What’s OnTwo new film works by Andrew Black and Aman Sandhu are united by an interest in queer narratives of place. Sandhu’s The Magic Roundabout uses a notorious traffic intersection in Swindon as a stage for the retelling of male indiscretions in a local Punjabi family. Shot entirely inside a car driven continuously around the roundabout, the film creates a state of suspension and disorientation while critiquing heteronormative colonial framings of South Asian migrants.
Black’s The Besom takes place in the countryside surrounding a US military radar station in North Yorkshire. Gay erotic fantasy is collaged with anxious reflections on the sci-fi associations of the site – its monstrous physical presence and role in state surveillance – as well as nostalgic pastoral narratives of depopulation and architectural ruin.
