The story of a Cornish field told over one climatic year is to embark upon a national cinema tour to coincide with the autumn solstice.  

A Year In A Field, a “quiet film” by BAFTA winning documentary filmmaker Christopher Morris, documents a standing stone in a West Cornwall field between the winter solstices of 2020 and 2021. It contrasts the stresses and strains of climate change and the human condition with the still and constant majesty of a 4,000-year-old granite monolith.   

“I’ve never glued my hand to a road, strapped myself to a tree or been on a climate protest march, but once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters are happening more than once in my lifetime and I’ve got to do something,” said Christopher, who began each day by filming the field near his home, a one-man vigil with camera and tripod.  

There are no interviews or experts in this film – no human beings at all, just an unassuming crop of spring barley near Land’s End, and the Longstone. A string of unprecedented worldwide climate disasters, met by weak global political resolve, are revealed as fleeting moments under its ever-present and unflinching gaze. 

The film was produced by Bosena, the Cornish production house home to Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men, in partnership with Falmouth University’s Sound/Image Cinema Lab.  

Tim Smit, co-founder of the Eden Project, described A Year In A Field as “genuinely the most moving and thought-provoking film I have ever seen”. Select screenings will be accompanied by Q&As with the film-makers, including tomorrow night at Newlyn Filmhouse at 7pm.