After a warm reception at several festival screenings and the Danielle Arnaud Gallery, Bevis Bowden’s film Marginalia | song to the river is now available to watch online in full.

Marginalia | song to the river explores the River Thames and its wildlife in a time of increasing land pressure and climate change.

Through poetry, song and statement this film asks us who we are and how we fit into the dynamic of our surroundings and nature.

The film features the poem Isis written by Penny Boxall, with additional contributions from Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente, Jonathan Westaway and Lukas Krone. They discuss the environments lost to climate change, the river as a breathing, moving superorganism and the deep sense of obligation astronauts have about conservation on returning to earth.

The music for the film was composed by Alex Smalley and Alex Lucas with the choral elements sung by the Choir of Merton College, Oxford.

Marginalia | song to the river was filmed as part of Merton College’s Creative Arts Fellowship between October 2023 and August 2024 along a section of the Thames upstream from Oxford, with additional elements filmed at Merton College, Oxford. Watch below.

Visit Bevis’s website here.