Bentwaters Frequency Test

Overview

A 16mm optical sound film that emerged from a contact printing exercise at an experimental film lab, based on a former military airbase used by the US airforce during the Cold War. Strategically critical, the rurally-situated RAF Bentwaters housed a US nuclear warhead pointed at Russia; and in December 1980, personnel from the base encountered an unidentified craft in the neighbouring Rendlesham Forest, an encounter that remains unexplained. The military remains of RAF Bentwaters now read as ruinous and incomprehensible, yet the sense that it could be reactivated as a working base at any time pervades its atmosphere.