The Walthamstow International Film Festival is back for another year and will be collaborating with The Stow Film Lounge to the premiere the film, By Our Selves.
Writer Iain Sinclair based the film on his novel Edge of Orison, which retraced the steps of poet John Clare, who was in Dr Matthew Allen’s asylum in High Peak, Epping Forest in the 1830s.
After a few years being trapped there, he met gypsies while walking through the forest and decided to leave the asylum and walk home with them to his original hometown, Peterborough.
Iain wanted to recreate the spirit of that journey and turn the story into a visual piece, so teamed up with director Andrew Kötting and actor Toby Jones to bring his vision to life. 
He says: “I’ve worked with Andrew on various projects before. We previously travelled on a swan pedalo from Hastings all the way over the river and sea to the Olympic Park for an earlier film called Swandown: Two men in a pedalo. 
“For this film, we walked through the forest to capture the claustrophobia of the road.
“Toby Jones came with us as he wanted to play John Clare, as his father, Freddie Jones, played him years before on TV and he wanted to portray the same role.
“We wanted to film it in the place it happened. John Clare wrote a letter called Journey over Essex, which describes everything that happened when he walked away. He had quite an adventure.”  
There were a few challenges in making the film and Iain admits the low budget was a problem, as well as a lack of time.
He says: “It is an eccentric project and was crowdfunded as peopled were intrigued by the story and because we were very economically tight, we just had a van and rented a place half way up the road and and only had about a week to film it.
“We kept it as accurate as we could. Andrew even plays a straw bear, as there was a tradition in the countryside where Clare came from. In the middle of winter, people dressed a ploughman up as a straw bear and he would walk around getting money from the farmworkers and then after a day or so of drinking and Morris dancing, they would burn the bear.  
“It is a good visual piece. While writing the book, I was so intrigued by the character that I wanted to redo that walk myself and did it exactly as he did with a friend of mine to see how it felt to go up this road. It led me to thinking about his life and so it seemed obvious the next step would be making it into a film, especially as my previous work with Andrew seems to usually include us exploring long journeys.”
Iain’s novels certainly do follow a certain theme. His book, London Orbital was about walking round the whole of the M25 and once again, Iain completed this journey on foot too.
He says: “We started and finished in Waltham Abbey and the last leg of the walk led us to Epping Forest during the night. We passed the place where John Clare had been and I thought it made sense to make this the next project. Most of my work comes off the back of previous projects.”
Walking is a passion for Iain and he focuses his writing on his personal interests. Living in Hackney for a number of years, he has explored the whole Lea Valley, which has inspired many of this novels.
He says: “I have written my whole life but I didn’t make a living out of it for a long time. I used to do all kinds of strange jobs but started to write and eventually I got to the position where I was getting more mainstream people publishing me, until Penguin were getting in touch. However, writing is something I always did whether I could get a big publisher or not.
“Next, I’m involved in a follow up project with Andrew yet again. We have recently finished a walk which took us from Waltham Abbey to where King Harold was supposedly buried after the battle of Hastings. We filmed it as we went along and it is going to be put on as a performance and film in Hastings in September. So it will be a follow project going in the other direction of the country.”
By Our Selves, Walthamstow School for Girls, Hewett Hall. Church Hill, Walthamstow, July 1, 7pm. Details: https://billetto.co.uk/en/events/byourselvessfl