Writer and presenter Stuart Maconie recently Tweeted about discovering Alan Lomax’s 1953 film Oss Oss Wee Oss, a documentary which focuses on the ‘Obby ‘Oss folk ritual festival that takes place each May in Lowennac Padstow, via the A Year In The Country: Cathode Ray And Celluloid Hinterlands book in which I write about the film:
“Just discovered this thanks to a fantastic new @ayearinthcountry book. So weird, unsettling and feral and clearly an influence on The Wicker Man” (Quoted from Stuart Maconie’s Tweet pictured above.)
With that in mind, I thought I’d post a screenshot or two from the festivities and processions shown in Oss Oss Wee Oss, which have a distinctive “wyrd” friendly nightmare-like quality…
…all of which brings me to this quote by Robin Hardy, the director of The Wicker Man, taken from the October 1977 issue of Cinefantastique magazine that focused largely on The Wicker Man:
“[In the later 1960s and prior to making The Wicker Man] we were filming in the Cornwall area, and one evening we went into Padstow for dinner. Now that is a village where these festivals are still held, and quite by accident we stumbled right on to it…”
Thanks to Stuart Maconie for posting about the book, Bopcap Books and Sally Feldt for letting me know about the post and William Fowler and Vic Pratt for their writing on Oss Oss Wee Oss in their book The Bodies Beneath: The Flipside of British Film and Television, which was a reference point for my writing on Oss Oss Wee Oss.
Links at A Year In The Country:
- A Year In The Country: Cathode Ray and Celluloid Hinterlands
- The Wicker Man Cinefantastique Issue – Reclaiming a Folkloric Behemoth
Links elsewhere:
- Oss Oss Wee Oss at the Lomax Digital Archive
- Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone at BBC 6 Music
- Stuart Maconie’s books, wanderings and never minding of the quantocks at Goodreads
- Bopcap Books
- The Bodies Beneath at Blackwells
- The Bodies Beneath at Amazon
