Grandfather’s Footsteps

My Mother found an old cigar box full of glass negatives, stereoscopic views, mostly of the Somerset countryside taken by my great grandfather Henry Stiles Savory, who was a country clergyman. Later some more boxes of his negatives turned up at a country house sale. I printed them and made enlargements from some of them, and a few years later the idea came to me to use them in a film. ‘In Grandfather’s Footsteps the film-maker re-evokes the presence of her great-grandfather, Henry Stiles Savory, a Victorian clergyman, photographer and scientist. It’s not a costume drama, bringing in his writings, and his personal effects – books, machines, photographs – Anne Rees-Mogg emphasizes her own links with him and his preoccupations. She achieves a real sense of timelessness.’ – Jo Comino