William Raban is one of the foremost British artists and experimental filmmakers of the last forty years, known primarily for his landscape, performance and multi-screen based films.
Born in Fakenham, Norfolk, in 1948, he went to St Martin’s School of Art in 1967, where he made paintings and prints that involved sustained but direct contact with natural surfaces, such as tree bark and waves. Raban then made a number of films utilising different facets of the filmmaking process to reveal hidden elements of landscapes. View (1970) alternated shooting speeds to give the landscape a rhythm, Colours of This Time (1972) used long exposures to alter the colour of sunlight, and Broadwalk (1972) used time-lapse to capture and freeze movement in Regent’s Park. River Yar (1972), made with Chris Welsby, was a more ambitious project and involved two screens (like Raban’s earlier Skyfilm (1970, made with John Barry). River Yar presents, in time-lapse, two views of the river at set points around the Autumn and Spring Equinoxes and alludes to the passage of the moon around the earth (the change in tides) and the passage of the earth around the sun (the light at different times of year).Read More »