BAFTA Award winning filmmaker Shreepali Patel and top cinematographer Tim Sidell (FKA Twigs, Alt-J) have teamed up with classical chart topper Daisy and The Dark to create an evocative video for her haunting debut single ‘Waltzing’.
Daisy and the Dark is an ‘invitation into a magical world’ - the creation of singer-songwriter-visual artist, Sarah Kayte Foster, who spent Christmas 2013 in the UK Classical Charts Top 10 with the Mediaeval Baebes before going solo:
“Shreepali and I began planning the Waltzing video straight after I’d filmed a live singing session with my former band. The session was for a newspaper known for their questionable portrayal of women and I turned up to our meeting still shuddering at one of the camera men telling me to ‘Look down the lens and imagine all the men watching’. This sparked off a discussion about the portrayal of women in music videos – and the challenge of creating something that’s deeply sensual, without being sexual - where the line between one ends and another begins, and how clearly that line can ever be drawn.”
This theme is apparent in the dark dream-like video, the camera deftly tracing two bodies in close-up as cinematic light projections crawl under their skin. Tenderness and violence, intimacy and distance; we are subtly invited into the emotion of the song.
“We agreed that rooting everything in the story was paramount. No 'skin just for skin’s sake'. We talked about the sensuality and claustrophobia in the lyrics of the song – which is about an experience in my early twenties - about how two people can end up stretching too far to connect over a long distance, be that geographical or emotional - and how violently vulnerable that feels.”
Director Shreepali adds: ‘I wove the story of Sarah’s song - and our interrogation into the relationship between music and gender politics - into my approach to filming. I was keen to explore projections and their mnemonic quality, particularly on the body, and this led to creating a shoot lit entirely by projections - minimalist, intimate and intense.’
