Dartington Morris Men were delighted to be invited to take part in the short film Hell's Bells, written and directed by Devon-based director Luke Jeffery and released by Wandering Tiger.
It is currently available to view on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/267325668
We were involved on two occasions, filming at one of our favourite pubs - the Tally Ho - and at the splendid Hearn Field near Combeinteignhead, as well as several of our members being involved in recording the chorus to the song "So it was the maiden woke", written by Ben Hudson.
We were invited to a private cast and crew screening of the finished film at the Phoenix in Exeter and had a good evening, enjoying recognising our antics on a big screen. As a bonus we were also shown a collection of behind-the-scenes bonus clips, which included the vocals of our own Christopher Farr singing 'General Taylor' from the end of the Fieldtown-style dance of the same name. Following the screening we looked hard for a place to dance for the film's audience in a buzzing Phoenix (there was a concert by New Model Army going on) and demonstrated a few of our dances in a dance studio to great reception.
Clearly the film is not about Dartington Morris Men - we simply featured as an anonymous Morris side - as you can tell by the hats we were asked to wear as part of the costume. DMM dancers definitely don't wear hats!
Hell’s Bells was screened in small cinemas across the country in 2016 and 2017.