trailer

Lines of Flight is a short film that gets to the heart of what climbing is all about. The film evokes the unusual, captivating and even disturbing sensations of free soloing. It combines these intense and yet sublime experiences and applies them to questions about the quality of modern life in the northern English Pennines.
Lines of Flight is produced and directed by Sal Brown and Martin Wood and is filmed and edited by Richard Heap. It features the voice of distinguished actor Samuel West, together with interviews with local climbers past and present, and beautifully shot ascents of some iconic gritstone lines.

Sal Brown & Martin Wood
Sal Brown is a writer making her first foray into directing with “Lines of Flight”. Previously she has produced a short film, “Echoes”, from her own script, which was filmed on location at the Yorkshire Air Museum, Elvington, York. She has also had short plays performed in such diverse venues as West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds and the Brooklyn Theatre, New York. Her feature script, “Man Made”, has been optioned by Frames of Reference Films. She is currently developing her next short films, one fiction, one documentary.
Sal says: “Directing parts of “Lines of Flight” was a great experience, though terrifying at times. I was more than a little awe-struck to be directing Sam West, an award-winning Shakespearean actor, but then most of what I know about directing I learned from him!”
She also says: “Part of the joy of working on “Lines of Flight” was the opportunity it brought to go back to some of my old stomping grounds in Derbyshire, where I learnt to climb. Working with Martin and Richard was great fun, and I’m hoping we can work together again.”

Although a novice film director, Martin Wood has written and published widely in the academic social sciences. He is interested in film primarily as a visually stimulating research method and is particularly keen to explore the space, or the “crack”, in-between film and audience. “Lines of Flight” is therefore an experiment in creating and making convincing a story that is felt directly by those who view it. In other words, Martin says, “I wanted to explore how something that is as rich, engaging, lively and colourful as film can possess us and make our breath stop”.
The film also has a personal link for Martin. It is an exploration of the Pennines region of northern England, in whose melancholic, post-industrial landscape he finds his own sense of aesthetic 'place' in which to follow his passions. As he reveals, “solo rock climbing offers me an escape from modern life, even if just for a little while.”