Patrick Hough's The Black River of Herself screens at Garter Lane Arts Centre as part of aemi's touring programme 'In the long now'. 

In Hough’s film, a female bog body is uncovered at the site of a dig. Like a person lying prostrate at the scene of an accident, she is unable to move but fully able to speak. The archaeologist/surveyor who has been delegated to recover her listens matter-of-factly at first, then comfortingly and increasingly attentively, as her meandering monologue moves on from an account of her individual fate to a premonition of a tragedy awaiting the contemporary environment – her ageless senses instantly alerted to changes in air temperature, and the presence of alien micro-particles. As the race to save the bog body turns into an allegory about the future of the planet, Hough punctuates the narrative with panoramic views of an evergreen Irish landscape, whose rugged, weather-beaten features look like they have been there from time immemorial. But it is the dramatic interplay between the two central protagonists that encapsulates the film. Beautifully scripted by novelist Daisy Hildyard, its wry, saturnine exchanges are disarmingly affectionate and genuinely affecting: the flesh and bones of a subtle and haunting piece of filmmaking that lingers powerfully in the mind.  

The Black River of Herself (2020) by Patrick Hough was created in collaboration with Film and Video Umbrella. Produced by Tracy Bass. Supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland and Arts Council England.