Dry hole is an unusual feature film project being written by Erik Knudsen and Duncan Thomas and to be directed later in 2008 by Erik Knudsen. Set in urban Britain, this is an intimate snap shot of contemporary urban life, as seen through the perspective of people's interaction with water. Episodic and peripatetic in construction, and poetically blending fiction and documentary, the narrative weaves its way in and out of specific people's lives to reveal an urban Britain with hidden disparities and aspirations. Further details on the project's progress will follow.
Erik Knudsen is completing the directing of the filmic components for Horse & Bamboo's latest mask and puppet production, Veil. Two young women, two generations, two cultures... Veil, the most ambitious production in Horse & Bamboo's 30 year history, will be touring across the UK during 2008. This production incorporates 10 separate filmic components, seamlessly integrated into a visually evocative production. For tour dates and venues, please visit the Veil site.
Erik Knudsen has contributed a chapter to the forthcoming book, Rethinking Documentary, entitled 'Transcendental Realism in Documentary'. This work is due out in May 2008 and is published by the Open University Press. The chapter, 'Transcendental Realism in Documentary', explores a different approach to thinking of and using film narrative in an effort to portray and elicit our more transcendent feelings and relationships to actuality and the factual. It looks at how the documentary can engage with not just empirical observations and the psychologically explicable, but how documentary can also explore more transcendent realities, which are usually as important as the empirically factual in affecting people's lives.
Erik Knudsen has signed an agreement to co-author, with Wilma de Jong and Jerry Rothwell from the University of Sussex, a book on creative documentary practice for Pearson Publishing. The book is due for completion in 2009, though we do not yet know when the publication date is.