EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL, EDINBURGH

JAMIE CREWE: A LUXURY

Premiered 25 August, 2021.

 

A luxury is a short film by Jamie Crewe commissioned by Edinburgh International Book Festival as an accompaniment to Shola Von Reinhold’s novel LOTE (2020). The film was conceived by Shola and Jamie, with reference to Curtis Harrington and Cameron, the director and subject of The Wormwood Star (1956), from which this film takes its structure. 

The film takes in views of Preston Hall, Midlothian: its grand staircase, its blanched statuary and moudings, its filthy attic. In said attic a figure, played by Shola, performs gestures with a marble egg, a hand mirror, and flakes of gold leaf as a lever harp plays. In a flicker of gold and descending glissandi the scene transitions to vivid abstractions of ink on water, billowing across the screen, speckled by gall. Shola reads an excerpt from LOTE in which three characters attempt a ritual of communion, and at its climax a drawing in oil pencil, oil pastel and ink is briefly glimpsed (a drawing also called A luxury).