A poetic journey through my home town. Goole, East Yorkshire. A Post Industrial town with a mix of stoic English locals and a newer Eastern European community. A town that is also the most inland port in Europe. With little work left on the docks people have slowly dispersed. I want to document what is left in a positive manner. I want to portray a fresh take on Northern English towns. I also want to use the film to explore my ideas on documentary. I would like to weave together my theoretical ideas on what the subject of documentary is through the story of my town.
I am using a small community shop as a catalyst for this personal discovery as well as organically following the documentary story. A story within a story. An exploration. I often flow through ideas as in a stream of consciousness, so I naturally lean towards essay filmmaking. I feel this story may intuitively lead me in a certain filmmaking direction.
Olive hunts shop will be the anchor for my story. This is a point I will always return to, in order to steady my curiosity and keep me in check. I have a tendency to float too far off topic. I don’t want to do a disservice to the memory of Olive Hunt. I have been documenting her two good friends who now run her shop since Olive passed away. Olive was a force of nature receiving an MBE from the queen for all her charity work.
I was drawn to ‘Olive’s corner’ while visiting the shop, which is where my story begins. Olive lead her life by native American principles, yet no one could tell me what that meant specifically. Finding out who Olive is, has lead me further into and through my town, and begun my own personal exploration into documentary.
Olive raised money for life boats, as Goole is close to the sea the history of the town is tied to boats and shipping as much as the docks. I want to follow this story through and out of the town onto the ships, over the ocean (filming in and under the sea), to perhaps end up on an Indian reservation. I think this premiss turns a traditional ‘Northern town’ story on it’s head. It also opens up my filmmaking to exploration with different landscapes, soundscapes and filming techniques that I want to experiment with.
