Private Project

August/September Rain

A subjective map of Berlin, a journal of sensory impressions of intimacy. August/September Rain takes us through the city via a hand-drawn map. This and nature's spokes-elements - the cycle of days and a river to cross, are our framework for entering into a personal experiencing of this place and the encounters made within it.

  • Flora Cullerne Bown
    Director
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Documentary, Experimental, Music Video, Short, Student
  • Genres:
    poetic, personal, experimental, artists' film
  • Runtime:
    14 minutes 55 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    October 31, 2023
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    Germany
  • Language:
    English
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Goldsmiths University
Director Biography - Flora Cullerne Bown

As a filmmaker, Flora Cullerne Bown (b.1996, London) is intrigued by the myriad ways we can relate to our surroundings; public or intimate, urban or rural. Her work engages specifically with personal experiences of place rooted in the sensory and poetic. These concerns are reflected in her film-making methods - often incorporating diverse mediums such as writing, sewing, drawing and animation within her films, favouring a DIY approach by using what is close at hand, as well as approaching an embodied use of the camera through improvisation.

As well as films, Flora works with installations and workshops. Over Summer 2023 she delivered a series of Improvisational Filmmaking workshops along the River Thames in London at low tide, inviting participants to probe their relationships to the site through engagement of the camera and senses. The resulting collaborative film 'How far is the distance between us?' was exhibited at Goldsmiths 2023 Degree Show, where Flora undertook a Graduate Diploma in Fine Art.

Prior to this Flora was based in Berlin, where she completed studies in Experimental Filmmaking at MetFilm School, learning from filmmakers Nina Könnemann and Dagie Brundert. Her time there became the seed for her film ‘August/September rain’, a subjective mapping of the city, which was exhibited in the group show 'Internal Kaleidoscope: Urban Fragments' at IMT Gallery, London in November 2022.

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Director Statement

Can we experience the warmth of an encounter through abstract representation? Can the sensory qualities of a memory translate on film to a viewer? Can a cityscape feel intimate? These are some of the questions August/September Rain sets out to explore.

After I moved back to London from Berlin, certain memories remained at the top of my memory pool of the city, although I was unsure why. Amongst these were encounters with music and strangers and spokes-elements of nature. These instances were all clustered within the months of August and September 2021, and most involved rain. In hope of finding more resonances between these moments and a way to weave a narrative, I drew their locations out on paper, thus producing a personal psycho-geographic map of the place.

The textural, layered approach within the style of the film is a product of having limited tangible material related to each memory to work with (for one I had a sound recording, another footage and others nothing) but I hope it also speaks to the felt qualities of experiences - the emotions and sensory impressions which mingle and are hard to describe in literal imagery or words.

I hope the viewer, despite missing actual recordings of every memory, may be able to feel immersed in this time and place we explore. I hope too that they may be left with some impression of an urban life full of connections rather than separations - connections with ourselves and each other, our senses, the cosmos - some kind of outer intimacy.