From Enys Men to The Witch: What’s behind cinema’s folk horror boom?

Eloise Hendy delves into the genre that turns the pastoral idyll into a place of terror, and asks what’s behind this obsession with the natural world, magic cults, standing stones and feminine powers

By Eloise Hendy

In Enys Men – the much-anticipated new film written and directed by Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkin, whose last feature, Bait (2019), earned him a Bafta for Outstanding Debut – a woman in walking boots, jeans, and a translucent red anorak trudges across gorsy moorland towards a cliff face. She clambers down, perches on a rocky outcrop, and stares intently at a few white flowers as they sway in the wind, high above clamorous waves below.

Every day she studies these flowers. Then, every day she drops a rock into an abandoned tin mine’s inky depths, and stands listening for a distant thud. She returns to an isolated, ivy-covered cottage. A standing stone sticks out of the landscape like an ancient dagger-head. The woman pulls the cord of a power generator, makes a pot of tea, listens to the scratchy, indistinct noises of a radio communication device, and, in a logbook, records the date – April 1973 – and the words ‘”no change”. At bedtime, by candlelight, she reads an environmental manifesto titled Blueprint for Survival. Snatched glimpses of the cover reveal a quote in red: “Nightmarishly convincing… After reading it nothing quite seems the same any more.”

This phrase goes to the heart of this strange, spectral work of cinema. Even calling it a film feels wrong somehow; it feels more like a fever dream, or hallucination. For, almost as soon as the unnamed wildlife volunteer’s routine comes into focus for the viewer, it starts to fracture. Lichen blooms on her flowers and on a scar that stretches across her abdomen. Grubby-faced men holding pickaxes stare at her from the mineshaft; sailors lost at sea grin and drip outside her front door; a girl in white bell bottoms stands on the outhouse roof. Steadily, the whole far-flung landscape begins to teem with apparitions. They are both convincing and nightmarish; nothing quite seems the same any more. Is the volunteer losing her mind? Or merging with an ancient Cornish terrain – one riddled with myth and old scars, like her lichen-sprouting stomach?

In a statement accompanying Enys Men (which is pronounced Ennis Main, and means “stone island” in Cornish), Jenkin suggests his starting point for the film was a single question: “What if the landscape was not only alive, but sentient?” Long fascinated by Cornish standing stones and their accompanying legends – one of which imagines the rocks as the petrified remains of a group of young girls, punished for dancing – Jenkin found himself imagining what these stones and remote moorlands might get up to under cover of darkness. “Almost inevitably, considering the setting,” he writes, “the idea was inclined towards folk horror.”

Jenkin is far from the only contemporary filmmaker inclined in this direction. Indeed, for at least a decade we have been in the midst of a magnificent folk horror revival. But why has this strange subgenre of standing stones and spectral presences captured the imagination of filmmakers and audiences in the UK and beyond? What does the folk horror boom say about our contemporary fears?

The term itself only went mainstream in 2010, when Mark Gatiss used it in the BBC documentary series The History of Horror to describe three British films now known as the Unholy Trinity: Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973). It is certainly no coincidence then that Enys Men is set in 1973, as, making the film, it was precisely these cinematic roots Jenkin wanted to rummage in. “For me,” Jenkin writes, “folk horror has very English connotations. The stripping away of a pastoral layer of Merrie England to reveal an earlier Celtic and pagan past full of perceived brutality, deviance and threat.” Yet, since Gatiss first invoked the genre, cinemagoers on both sides of the Atlantic have been offered up Ben Wheatley’s Kill List (2011) and A Field in England (2013), Paul Wright’s For Those in Peril (2013), James Crow’s Curse of The Witching Tree (2015), Robert Egger’s The VVitch (subtitled “A New England Folktale”), Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Scott Cooper’s Antlers (2021) and, most recently, Alex Garland’s Men (2022). All present nightmarish visions of a deviant, occult and cult-addled countryside. And that is far from an exhaustive list. Continue reading

Barde’s “Fanny Power”

1977 – Barde (Porte Parole/Direction/Polydor) 10006

Friend of THE HOBBLEDEHOY Chris Crilly (aka Fiddler72 ) led this 70s-era Montreal-based Celtic group BARDE. The band released two LP’s at the time and, according to Chris “had considerable critical, if not overwhelmingly commercial, success in North America and elsewhere. ” We can understand why after listening to this lovely treatment of O’Carolan’s Fanny Power.

Turlough O’Carolan, (1670 – 25 March 1738) was a blind Celtic harper, composer and singer in Ireland whose great fame is due to his gift for melodic composition. Although not a composer in the classical sense, Carolan is considered by many to be Ireland’s national composer. Some of Carolan’s own compositions show influences of the style of continental classical music, whereas others such as Carolan’s Farewell to Music reflect a much older style of “Gaelic Harping”.

Wikipedia

RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards shortlist announced

Lankum’s Radie Peat performs at the 2018 RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards

The shortlist has been announced for the 2019 RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards, taking place in Vicar Street on October 24th.

This year’s nominees cover the entire Irish folk spectrum, with talents like Lisa O’Neill (nominated in four categories, including Best Folk Album and a pair of nominations for Best Original Folk Track), Junior Brother, Saint Sister and Ye Vagabonds nominated alongside veteran players like Dervish, Gerry O’Beirne, Cormac Begley and Martin Hayes. You can read the shortlist in full below.

Additionally, it has been announced that Irish folk legend Moya Brennan, the vocalist with Clannad, will achieve this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards 2019 – The Shortlist

Best Traditional Folk Track

Bacach Shíol Andaí -– Ye Vagabonds

The Factory Girl – Lisa O’Neill

The Foggy Dew – Ye Vagabonds

The Granemore Hare – Daoirí Farrell

Póirste Béil – Inni K

Best Original Folk Track

All Down the Day – Gerry O’Beirne

Áthas – The Gloaming

Blackbird – Lisa O’Neill

Down in the Glen – Karan Casey

The River Holds Its Breath – Colm Mac Con Iomaire

Rock The Machine – Lisa O’Neill

Best Emerging Folk Act

Anna Mieke

Alfi

Lemoncello

Junior Brother

Saint Sister

Best Folk Instrumentalist

Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh

Colm Mac Con Iomaire

Cormac Begley

Martin Hayes

Zoe Conway

Best Folk Singer

Daoiri Farrell

Iarla Ó’Lionáird

Lisa O’Neill

Radie Peat

Ríoghnach Connolly

Best Folk Album

A Lifetime of Happiness – Daoirí Farrell

Heard a Long Gone Song – Lisa O’Neill

The Hare’s Lament – Ye Vagabonds

The River Holds its Breath – Colm Mac Con Iomaire

Pull the Right Rope – Junior Brother

The Gloaming 3 – The Gloaming

Best Folk Group

Dervish

Flook

Saint Sister

The Gloaming

Ye Vagabonds

Source: RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards shortlist announced

Lankum: ‘Dublin folk miscreants’

Lankum, a four-piece group from Dublin comprised of Ian & Daragh Lynch, Cormac Mac Diarmada, and Radie Peat, is truly one of my favorite current acts.

They set incisive original songs with material taken from the traditional repertoire to fiddle, pipes, concertina, and guitar accompaniment.  The result is a thick and captivating sound with intense, penetrating lyrics that makes their website’s motto, “Dublin folk miscreants” as apt a description of the group and their music as you’re likely to see.A short while ago, Ian, the group’s piper, reached out to let me know that the band would be embarking on a short U.S. tour this January, with stops in Brooklyn, Vienna, Va., Sellersville, Pa., Cambridge, Mass, and Barre, Vt.  Longtime readers will remember my very enthusiastic reviews of their albums “Cold Old Fire” (which was recorded under the group’s former name, “Lynched”) in 2014 and “Between The Earth and Sky” last year, so you can imagine my excitement – it’s great that American audiences will have a chance to acquaint themselves with their music [ . . . ]

Read more at IRISH ECHO: Lankum: ‘Dublin folk miscreants’ | Arts & Leisure | Irish Echo