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Sarah Miles

Sarah Miles

Directing

Biography

Sarah Miles was born in Epsom, Surrey. Brought up in West Dorset, she studied drama at South Warwickshire College and English and American studies at the University of East Anglia. Miles' award-winning films blend fragmentary and evocative narratives of family and memory with references from cinema and literature. Miles' films have been screened extensively as single screen and installation works at cinemas and galleries and broadcast on Channel 4, Canal 4 and BBC2. Screenings at international film festivals include Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Melbourne and Chicago, and artist presentations include: Tate Britain; Arnolfini UK, Pacific Film Archive, Image Forum, Japan and Los Angeles Film Forum. She has lectured in Visual Theory at KIAD and freelance work includes pop promos and DVD extras. She lives and works in London and has a son. I have found that my work is a revealing of something I don't really want to say but have desperately needed to communicate. Perhaps it's the need to keep it hidden that makes it poetic so that what is meant is felt. SM Sarah is also a very interesting theorist and writer; her proposals pose complex philosophical questions, which, it seems to me, her films are attempts at resolving. - Gary Thomas

Known For

Coping with Cupid
7.5

Three blondes from another planet land on earth to conduct research into romantic love

Coping with Cupid

1991
A Bunny Girl's Tale
10.0

Intrigued by the desire to have been a Bunny Girl, the director takes a look at what it meant. Interviewing several of the original Bunnies she learns the rules and expectations on the girls as well as the more sinister side of a 1976 murder.

A Bunny Girl's Tale

1999
No Place (Looking Back + Looking Forward)
N/A

No Place, set in King's Cross, London, represents the point of view of a woman (Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz grown up into Judy from Hitchcock's classic Vertigo) looking back, from the apparent sanctuary of a church, contrasting her memories of the countryside with a loss of innocence, and of childhood illusions, following her arrival in the Emerald City. An elusive collage of real and fictional characters who all live in a kind of temporary limbo a long way from home but still looking for a sense of belonging.

No Place (Looking Back + Looking Forward)

2005
Amaeru Fallout 1972
6.0

amaeru(v). the attempt to draw close; depend; belong…’ Two Japanese girls appear in the West country in a radio transmitter field above Eggardon Fort; they go to school in Lyme Regis; they live in the countryside; they sleep in the same bed; they explore the town; they separate. Amaeru.. is a dreamlike narrative of transience and separation, an ode to homesickness through place and time. Includes PJ Harvey performing a specially composed version of the Three Degrees’ "When Will I See You Again."

Amaeru Fallout 1972

1997
I Love You
N/A

'A fugitive feminist in fur.'

I Love You

1990
Damsel Jam
N/A

An organic documentary. Girls experience and women remember being twelve years old, jammed together in a menstrual hearse (a white Talbot lined with red velvet). The body remembers what the mind forgets, going forwards towards the past. Each woman’s memory is reflected in her representation: Stella as an angry, haggard Tinkerbell; Emma made up as Marilyn, headbanging in the forest of dreams. My mother asks for a bag over her head.

Damsel Jam

1992
Magnificent Ray
N/A

Magnificent Ray explores the western by focusing on gender relations in a confluence of the dream movie genre and everyday life. Filmed on location in Bridport and Portland in West Dorset, and featuring locals as extras and principal players, Florence encounters Ray a subtle souled girl slipping into forgetfulness. Their journey from showdown to slowdown explores the nature of dreams whilst sensing a narrative. Miles teases out the glamorous cowgirl/boy image in teenage girls through music and costume as they adventure through a rich, wild, western landscape. - Jo Lanyon, Director of Picture This Moving Image from the catalogue to the show

Magnificent Ray

Modern Times
N/A

‘Walking is good for untangling a tangled heart.’ Inspired by the final shot of Modern Times Charles Chaplin in which the gamine girl and the tramp walk away from the camera. Commission by Guy Mannes Abbott and Celine Condorelli for Walking 1 to 10.

Modern Times

1999
2001 A Family Odyssey Ophelia's Version
N/A

A Family Odyssey Ophelia’s Version is a poetic experimental film exploring the hidden systemic powers of identification within a family constellation through four generations. Ancestors haunt the landscape like screen memories and family members collaborate to perform aspects of themselves. A collage of family album; the filmmaker’s father’s photographic archive; Hollywood narratives including Apocalypse Now, Badlands and Breakfast at Tiffany’s reflect a complex layering of narratives.

2001 A Family Odyssey Ophelia's Version

2002
It Might Even Be Kind Of A Relief To Be Finished Marilyn Monroe
N/A

"A meditation of the heartbreaking performance of identity. Inspired by material shot during a visit to Mike Wade studio on the Jurassic coast as he finishes a waxwork of Marilyn Monroe for a Hollywood Museum. This material provided the canvas for an intimate embroidery exploring her life, her work, her self. One American Woman, a speculation on disbelief. Additional layers all emotion and abstraction include a window overlooking the remnant tombs of a graveyard garden adding a haunting and introspective atmosphere. A correspondence with KE Jung Korean Psychoananlyst leading to thoughts about the connections between childhood sexual trauma and Hollywood and wax. It becomes Kind of a gift to her And a homage to my grandmother’s textile talents."

It Might Even Be Kind Of A Relief To Be Finished Marilyn Monroe

2023