Representations of Capitalism, History and Nation in the Work of Patrick Keiller

The field of English experimental film since the late 1970s has been perceived as increasingly complex and hybridised in terms of the classic distinctions between avant-gardism and more mainstream types of film practice such as those found in art cinema. A.L. Rees, for instance, has said that the ‘current state of experimental film … defies summary’. ¹ In this context, two films by Patrick Keiller stand out: London (1993) and Robinson in Space (1997). They are perhaps best described as fictionalised documentaries, blending the picaresque narrative, the documentary portrait and the filmed essay. Both films work through their themes with a wry, ironic, often surreal sense of humour and an avant-garde commitment to aesthetic experimentation. Equally, they adopt a self-consciously literary, personal and poetic sensibility with affinities to art cinema. The style of the films is very specific, with their long-held and enigmatically framed still images and their unexpected juxtapositions between sound and image and between one image and the next.