Symphony of silence
“Hinting at larger forces …”
M. A. LITTLER is a German writer and Editor of the transatlantic literature and arts magazine, Sargasso. He is also a filmmaker, his production company, Slowboat Films, being one of the last remaining bastions of truly independent cinema, dedicated to authentic and personal filmmaking outside the stronghold of the television and studio system.
In this week’s guest post for The Culturium, Marc showcases his beautiful film diary, Beyond the White Rains, a meditation on the dichotomy of man’s interior world with his surrounding environment. Located inside an old whaler’s cottage, the film captures the ever-changing weather, the impervious sea and moving clouds. Enigmatic, elegiac and, at times, eerie, the film’s pared-down images and otherworldly sound design reveal both the external beauty of a remote coastal setting and one man’s haunted, inner world.
© Slowboat Films, Beyond the White Rains
In 2018, I made a film about the life and death of Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Franz Wright, titled Last Words. It was far from a conventional portrait or documentary. The film revolved around audio tapes Franz recorded for his wife, Elizabeth, after being diagnosed with cancer. We retraced places that had carried deep meaning for him.
In Grants Pass, Oregon, we checked into a motel where my wife noticed blood on the pillows. She looked out at the desolate parking lot and said something that would change the trajectory of my work: ‘You should shoot that—through the window.’
That phrase—through the window—became a way to express Franz Wright’s absence. Window shots became the visual foundation not only for Last Words, but also for another film, Radius, filmed in the Black Forest a few months later, and eventually for Beyond the White Rains—a film I never intended to make.
Beyond the White Rains began during the early days of Covid or what was then called ‘the Chinese flu’. I had become obsessed with extreme limitations and with an Aboriginal belief that one cannot truly know a place beyond a radius of two hundred yards.
I had retreated to a remote, electricity-free cottage on the northwest coast of Ireland to finish a book of poems called Heresies. Instead, I made Beyond the White Rains—a film composed of repetitive yet subtly evolving shots of a storm-battered coastal landscape during winter storm Brandon. Nearly every frame was shot through a window.
Back home, I compiled the footage haphazardly, convinced there was no film to be made. Then, by chance, my longtime collaborator and friend, Alain Croubalian, saw it. He was transfixed. Unprompted, he composed and recorded a stark, drone-based harmonium score and sent it to me without explanation. Not long after, he passed away. Completing the film became a quiet obligation.
© Slowboat Films, M. A. Littler & Croubalian
The poems were the final challenge. I tried recording them. I tried over two hundred different poems. Nothing held. Last Words had taught me that the simplest films are often the hardest to make.
Eventually, I began experimenting with fragments—unfinished lines layered over field recordings: AM radio static, hymns, the shipping forecast. Slowly, it all began to synthesize.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, I would leave central Europe a year later and move just twenty miles from where Beyond the White Rains was filmed. From the bedroom window of my new home, I would go on to shoot four films of the same mountain—and write two books of poetry.
© Slowboat Films, Beyond the White Rains
Winter came early
Insignificance suits me fine
Nothing but a radio receiving frequencies
Nothing but a lighthouse man
Receiving an ancient Morse code
Hinting at larger forces
The permanent
Stands in opposition
To the fleeting
And you’re seeking solace
In all the wrong places
Don’t make me ask
Give freely
Or don’t give at all
How give a voice to that
Which cannot be said?
Brother Sun
Sister Moon
Brother Fire
Sister Water
—M. A. Littler, “Winter Came Early”
Post Notes
- Feature image: © Slowboat Films, Beyond the White Rains
- Slowboat Films
- Sargasso Magazine
- M. A. Littler: The Mystic Mind
- M. A. Littler & Sven Heuchert: The Generosity of Spirit
- Abbas Kiarostami: 24 Frames
- Alain Resnais: Last Year at Marienbad
- Paolo Sorrentino: The Great Beauty
- Jean Cocteau: The Art of Cinema
- Andrei Tarkovsky: Cinematic Genius
- Nuri Bilge Ceylan: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
- Sergei Parajanov: The Colour of Pomegranates
- Ben Rivers: Two Years at Sea
- Michelangelo Frammartino: Le Quattro Volte
- Bill Viola & Michelangelo: Life Death Rebirth
- Marie Menken: Arabesque for Kenneth Anger
- The Culturium uses affiliate marketing links via the Amazon Associates Programme
