ENYS MEN readies for Cannes
Credit STEVE TANNER © 2021
With the release of BAIT in 2019, director Mark Jenkin brought his powerful story of the Cornish housing crisis to cinemas across the globe. With its success came attention, not only from cinephiles but also the mainstream, with the film being a box office success and winning numerous awards including Outstanding British Debut at the BAFTAs. The film showed Jenkin to be a visionary artist with a unique understanding of the Cornish landscape, politically and visually, whose work has continued to evolve over the last 20 years.
Now, with the premiere of his second feature ENYS MEN at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight approaching, once again the eyes of the film industry are focussed on Cornwall. The film is a psychological, ecological horror, set on a remote Cornish island, about a wildlife volunteer’s daily observations of a rare flower. Produced by Bosena, the Cornish production company founded and managed by Denzil Monk, Jenkin uses the same process of filming on 16mm film with post sync sound that he has used on previous films.
Credit STEVE TANNER © 2021
We spoke to several of the production team including 1st AD Callum Mitchell, 2nd AD Jonny Dry, and Production Co-ordinator Ella Turner.
Callum has been working with Mark Jenkin as 1st AD since his 2015 film BRONCO’S HOUSE. He told me that he “first acted in one of [Jenkin’s] film’s years ago called HAPPY CHRISTMAS and I found that kind of terrifying but was really interested in learning about making films. So, I said to him ‘next time you do it, could I work behind the camera?’”
Mark Jenkin’s journey to be in this position has been a long one, making numerous short experimental films and featurettes along the way. Their continued success throughout the film festival circuit has brought more ambitious projects, with the breakout hit BAIT truly putting his work on the map. Consistently working in Cornwall, with a small team of local creatives has been a key part of Jenkin’s method and the partnership between Callum and the director is obviously a fruitful one as Callum has continued to be 1st AD throughout.
Throughout our chat everyone tells me that being on a Jenkin’s set is a truly unique working environment with a small and collaborative crew. This is never more apparent than when Jonny tells me that, “Everyone just pitches in, works, and helps where they can. I started out as Covid Supervisor, because I’d done the course when working on a previous short film, but by the second week they asked if I wanted to be 2nd AD”.
Credit STEVE TANNER © 2021
One of the intrinsic themes in the film is the ecological crisis, which has been a particularly prevalent topic in Cornwall over the last few years, and Ella told me that it was of paramount importance that the production was made in as sustainable a way as possible. They used the albert carbon calculator to track the production process, even using state of the art Volstack generators on set. She told me that “one of the differences in shooting in Cornwall is that the locations are remote so that it wasn’t feasible to take everyone to and from the location, and most of the time the cast and crew would have to walk twenty minutes down a little track to get to set.”
As with previous films, the crew was largely made up of people who live and work in Cornwall, and it always is apparent how passionate everyone is in honouring the landscape that they work in. ENYS MEN is mainly shot on location and I ask the group how that process went. Ella is the first to give credit to producer Denzil Monk who “seems to just know everyone who owns the land. When we needed to film in a certain location he would just know exactly how to get there”. Callum too believes that the way Jenkin writes is so rooted in Cornwall “that actually finding the locations is easy as it naturally spills off the page”.
This focus on the Cornish landscape is also helped by Jenkin’s style of filming. Recording no live sound and instead getting the actors to record the dialogue in a recording studio in post-production means that the crew working on set is much smaller and more flexible. Jonny said that ‘bizarrely it’s the calmest and quietest set I’ve ever worked on, which is weird to say, considering that you’re not recording any audio. But because of Mark’s lightweight method of filmmaking, you can focus so much more on shooting the film”.
Credit STEVE TANNER © 2021