Jonny Trunk – DJ set

Jonny Trunk is an English writer, broadcaster, DJ, producer, and owner and founder of Trunk Records. Trunk Records is a British label that specialises in film, library, and early electronic music releases.

Jonny Trunk presents a very rare screening of ‘Circle of Light’ film.

Circle Of Light is a 32 minute colour film shot in 1972 by Anthony Roland, featuring the photography of Pamela Bone, with a groundbreaking soundtrack by Delia Derbyshire and Elsa Stansfield.

Bone travelled extensively in exotic locations across India, including Sikkim and Kashmir. On returning home, she began working on a conceptual slide show of her travels and transparencies, one that began to slowly morph over the next seven years into a show of slides influenced by travel, the seasons, children, still life studies and landscapes. The working title of the show was Circle Of Light.

Her slides and techniques were unique; she’d blow up images to use as textures behind other images, she’d put black and white images behind colour ones. The results were often extraordinary, baffling, and deeply engaging. She took lessons in sound recording too, but things took an unexpected turn in 1969 when she was introduced to Anthony Roland by art critic Marjorie Bruce-Milne. Together they began work on Circle Of Light.

For a soundtrack Roland commissioned Delia Derbyshire (moonlighting from the Radiophonic Workshop). They had recently met via designer Lucienne Roberts, and with the help of artist Elsa Stansfield (pre their founding of Electrophon Studios in 1973) Derbyshire brought together numerous elements for the soundtrack.

The finished film has no narration apart from Bone’s introduction, and focuses intensely on her unique glass transparencies. The narrative is controlled by Roland’s signature slow tracking style; with calming drifts across glorious, intense images of beaches, trees, forests – landscapes and still lives too, with gradual mixes and all perfectly accompanied by Derbyshire’s collaborative electronic soundtrack with effects.