This short documentary, shot on 500T 16mm film, explores the creative world of artist and poet Joel Chidi Sydenham who channels his inner feelings, personal history, and outlook on life into both painting and poetry. Each artwork is paired with a poem, allowing his ideas, textures, and emotional states to move fluidly between the two mediums.

Shot on 16mm and captured both in his home studio and out in nature, the film mirrors the artist’s relationship with the landscapes that inform his work. The natural environment becomes both a subject and a metaphor, an external expression of the internal landscapes he navigates through his art.

The piece concludes with a spoken rendition of his ‘Lost At Sea’ poem, performed by the artist beside a body of water that symbolises the themes behind his piece. In this way, the film itself becomes an additional medium through which his art lives, offering a layered, immersive portrait of his creative process.

Editor: Ivo Bright

Colour: Fraser Twitchett @ OKAY Studio