Slow Movement of Poplar Trees and Wind is a short film made by Fiona Brehony, created in collaboration with composer Simon Knighton for Sound Sculpture No. 6, performed by House of Bedlam with Juliet Fraser at the Royal Northern College of Music Concert Hall in October 2022. Seen here in a Youtube clip.

The film grew from a shared process of research and recording – Brehony and Knighton working together in the field, capturing the sound of poplar trees at the same moment as the footage was taken. Rooted in research into the particular quality of silvery leaves in motion, the film attends to poplar trees as a dynamical system – bodies in constant, patterned flux, shaped by wind, light, and the rhythms of the natural world.

Screened as part of the third movement of Knighton’s piece, the film draws visual and sonic connections between nature and mathematical systems, finding in the slow, shifting movement of trees something that mirrors the cycles and disruptions that run through both the music and the wider world. It is quiet, attentive work – characteristic of Brehony’s approach to landscape as a site of deep listening.