DOUBT

“To hell with them, to hell with them all. This work is a prayer to my God.” (A note from Erik Knudsen’s personal notebook.)

In 2016, Erik Knudsen commenced work on his new feature film, Cleft Lip, starring Reece Douglas, Miranda Benjamin and Keith French, which has now been completed and is due for release in 2018. The making of Cleft Lip marked 25 years since Erik Knudsen’s first feature length film was publicly screened: One Day Tafo, Channel Four Television, 1991, UK. Doubt was always a big part of his creative and spiritual development and continues to play a big part in his creative and spiritual search. Over the years he has learned to see it, recognise it, and embrace it.

Now seems an appropriate moment to pause and reflect on his creative journey. With this in mind, the Doubt Project – book and film – has been constructed out of recent photographs, his entire body of films and some reflexive writing related to this theme of doubt from the past 25 years of writing notebooks. He has created a new reflexive film out of his previous films. Some of the poems in the book have found their way into the narration of the film, as have some of the photographs. The structure of the film mirrors that of the narrative of the book.