Sheepwoman 1975

Directed by Mike Leggett

Sheepwoman is the final part in Sheepman & The Sheared, a seven-part film made within the workshop and theoretical context of the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative, and more particularly of structural/material film. In the series, Leggett delicately negotiates a dialectic between the creation of images and stripping the images of their illusionism. The film takes Landscape as Object in front of the filmmaker and the medium of film; specific conditions to do with both Nature and human activity with Nature are recorded with the camera, but the camera itself is also subject to the observation and reaction of the filmmaker. In Sheepwoman, the camera image – of a woman reading a text on shearing – is the subject, which is examined in conjunction with synchronous/non-synchronous sound and written word image.