I was 10 when I played Betty Paris in a production of The Crucible. From that moment, I was obsessed. I was completely enthralled by the coming-apart-at-the-seams intensity, the infectious madness of the girls accused, how it all tangled with the sexual politics of becoming a woman, how it spilled out into the village, poisoning everything with hysteria. (The communism subtext, at 10, was maybe lost on me)
Being a woman often feels like straining at the seams that hold your sanity together, something howling inside you that you can’t name or even look at directly. A restless ache, an intensity of feeling.
"I get this ache... And I, I thought it was for sex, but it's to tear everything to fucking pieces." - Ginger Fitzgerald, Ginger Snaps
A knowledge that something inside of you must be wrong and you have to do everything in your power to prevent it leaking out. Desire, growing inside you and waiting to burst out and unstick the foundations of your being.
The 1600s - please judge me gently on the historical accuracy, we did our best with the local theatre costume hire and Etsy - are fertile ground for exploring that feeling: the height of fear around witches, the devil, and women’s unseen malign energies.
"I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you... I have seen some reddish work done at night"
- Abigail, The Crucible
The Crucible is set in New England but here maybe the most famous witch trial was of the Pendle witches of Lancashire, a county at the time was “fabled for its theft, violence and sexual laxity, where the church was honoured without much understanding of its doctrines by the common people"
There’s debate about whether women were truly the primary targets of witch trials or whether that was a later construction, but in the Pendle trials, it was mostly women, poor, old, living in rural communities beyond the reach of the state, who were the accused.
There’s sometimes debate if women generally were the primary targets of witch trials or if this was a narrative constructed in later reports but in the case of the Pendle witches and other famous witch trials it certainly appears that groups of women were targeted, families living in rural communities, outside of the control of the state. Herbalists, healers, women with social and sexual power were suspected of colluding with the devil.
Silvia Federici, in her text, Caliban and the Witch, argues that the witch hunts of early modern Europe were not random superstition but part of the violent foundation of capitalism itself. As society shifted toward wage labor and private property, female bodies (especially women’s sexuality and reproductive power) were disciplined and controlled. The “witch” became a symbol of rebellion against this new order: a woman who refused to conform, to labor silently, to obey or to submit her body.
Rural isolation made it especially hard for state and church control to take root, the people in these communities maintained their connection to folk magic and ritual. Fear of women, especially of young women’s sexuality and power, is a lay line through The Crucible, the witch trials and through society itself.
In the 1600s, early medicine taught that the body was governed by four humours: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, with corresponding colours and diagnosis's. Men were considered the optimal beings (warm and dry) while women were defective: cold and wet. This “wetness” supposedly caused imbalance in their humors, leading to melancholy, lust, uncontrollable anger. This wetness is one of my favourite things about women, in all the ways.
Despite the inaccuracy, that theory speaks to me. It captures something about how we sometimes feel pulled by forces inside of us, ragdolls flung around, poppets gripped by unseen hands, outside of our own rational control. These fluids, physical “impurities” symbolic of “what’s wrong with us”, why we can’t be quiet, can’t stay composed, can’t be good girls or pious wives. Why we’re always spilling out everywhere, outside ourselves, out of control, howling. How simple it could be if it could just be blamed on bile.
The Sanguine or red humour controlled by the blood, redness, a sanguineous woman is a woman running hot, an excess of blood, flushed rosy, full of lust and temper.
William Perkins wrote in A Discourse of Conscience (1596)
“The sanguine woman, being soft of nature and hot of blood, must bridle her passions, else they turn to frenzy and folly; for the devil worketh first upon the humours before he tempteth the soul.”
Dancing with the devil becomes a metaphor for surrendering to desire, to madness for escaping control, “reddish work”
When I think about escape I return again and again to Sylvia Plath’s 1965 poem Ariel, (named for the air spirit related to Caliban from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, tying back in to Federici’s text) Few poems give me chills like Ariel. Every time I read it, I feel shot into the air. A poem about coming undone as a form of release.
And I Am the arrow,
The dew that flies Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
The line, Into the red, feels like closing your eyelids as a bright light burns through to the back of your retina. At peace with your own self obliteration. Like levitating up and out in the eye of a storm. The moment just before some death, real or allegorical. The same sensation when Thomasin rises above the fire in The VVitch, or Anna convulses in the subway in Possession.
This film lives in that space: the hysteria of uncontrollable desire. To run, to fuck, to tear yourself apart. For “mad” women and all the ways they find to escape.
A homage to camp British B-movie horrors of the 1970s, to House of Psychotic Women, to the wilderness of the North and the wildness inside. We were so lucky to be joined on this project by a cast of dreams, I really did want to try for some historical accuracy so finding porn performers without visible tattoos, modern haircuts and shaved bodies and who were crazy enough to shoot in the freezing countryside in spring was somewhat of an almost impossible feat.
This was by far our most ambitious shoot day ever. We'd usually aim to shoot for about five hours but this one really pushed what it was possible to do with a small team and a days work. I can really see why film sets have huge credit lists because trying to do almost everything yourselves (including performing in the film!) becomes near impossible when the stakes are this high with such limited time.
Despite everything through the years Four Chambers remains a project that is primarily just two people in collaboration with performers.
For this shoot, we were lucky enough to be joined by Helena (saving my life as always in pre-production, running around on set, even agreeing to a small cameo) and Valerie (who shot the most beautiful on set photos all while holding candles and blankets and sat in the cold for us for hours while we danced by the fire)
And three incredible, incredible performers who went with us with what was I'm sure a somewhat insane pitch. Cora, who trusted us with her first time performing on a porn set, joked that “as long as I didn’t make her act” and then threw herself into every single set and every scene with so much incredible energy and ease. A perfect performer, such a natural.
Marcus, a consummate professional and sweetheart who just so effortlessly embodied what we needed, his patience, good nature and ability to get into character and then FUCK in that character immediately could be studied by science.
Maria, who despite having worked with her on so many films now, never ceases to surprise and amaze me with the immediate connection and power she puts into every single performance. A dream to work with, here's to many more.
I could not have dreamt for a better team, we’re so lucky to get to make art and porn with people I admire and count as friends and get to spend a weekend with them in the countryside having a fire side orgy with a little devil worship.
And what better setting for said orgy than Ashlack Estate? I put out a call on Instagram looking for a dilapidated stone barn and Jenna replied saying they thought they had something like this on the estate. Ashlack is an incredible home and working farm in the Cumbrian wilderness ran by the best people who were just so welcoming, up for all of our weirdness and fed us some of the best food I've had in my life.
My only regret is that we didn't use the incredible location of the house itself, which is something to behold. Special thanks to Sean, who rode us around very fast on his quad bike, made us our fire, took us to hold the lambs and shot some of these beautiful portraits on set on 6 x 4 film.
We've somehow managed to compile a list of some of my favourite people making music for the score. We have not 1 but 4 names to thank for the soundtrack. First Rowan from Goblin band who bestowed us with some layered hurdy-gurdy drone score for the scene on the fell, Cinder Well, for the haunting rendition of their song Mayn Rue Platz performed inside the Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum in Oslo (one of the most magical places in the world) at the beginning of the barn scene. Andy Gibbs from Thou with an original score for the barn and One Leg One Eye with Glistening, She Emerges for the madness of the fireside orgy & abduction.
Making this film made me fall in love, both with everyone in it and who helped us along the way and with filmmaking itself again. For a while, I’ve felt stagnant in my creative process, like trying to pull boots through thick mud (which we did a bit of on this shoot). I've lost people these last years to the madness and the feeling that this film is trying to explore in someway. I’ve felt stuck in it. But this weekend, being with these people and the film that we've made feels like escape, like levitating up, off my feet into the fresh, spring air.
Silvia Federici, Caliban and The Witch, 2004. Arthur Miller, The Crucible, 1953. the photography of Ellen Jane Rogers Robert Eggers, The VVitch, 2015. House of Psychotic Women, Kier-La Janisse, 2012. Panos Cosmatos, Mandy, 2018. Frances Hill, Salem Witch Trials reader, 2000. Dennis Wheatly, The Devil and all his Works, 1971. MormonGirlz.com
CONTENT NOTES images of dead animals, spit, cum on body, rough and tumble bullying, sex in frenzied stupour, light suggestion of coercion, alien abduction?
