Film director, writer, producer and immersive artist, Martha Fiennes, made her name with her debut movie, Onegin, released back in 1999 starring her elder brother, Ralph.

She’s gone on to become a pioneer of dreamlike generative art experiences, including Yugen and Nativity shown earlier this year, as her work increasingly looks at themes of consciousness and reality, and how we seem to be at an inflection point in questioning both.

Ahead of her debut appearance at HowTheLightGetsIn up on Hampstead Heath next month, I asked her to explain her philosophy about modern media, the huge impacts of A.I and tech, and why she is ultimately optimistic about their potential for as inquisitive humans…

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Guest Editor: Martha Fiennes

When I was at film school, it was a very Marxist education, (though I didn't realise it at the time).

We studied the Soviet era approach to information, and there was this idea that we were the lucky ones, that we had an incredible open channel of knowledge from our media, and the poor Russians didn’t.

But actually, of course, any media outlet is subjective, selecting and choosing how it presents a story, and you must question everything. 

That includes questioning the nature of your own reality, just as much as it does the super-highway of information madness that we now have to choose from.

At the HowTheLightGetsIn festival at Kenwood next month, I’ll be speaking on a panel on ‘stories of unreality’, which fits nicely within my own wheelhouse as a filmmaker.

We’ll be discussing whether hundreds of years of novels and films have focused too much on portraying realistic accounts of events, mostly rejecting the unseen and the mystical.

I’ll argue that our great artists, thinkers, filmmakers and writers have always been wildly creative, but if your goal is mass entertainment, the economic system has usually made your work fit into quite specific grooves.

What’s new, I think, is that we’re at a time where there’s a sense of questioning what reality and consciousness actually is.

Are we simply making this all up? What stories do we hold in our minds about anything that might not actually be the truth?

I used to think that there was a coherent, sentient system out there called ‘the film industry’, and that I would play my part in it, having done all the right things. But actually, it isn’t sentient - there’s nobody home! The only thing that's home is me.

Today we’re at a seismic time of change, and we’re redefining and questioning all the models that have gone before.

Technology is changing everything, and with that comes radically different experiences for the next generation, but I still think the human urge to understand itself – the magnificence of the imagination – is phenomenal.

We must use the technology to learn more about ourselves.

You only have to study the most advanced yogis and other enlightened people for your jaw to drop at the capacity for the human mind to traverse staggering landscapes.

Now A.I. comes in and can do astonishing and terrifying things, so I think we’re invited to make the quantum leap ourselves – way ahead of the large language models – and step into extraordinary realms of possibility.

I’ve been a bit of a pioneer in combining film and art into ‘immersive’ experiences, (although that’s really not the right word for it), and was very honoured to be invited on the Cannes jury this year, as alongside the Palme d’Or, they’ve now got a new immersive category prize, which is finding its feet.

I’m certainly keen to explore technology and its potential to give us new experiences, which can hopefully give us a quantum leap in that department as well.

When I was starting out, aged 17, I knew I had a good photographic eye, so I thought, yes, I’m a filmmaker. But later on, I had a revelation.

No, I’m actually interested in so many more metaphysical types of things - consciousness, meaning and lies at the very seat of the human soul - and I'm actually a filmmaker in order to get all that out.

HowTheLightGetsIn returns 20th-21st Sept at Kenwood House. As the world’s largest ideas and music festival, you’ll hear from Martha alongside Brian Cox, John Gray, Diane Abbott, Alastair Campbell, Alain de Botton, and loads more. With debates, talks, comedy, and live music across the weekend, you’ll listen to the world’s top thinkers give their views on the most urgent issues facing society today.

As partners of the festival, Camdenist is offering an exclusive 30% off tickets with code CAMDENIST2025. Get your discounted tickets now, and we’ll see you there…

FESTIVALS

Carnival is London’s biggest celebration, so ignore the hate

It’s Notting Hill Carnival this long weekend, which means 2 million+ people heading to West London for an intense experience that includes collective joy, community belonging and deep pride.

The shear scale and chaotic exuberance of it all also means that a small but vocal section of society - who fail to understand the annual event’s vital cultural importance, or are afraid of what it represents - will also be wheeling out some very tired negative tropes.

There’s always been a racist lens through which certain people choose to view the spectacle, where the drudgeries of life are stripped away for a couple of days to be replaced by dancing, music, costume and revelry.

But in this era of the mobilised ‘online right’, where the Overton Window has so shockingly slipped towards the mainstreaming of race and religion-based intolerance, I expect the hordes of bots and Reform-addled commenters to be out in force, too.

In the current climate of ‘Khan’s London’ shitposting, expect them to seize upon every skirmish and statistic, screaming that the horrors of so many people enjoying themselves with such abandon is deplorable and must be curtailed.

The current nonsense du jour in the press about ticketing the event misses the entire point about what makes it so special. Nobody wants a serious crowd crush incident, and there’s never been one, but attempting to corral a million ticket-holders into a sprawling network of residential streets sounds a far more dangerous proposition to attempt than letting people flow more freely.

When you bring this many people together and fill them with rum punch to earth-shattering basslines, you have to expect a few disgraceful incidents of violence, robbery or unacceptable abuse, but proportionate to all the fun the proceedings generate, I find it perverse how much of the narrative that element of things still dominates.

So my only suggestion over the next few days is to ignore the inevitable hate and negative ranting, spewed by people who very clearly have no interest in going anywhere near Carnival anyway, and instead just head down there yourself to get stuck in.

You’ll see a bamboozling amplification of the best, and occasionally the worst, of society, but the intensity of it all is utterly fantastic if you let the unchained spirit envelop you - and love and good times always win the day, big time, no matter what the dull naysayers say.

🎚️ Warming things up slightly closer to home on Sat 23rd Aug is another free street bonanza, as Inverness St Block Party becomes the latest event to celebrate the current pedestrianisation of Camden High St. Not only that, but they’ve got legends of Camden’s nightclub history playing, from Gilles Peterson dropping a Talking Loud selection at 1pm to radio guru Gordon Mac and perennial faves like DJ Amazon, Frankie Foncett, Matt White and Rose Windross, rounding things up with Norris Da Boss Windross & MC Creed, too.

BOOK

Neighbourhood culture fights back in the face of redevelopment

As you might already know, I also co-produce a similarly neighbourhood-focused weekly newsletter and quarterly print newspaper out East, centered around Hackney Wick and the Olympic boroughs, call The Wick.

And now we’ve decided to collate the best photography, art and storytelling from the title into a beautifully-crafted, limited edition hardback photobook, to be printed in good time for Christmas gifting.

The Wick – 15 Years of Culture, Community & Change will be a coffee table essential for everyone with an interest in how creative communities can navigate the dramatic changes and all-too-frequent displacement that urban regeneration projects usually impose upon them.

With 160 pages of historic and artistic images, plus inspirational stories of the joys and pains, the battles and victories (and their scars), the book will reveal how Hackney Wick & Fish Island’s unique creative spirit has persisted, despite – and often in direct response to – the ongoing upheaval of post-London 2012 Olympics regeneration.

It can hopefully also be a blueprint for communities elsewhere to fight for their cultural and artistic infrastructure, so I thought Camdenist readers may well like to pick up a copy, too.

You can pre-order the book now and do let me know if you think we should consider doing something similar here in Camden in future…

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