With UFOs in the news and the skies of the U.S. and Canada, and the great sequel to The Man Who Fell to Earth this past Spring and Summer, James Harris's just-shy-of-five-minute film poem, Fallen Angel, is very much relevant and welcome. And altogether haunting and beautiful. It's vividly appropriate to our time.
The poem, beginning about a minute and a quarter in, written and narrated by Harris, is rife with destiny and the puzzles of time and space. Harris, a talented songwriter and singer, could have put this to music with memorable result.* Instead, it's put to speech and film (and good background instrumentation by Snowkitten) in the underneath of Birmingham, England. Not quite hell, but the reality that all of us unwinged beings experience in one way another.
Fallen Angel is making the rounds of film festivals. It deserves a place in any science fiction and fantasy venue. You can watch it above on YouTube, or here with some additional information on its Film Freeway site.
*Harris has written two new songs with will appear in music videos with footage from Fallen Angels. I've listened to them, and they're superb. I'll post links to them here as soon as they're up. In the meantime, here's James singing another song that may sound familiar to you:
7 March 2023: And here's James Harris's video, Lost Soul
