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Mark Jenkin
Film is the medium for Mark Jenkin, the filmmaker who has championed celluloid throughout a highly distinctive career.
With his BFI-distributed feature film Bait in 2019 writer-director Mark Jenkin achieved a genuine indie sensation. From seemingly outside of Britain’s traditional filmmaking structures the film emerged to reached a wide audience, despite its ostensibly semi-experimental form. Yet Jenkin had been making films since 2002, ploughing a particular filmmaking furrow based around analogue techniques, home-made solutions, and adherence to his own DIY filmmaking manifesto, Silent Landscape Dancing Grain 13. (One of the rules being to break one of the preceding rules.)
Here we present a selection of Jenkin’s other works in order to highlight an under-explored filmmaking journey. Focusing on his longer shorts and mid-length works, we include Bronco’s House (2015), the 44-minute film that brought Jenkin to the attention of critical champions such as Mark Kermode, and which has many thematic resonances with Bait. His other mid-length work Enough to Fill An Eggcup (2016) can in some ways be seen as a summation of his various earlier Cornish landscape shorts. While David Bowie Is Dead (2018) finds Jenkin in a completely different, urban rhythm – an amphetamine rush through Patrick Keiller-esque psychogeography. Finally, the BFI Network-funded Hard, Cracked the Wind (2019) shows Jenkin still developing his short-form techniques even after the production of Bait; channelling both MR James and John Carpenter for this eerily atmospheric genre piece.
Enys MenEnys Men
Horror202291 minsDirector: Mark Jenkin
Mark Jenkin follows Bait with this chilling, endlessly mysterious folk horror tale, beautifully shot on grainy 16mm.
BaitBait
Drama201989 minsDirector: Mark Jenkin
Simmering tensions between locals and newcomers in a modern-day Cornish fishing village reach boiling point in this hugely acclaimed British independent film.
Mark Jenkin's The Cinematic DNA of Enys Men
Discover more about Mark Jenkin's influences in our Subcription collection.