FLUX GOURMET•TIM SIDELL BSC
WHAT’S COOKING? By Oliver Webb
D
irector Peter Strickland serves up a gastronomic feast with his latest film, Flux Gourmet, which provides an insight into a dysfunctional, ‘sonic catering band’, comprised of experimental performance artists, who take up residency at a remote artistic institution, run by an enigmatic director. An outsider is tasked with recording the day-to-day performances of the group, only to discover that he slowly becomes part of their collective. Brilliantly shot in vibrant hues by DP Tim Sidell BSC, the sumptuous and surreal character-driven drama is set to be released in the UK on the 30th September. “A decade ago, I was testing for a feature film alongside my great friend Nic Knowland BSC who was prepping Berberian Sound Studio (2012) with Peter,” says Sidell, whose recent credits include Two For Joy (2018, dir. Tom Beard), six episodes of Sky Original’s I Hate Suzie (2022), plus the National Theatre/Sky Arts’ TV movie Romeo & Juliet (2021). “We all met at Ice Film in London to compare 16mm, 35mm, ARRI Alexa and Red cameras, and I showed Peter some of my experimental film work. This led to me shooting some second unit material for him on Berberian Sound Studio, and then, in post, we started to discuss a sequence that Peter thought could be enhanced through some of the experimental techniques I’d established in my own practice. So I went off to have a play, and he and his editor then cut a great little sequence together. I subsequently shot some other bits with Peter using similar techniques.” When it came to initial conversations about Flux Gourmet, Sidell notes how Strickland set out the overall structure of the film. “The residency of the sonic catering band at the remote artistic institution takes place over three weeks. It was written as a three act play and like a three-course meal, with a colour, bodily fluid and foodstuff for each. The starter (week one) is red – blood and tomato soup. The main (week two) is yellow – bile and a cheese omelette. The dessert (week three) is brown – excrement and chocolate pudding. I absolutely loved this conceptual structure and knew there’d be some great visual opportunities.” The film was shot over a period of fourteen days in North Yorkshire manor house in Yorkshire, apart from the gallery sequences, which were captured in Selby Town Hall. “The fact that the mainstay of the shoot was at one location made things much easier than they might have been,” says Sidell. “An additional day was added
though in one of the out-buildings at the manor, which we’d initially used for the sonic caterer’s dormitory, and which then we turned into a basic studio for additional abstract food and audio tech shots. The basic lighting rig and the seating gallery above the main space in Selby Town Hall was what facilitated our lighting approach, and made it feasible to complete everything there in four days. The gallery was small and hot, the hall was rich and varied. We were lucky to be shooting there.” In terms of creative inspirations Strickland’s first and foremost reference for Sidell was documentary material of the short-lived Viennese Actionist art movement. As the DP explains, “The Actionists were a group working in the ‘60s and ‘70s who set out to
64 SEPTEMBER 2022 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD
deliberately provoke and upset the establishment through performances involving nudity, blood and dead animals. This aligned with Peter’s intent with the script – to parody cultural institutions and the characters that function within them, but to do this affectionately and respectfully, rather than mockingly. There’s an observation here on the interdependency between the institutions and the artists that they host. “Those often transgressive Actionist performance events were documented through B&W 35mm stills and 16mm film, and we sought to bring the authenticity associated with the texture of those original images to the performance sequences in Flux Gourmet. Documentary stills by the German artist, teacher and performance artist, Joseph Beuys, provided another reference for this. “However, by way of contrast that, we also wanted to establish a formal austerity for the remote institute and play on the notion of the establishment that would contrast the performances, and the work of director Peter Greenaway was a reference here.” Sidell says that Strickland was also keen to develop a heightened theatrical quality to certain scenes in Flux Gourmet, such as the burglary sequence, for which he referenced Judex (1963, Georges Franju, DP Marcel Fradetal). The Third Part Of The