A Somerset farmer’s home videos are a gift for director Oscar Harding, serving as a moving and surreal portrait of one man’s quiet rural existence
The found-footage connoisseurs assembled in this documentary all agree: first-time feature director Oscar Harding has struck gold in Huish Champflower. That’s the Somerset village where his family once lived alongside Charles Carson, a farmer who found his vocation making mad little films about the life and death – mostly death – he saw all around.
Too much is made of the slight story of the VHS tapes’ rediscovery, but the footage itself is delightful, ranging from Countryfile banalities to macabre surrealism, and swerving excitingly between the two. Oh look, a cute kitty curled up by the fireside! Oh no, wait… is it mummified?
