revised: October 8, 2025; Accepted: November 23, 2025; Published: February 3, 2026  Show citation

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Nightingale, J. (2025). Knitting on Location: The Norfolk Knitting Pattern Film Series. Iluminace, 37(3), 43-48. doi: 10.58193/ilu.1821
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    References

    1. Hamlyn, Nicky, Simon Payne, and Al Rees. Kurt Kren: Structural Films (Bristol: Intellect, 2016). Go to original source...
    2. Husbands, Lilly. "Animate Projects - Craft's Critique: Artisanal Animation in the Digital Age," Animate Projects, accessed October 8, 2025, https://animateprojectsarchive.org/writing/essays/l_husbands_2.
    3. Lowder, Rose. Bouquets 11-20: Notebooks (New York: Visual Studies Workshop Press, 2018).
    4. Taylor, Rita, Lesley Lougher, Jan Hillier, Ken Holloway, and Martin Warren. Sheringham Ganseys: People, Places, Patterns. Second Edition (Sheringham: Sheringham Museum Norfolk Trust Ltd, 2019).
    5. Wright, Mary. Cornish Guernseys and Knit-frocks (Clifton-upon-Teme: Polperro Heritage Press, 2008).

    This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original publication is properly cited. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.


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