Director’s Statement
I created Negative Worlds over 8 years with a small and very dedicated team. It’s a record of friendship, study, and nights out. It also documents places in south London which have been destroyed and rebuilt over that time. Fictionalised and built into an experimental narrative, the result follows an ensemble cast as they criss-cross through time in search of a future worth hoping for. The form of a narrator who tells the story over a collage of clips was inspired by Chris Marker’s La Jetee - a style capable of huge jumps and conceptual storytelling, centred on the narrator’s own journey. Negative Worlds is about how the present is founded on our collective ideas about the future.
Edmund Hardy, Negative Worlds creator
Supporting Materials
“Within Negative Worlds there is something utopian; within its choices as a production, its story and its methods. Namida Red’s thematic concerns have been catalyzed by the pandemic, but they also suggest a way of being in the world beyond it.” (Andrew Spragg, Filming With Namida Red)
Many films influenced Negative Worlds. Some played at key moments in the genesis, listed here.
Return to Zero
Music
The original score is by Edmund Hardy (aka Namida Red). It was written as the images came together, in parallel to editing.
It embodies a struggle and a criss-crossing of contradictions. It combines neo-trance atmospheres with the revanchist beauty of Baroque harmonies. Similarly, vocal synths dominate but are torn away occasionally by the voice of Florence Warner.
Listen to ‘Buried Like This’ from the original soundtrack.
Music is also featured by Kelora, Egg Meat, Tooth Rust, Georgie McVicar and lupa lari, echoing the ensemble cast.
Collaborators
Many of the clothes in Negative Worlds are by Rachel Schofield Owen at C2RI.
Ceramics by Erin Liu.