The Cult of Water & Secrets of Sussex's Rivers with David Bramwell & Vera Zakharov

About

A unique night of films, talks and performance themed around local rivers, magic, folklore, our industrial heritage and ecology with David Bramwell and Vera Zakharov.

Riverine Resurrections
Whatever happened to the bournes of Brighton, and can we still find them? And what of the old ways of the Sussex Ouse? Humans have an ambivalent relationship with waterways, perceived as nourishers of the body and soul, and yet demonised (much like the deities associated with them). Vera takes a personal, cartographic and queer ecological journey along the buried and re-emerging waterways of the local area to discover what nature can teach us of our own liberation.

The Cult of Water
A magical candle-lit odyssey, in search of the occult secrets of our rivers, and a drowned village which has long haunted his memories. From Doncaster (where he grew up) Bramwell travels up the river Don and back in time, through the ladybird plague and drought of 1976 to the heavily polluted Don of Sheffield's steel industry, up into the Pennines and back into a pre-Christian era when rivers and springs were worshipped as living deities.
Along the journey Bramwell battles with his own thalassophobiak (the fear of what lurks beneath); learns about hydromancy from magician Alan Moore, discovers a unique forest of figs growing on the banks of the Don and encounters Jarvis Cocker on his own adventures, sailing down the Don on an inflatable inner tube. His journey finally brings him face to face with the goddess of primordial waters, Danu, who gave her name to the Don.

David Bramwell is a performer, award-winning broadcaster for BBC Radio 4 and the author of The Haunted Moustache, The Odditorium and the Mysterium. His Cult of Water has dazzled audiences from the Soho Theatre and Berlin's Occulture festival to the druid's winter solstice gathering in Glastonbury.