A Clever Woman 15

Presented by Tull Stories, this screening will be followed by a Q&A with directors Jon Sanders and Anna Mottram and actors Josie Lawrence and Tanya Mayers*

Sisters and performance artists Phoebe and Dot (Josie Lawrence and Tanya Myers) have returned to their family home on the Isle of Wight a year after the death of their composer mother. As they prepare the house for its sale, clearing decades of family clutter, they have started to work on a site-specific performance piece about their complex relationship with their mother and her serial infidelities; this incorporates her compositions for pianola and songs using the poems of Mary Coleridge, one of which, A Clever Woman, gives the film

its title. Over one day, they - plus house-sitting musician Tom (James Northcote) and the sisters’ producer/curator Monica (Anna Mottram) - are forced to engage with the ghosts of the past and the void left behind. Beguiling and free-spirited, Jon Sanders and Anna Mottram’s uplifting film explores family bonds and the process of mourning.

The films of Jon Sanders and Anna Mottram stand as a distinctive and truly independent voice in British cinema. Building around them a unique, collaborative improvisational approach to filmmaking, and a collective of brilliant performers operating ‘without permission’, their practice draws from Anna’s work on the stage, and Jon’s experience as a member of the Berwick Street Film Collective and filmmaking partner of Roger Deakins. A Clever Woman is their latest film: a beguiling new drama touching on loss, guilt, creativity, and the bonds of sisterhood. It stars Josie Lawrence, Tanya Myers, James Northcote and Anna Mottram. This is the final performance from Bob Goody, who sadly died in March.