Author: Harry Wheeler - Film & Photography

During the lockdown period, a lot of film work dried up for me. Thankfully, that time gave me the opportunity to work on what was then called The Doc Rowe Project, which has since evolved into The Archivist—a well-earned title, as the documentary focuses on Doc, who has been documenting calendar folk traditions since the 1960s, building an incredible archive of footage and photographs.

During filming it all got very meta, with me documenting Doc, documenting calender customs, and I’m pretty sure that someone was filming me too!

Thanks to a highly successful crowdfunding campaign, a portion of this material has now been digitised—though I’m told they’ve barely scratched the surface. Still, I’m incredibly excited to see what they’ve uncovered so far, especially as The Archivist is set to be featured at one of the UK’s premier film festivals: Sheffield Doc/Fest.

Screenings will take place on Saturday 13th June and Sunday 14th June, with Q&A sessions and discussions included.

Pleased to announce the release of ‘The Zen Art of Stone Squeezing’ out into the world.

This short film began with a phone call from local death doula Mary Clear and unfolded through a series of curious synchronicities.

John takes us through his life of being a Dry Stone Waller and how by integrating Kung Fu into his practice, he has been able to overcome adversity and live a life of poetry, where inner places seem to match and coincide with the physical landscapes he finds himself working in.

After filming, John humbly apologised for “messing it up”: but the film’s journey on the film festival circuit tells a different story. With 19 film festival selections, 4 award nominations, 2 Quarter-Finalist spots, 3 Semi-Finalist placements, and an impressive 10 awards, including 2 ‘best Key Cast member John Mounsey’ Awards, all this tells us: No John, you didn’t mess up!

John was a great storyteller, and a documentary filmmakers delight, with sentences of poetic humour and controversy firing out of him everytime he opened his mouth.
Thanks to everyone who has supported its path so far. To support the work I do, please consider buying a copy of ‘Music to Dream to Volume 1’, which features music from ‘The Zen Art of Stone Squeezing’ by dbh. Release date to be announced at a later date.

#thezenartofstonesqueezing #filmfestival #harrywheeler #johnmounsey

I’ve made a couple of trailers for Breaking Barriers groudbreaking project ‘Elevation’, which involes about 20 people at a time, wearing binaural headphones, listening and walking up on the iconic Blackstone Edge. It contains information about the ridges history and touching stories given by the people in Rochdale. It needs to be experienced directly ideally, however these trailers give you a good idea of what to expect. Sessions are happening during June 2024 book tickets here.

Recently I got interviewed by Wild Filmmaker about Filmmaking and got deep into dream-talk, dreams and films have alot in common – I explain this further here:

https://wildfilmmaker.com/the-zen-art-of-stone-squeezing-exclusive-interview-on-harry-wheeler/

Delighted to see some of the footage that I shot for the up and coming Fifth Column Films production about folklore documentist Doc Rowe, including the shot of Doc’s wellys!

Doc Rowe has been documenting the folk traditions of the British Isles since the mid 1960s, and has built up a vast collection of irreplaceable audiovisual material spanning 60 years. It needs digitising and saving for the future! There is a crowd funder please follow the link for more details.

Happy to announce that I’ve finished ‘The Zen Art of Stone Squeezing’ and can finally start submitting to film festivals! I am also delighted to discover that on this day of compleation it just so hapens to be John Mounsey’s birthday! I made made a very rough cut of this last Christmas when John was still with us in the physical, so he could share it around. He was worried that he’d completely messed the interview up due to dropping psychedelics before filming (unbeknownst to me!). John was a great story teller and a filmmakers delight. This new version features illustrations by Seamus Kelly and a hilarious story about how he met Prince Charles. Planning to make it public in the spring in order to offer exclusivity to the film festivals. Meanwhile going to starting interviewing people for ‘Being with John Mounsey’ in the coming weeks…

I had the pleaseure of working with local folklorist John Billingsley on this short film and advert for ‘Dreaming Valleys’ – a day of deep topography with talks, short films and music all investigating how humans relate to place.

Billingsley has been the editor of Northern Earth magazine for decades which covers archaeology, folklore and extends to issues of humans and their relation to place like phenomenology and psychogeography.

Over the summer I had the opportunity to work with artists Julia Grime and Phil Davenport on their exhibition ‘Refuge from the Ravens’ which reimagines a new version of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, by people who have experienced homelessness.

We wandered to the sleeping spots and urban spaces that people with no fixed abode find themselves in. As I sat with Big Issue venders in Manchester city centre, filming their perspective, I got to see a different view of society. Thousands of people literally ignoring you can be hard to sit through, but while life on the streets is truly tough, it turns out there are tender moments that cut through the indifference. Some of the stories of humanity shining through, will never leave me. Like the story of the bouncer who let a homeless kid kip in a safe spot at night in 1970s Manchester and brought him maths workbooks. Without those few acts of kindness that kid might not have made it through to adulthood.

Songs were written and recorded, interviews captured, and field recordings were made by Sofie Cooper who also masterfully weaved all the audio together for a surround sound installation. I was editing blind, I roughly knew what the soundtrack was going to be, but because of the nature of the installation, I tried to create an edit that would compliment ‘happy accidents’ rather than following a set soundtrack as such and true to so much of my work, it ended up taking on a dreamlike quality.

Grime and Davenport’s working method has created a series of impactful impressions and perspective on homelessness that are punctuated by moments of tenderness.

Me, Dean McPhee and his trusty Fender telecaster have spent the past six months taking pilgrimages to a very special tree in order to get footage for his latest music video: ‘The Alder Tree’.

At the start of what ended up being a six-month shoot, I asked Dean McPhee why he chose the title.

As part of his day job Dean has been on the front line supporting young people in difficult situations all the way through the pandemic and he told me how he had got ill for several weeks at the very start of the first lockdown with a fever, cough and breathlessness. He wrote this piece of music as he recovered, and said he had been reflecting on how music has always helped give him the strength to get through difficult experiences. He had been thinking about breathing and the respiratory system, and how it resembles a tree, and how his guitar is made of Alder. Carl Jung coined the word ‘synchronicity’ to explain a very dream-like phenomenon that can occur to us all while we’re awake and with this, in mind, I wasn’t surprised to learn that within Celtic mythology that the Alder tree is connected to the qualities of resilience, support and protection. It’s used as firewood and its most distinctive quality is that it loves to grow by water. In our search for an Alder tree for the video, we located a very picturesque lone Alder tree growing by a reservoir many miles away, and yet, in another example of synchronicity despite this great distance they turned out to be the very reservoir waters that supply Dean’s hometown of Bradford.

The video premiers at 21:00 on Sunday 17th October.