Out of the Peat

Flesh as film, and film as flesh...

An amateur archaeologist arrives on a desolate peatland in Lancashire, their mind filled with the strange power that peat-bog waters hold to preserve organic matter. They have come to excavate the peatland. They have come to exhume a body. But, in digging into the peat — and into the past — they unearth much more than mere relics.

The peat holds forgotten histories, uneasy truths, and vast stores of climate-change-accelerating carbon. Reflecting the attempt to document and preserve this landscape via the moving image, the film becomes both a lament and a call to action for local peat-bog restoration and protection.

Inspired by the poetry of Seamus Heaney, shot on black and white Super 16 film by Morgan K. Spencer (Ungentle), edited by Anthony Ing (director of Jill, Uncredited) and scored by Richard Skelton (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead), Out of the Peat is a queer eco-horror which reflects on what it means to bury, to archive, to capture, to unearth.

The film was supported by the BFI Network Film Fund, and shot in collaboration with the Lancashire Wildlife Trust.

• Tabitha Carless-Frost (they/them)

  Director
• Theo Rollason (they/them)

  Director
• Tabitha Carless-Frost

  Writer
• Tate Turnbull (she/her)

  Producer

  Sea Holly (2024), Solidago (2021)
• Roo Gehring (they/them)

  Key Cast

  "The Excavator"

  Glow Up UK (BBC, 2023)
• Morgan K. Spencer (he/him)

  Director of Cinematography

  Sea Holly (2024), ON - Zendaya V Roger (2024), Ungentle (2023), No Archive Can Restore You (2020), The Man from Mo'Wax (2016)
• Richard Skelton (he/him)

  Composer

  Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2023), You Never Know, One Day You Too Might Become a Refugee (2023), Know Your Place (2022), England is Mine (2017), The Loneliest Planet (2011)
• Anthony Ing (they/them)

  Editor

  Jill, Uncredited (2022); The Gallery (2020); Day After Day (2016)