Output details
36 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
Edinburgh Napier University
The Druids. Travels in Deep England. Documentary Film
The Druids is an exploration of neo-pagan magical belief in the 21st century. Shot over three years in Somerset, England, this ethnographic documentary follows a group of modern pagans and their friends through their celebrations of the ritual year in the West Country, home of stone circles, King Arthur and the Tesco supermarket chain. We meet informants such as Gordon (Tarot-reader and stone circles guide), Liz and Trevor (druids and owners of three shops in Glastonbury), Adrian (druid and keeper of his own miniature henge) and Alison (druid and witch).
The stories about their lives are interwoven with unique footage of ceremonies at Glastonbury (Gordon’s handfasting; Liz & Trevor’s May Day), and at Stanton Drew (home of the Dobunni Grove, a branch of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids). Each informant speaks frankly about the trajectories and interests that brought each of them to the West Country, and to their involvement in magic. The film explores how the activities and beliefs of the druids are rooted in contemporary attitudes to the landscape, Celtic prehistory, medievalism and the New Age.
Super 8 footage of changing seasons and countryside is used to express visually first-person accounts of visionary and liminal experience, and for other kinds of subjective content. Original music, based on Somerset folksongs, arranged and performed by Jack Richold.
