Lefty Caligari - Filmmaker and Poet

Holmfirth born film maker and poet Lefty Caligari died two years ago at the age of 49. He started making films in his early 40s and made 48 short films.

Caligari was a prolific filmmaker, who would finish one project and then jump headlong into another,
never pausing to consider where the films would be shown. Every now and again he would pause and then think: maybe it's time I sent one of my films out into the world.

Lefty Caligari's films are very powerful and have a haunting melancholy that leaves a deep impression. Each frame is lovingly crafted with great care and imagination. These deeply personal pieces help illuminate the struggles of the artist with a world out of kilter in which the individual is psychologically crushed and atomised by an indifferent world. They also illustrate the devastating effects of chronic mental illness and the demolition of human memory by our turbo consumerist society.

Over the next few months we will showcase several of his films that display a variety of different styles including silents and talkies. The light-hearted tone of Join A Union and the black comic humour of An Evening With Mr Flotsam And Mr.Jetsom contrasts sharply with the political satire of Hard Lessons. Just before he died Lefty Caligari, made two of his finest films that can be rightly called film poetry. Isolation examines the terrible effect of chronic mental illness upon an atomized individual while Death Of A Vertical Community is a lament for the destruction of a neighborhood by the unchecked forces of capitalism. Lefty Caligari's films often seek to challenge the viewer and take them out of their comfort zone.

Besides, his film making Lefty Caligari was a prolific poet and painter. We will publish excerpts from his last two unpublished anthologies: After A Century Of Shadows and Towards Our Collective Dreams. These will be published in 2019.

Lefty Caligari's work takes the viewer and reader on an unforgettable journey that explores what it is to be human.