Film / News
Monty Python meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – in Somerset
Each year, the Found Footage Festival comes to Bristol for invariably sold-out shows as part of an international tour hosted by founders Joe Pickett (The Onion) and Nick Prueher (The Colbert Report, Late Show with David Letterman). Audiences around the world lap up their latest finds: bizarre home movies, odd industrial training videos, rib-tickling self-help guides, crazy religious rants, and so on. But who’d have predicted that they’d discover their Holy Grail just down the M5?
Bristol-born filmmaker Oscar Harding’s grandfather passed away in Somerset a decade ago. Among his possessions was one of the weirdest videotapes ever seen, which had been made by eccentric neighbouring farmer Charles Carson.
Carson shot, edited and scored the whole deranged epic himself. Ever wanted to see a skeleton drag race, a rendition of Scotland the Brave performed on pieces of tractor machinery or a close-up look at a cow placenta? That’s just the start.
A Life on the Farm director Oscar Harding
Naturally, Oscar embarked on an epic quest to find out more about the life and motivations of this rural nutter/unheralded outsider artist (delete according to taste). He also showed the video to Pickett and Prueher backstage at one of their shows. They quickly recognised the huge cultural importance of what’s been billed as Monty Python meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The ‘A Life on the Farm’ poster by Somerset artist Ellie Powell
Now the Found Footage Festival has launched a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund Oscar’s documentary A Life on the Farm. It’s described as an “exploration and celebration of Charles Carson and his movies, which present a moving and laugh-out-loud document of a time and place in danger of being lost to history.” A suitably bizarre twist in the tale (and, quite possibly, the tail) is also promised.
Charles Carson and friends
So far, backers have pledged £11,524 of the £15,000 needed to complete the film. For more information on how you can help to support the project, visit the A Life on the Farm Kickstarter page. But hurry – they need to reach their goal by Friday 11 September.
Images supplied by Oscar Harding.
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