Golden Apples of the Sun, 2021
Super 8 transferred to HD, 4'26"
Commissioned by Homerton College, University of Cambridge.
With musical score by Teresa Winter.
Still from Golden Apples of the Sun, 2021.
Still from Golden Apples of the Sun, 2021.
Still from Golden Apples of the Sun, 2021.
Golden Apples of the Sun is an experimental short film by artist and filmmaker Shezad Dawood, commissioned by Commission Projects for Homerton College, University of Cambridge. The film is centred around Dawood’s major ceramic commission for Homerton College, University of Cambridge. This 7 meter work will be housed in the new reception on Harrison Drive as part of the new Dining Hall extension built by Feilden Fowles.
Golden Apples of the Sun takes its starting point from the apple orchard that lives large in the memory of the college, and is directly opposite the site of the New Dining hall, which also feeds into the abstracted landscape of the new ceramic work.
The film then segues to Blackburn to Darwen Terracotta where it poetically documents Dawood painting his 7meter artwork over a number of days, and then on to the quarry in Devon where the clay for the ceramic comes from, in a non-linear journey of materiality and passing time from the orchard to the ceramic tiles and to the earth from which all things originate.
The title Golden Apples of the Sun is a nod to the Greek Myth The Golden Apples of the Hesperides. The Hesperides were the goddess-nymphs of evening and the golden light of sunsets, who were entrusted with the care of the tree of the golden apples, and this intrinsic connection between the spirits of the Earth and where nature and culture meet and revolve around each other in their eternal dance.
Click here to view a trailer.
Writer and director: Shezad Dawood
Producer: Miranda Sharp
Score by: Teresa Winter
Editor: Sergio Vega Borrego
Commissioner: Homerton College, University of Cambridge with the assistance of Commission Projects
Special thanks: Geoff Ward and Deborah Griffin