The Moon and the Sledgehammer is a British

Cinema of the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...

 1971

1971 in film

The year 1971 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*February 8 - Bob Dylan's hour long documentary film, Eat the Document, premieres at New York's Academy of Music...

 cult

Cult film

A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside the small fanbases; however, there have been exceptions that have managed to gain fame among mainstream audiences...

 documentary

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 directed by Philip Trevelyan

Philip Trevelyan

Philip Erasmus Trevelyan is a British farmer, entrepreneur and former film editor and television director, most noted for the 1971 film The Moon and the Sledgehammer.-Personal:...

 and produced by Jimmy Vaughan which documents the eccentric lives of the Page family, consisting of Mr Page, and his adult children Jim, Pete, Nancy and Kath, who live in a forest near Chiddingly

Chiddingly

Chiddingly is a village and civil parish in the Wealden District of East Sussex, some five miles northwest of Hailsham. The parish is rural in character: it includes the village of Chiddingly and a collection of hamlets: the largest of these being Muddles Green and Thunder's Hill; others...

, Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

 without mains gas, mains electricity

Mains electricity

Mains is the general-purpose alternating current electric power supply. In the US, electric power is referred to by several names including household power, household electricity, powerline, domestic power, wall power, line power, AC power, city power, street power, and grid power...

 or running water

Running Water

Running Water may be:* Running Water, Tennessee, former name of Whiteside, Tennessee* Running Water, South Dakota, a community in Bon Homme County, South Dakota* "Running Water" from the 1983 album The Present...

. The sons find employment by fixing mechanical things as odd jobs and maintain two traction engine

Traction engine

A traction engine is a self-propelled steam engine used to move heavy loads on roads, plough ground or to provide power at a chosen location. The name derives from the Latin tractus, meaning 'drawn', since the prime function of any traction engine is to draw a load behind it...

s.

The film consists of interview

Interview

An interview is a conversation between two people where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the interviewee.- Interview as a Method for Qualitative Research:"Definition" -...

s with the Page family, interspersed with footage of them going about their lives in the forest. There is no voice-over

Voice-over

Voice-over is a production technique where a voice which is not part of the narrative is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations...

 narration, and shot using natural light. The film is 65 minutes long and is shot on 16mm colour film. The sound

Sound

Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...

 is mono

Mono

Mono is considered to refer most often to:* anything single, e.g. as in monorail, a train system using a single rail, as opposed to the conventional two-rail system...

.

In 2009 the film was released on DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 for the first time. To coincide with this it had showings at various cinemas. A reunion of the director and crew and a question and answer session was held at the London showing. This forms the basis for a companion DVD - Behind the Moon and the Sledgehammer, directed by Katy MacMillan - a documentary film about a documentary film. This also features film directors Nick Broomfield

Nick Broomfield

Nicholas "Nick" Broomfield is an English documentary film-maker. He is the son of Maurice Broomfield, a photographer.Broomfield works with a minimal crew, recording sound himself and using one or two camera operators...

, Molly Dineen

Molly Dineen

Molly Dineen is a BAFTA and Royal Television Society award winning UK television documentary director, cinematographer and producer....

, Andrew Kotting

Andrew Kötting

Andrew Kötting is a British film director, writer and artist.Kötting was born in Kent. He studied BA Fine Art at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, London, 1984; MA in Mixed Media, Slade School of Art, London 1988. In 1989 he collaborated with Leila McMillan in setting up BadBLoOd & siBYL...

 and Ben Rivers

Ben Rivers

Ben Rivers is a contemporary experimental film maker and artist based in London. His work has been shown in many film festivals and galleries throughout the world, and won numerous awards...

discussing the film and its influence.

External links

• http://www.britmovie.co.uk/2010/04/26/the-moon-and-the-sledgehammer-1971/
• http://www.off-grid.net/2009/06/07/the-moon-and-the-sledgehammer/
• http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-moon-and-the-sledgehammer/4248
• http://sasesearch.brighton.ac.uk/view/?from=search&fromid=&film=6504