Happy is the Eye film

Happy is the Eye film

As part of the Forest Oral Histories project, Dean Heritage Centre commissioned artist & documentary filmmaker Ryan Powell to create a film on the Forest of Dean drawn from our recordings. Ryan works with different techniques including observational landscaping, sound and video collage and oral history documentation as ways of exploring the emotional and material links that tie people with the landscapes and spaces they occupy.

The film uses recordings and photographs sourced from the Dean Heritage Centre archive and the Voices from the Forest project, to build up an image of life in the Forest of Dean during the 20th century, with a focus on ways that people directly interacted with the natural landscape as part of their way of life.  Almost every scene in the film is in fact made up of several shots that have been blended together to create a new image, one that synthesises elements of the landscape, bringing them into conversation with one another. These images are in a constant state of flux in recognition that nothing is static, that both the human, the natural and the relationship between them, are forever changing.

The film will be showing in the Dennis Potter room along with explanative text.  The name of the film comes from the saying 'Happy is the Eye betwixt the Severn and the Wye'. The film lasts for about half an hour and Ryan has done a tremendous job of capturing so much of the beauty, landscape and Foresters’ memories of the Forest. Come and have a look!

*please note that the Dennis Potter room is on the top floor and is not wheelchair accessible. Please contact Nicola Wynn at DHC for alternative arrangements to see the film.

The film can also be viewed online, please follow this link:

 https://vimeo.com/486397575/f3c324c98a