Slate

Directed by John Barlow

A tightly regimented series of views from around the town of Bethesda and the nearby abandoned Dinorwic slate quarry in North Wales, portraying the scars of this historic local industry as a ghostly, oppressive presence in the landscape. Short clips shot on DS8mm are arranged in a tiled, grid-like structure that evokes the stacks of roofing slates once produced in the old quarry. The distorted drone and clattering slates of the soundtrack heighten the sense of a surreal and overbearing atmosphere.