White Hawk Hill

South Balcony, Brighton and Hove Museum, Pavilion Gardens, Tuesday, March 8, to Sunday, April 10

BRIGHTON’S history stretches much further back from the Prince Regent’s pleasure town – as this new film installation by Red Earth is set to show.

The 20-minute triptych film White Hawk Hill focuses on the site of a Neolithic gathering place which predates Stonehenge – and towers over today’s city.

But as the film-makers themselves confess most people in Brighton don’t know the settlement, Whitehawk Camp, even existed.

“Whitehawk Hill is a forgotten and neglected, but extraordinary place,” says Caitlin Easterby, who created the film with fellow Red Earth founder Simon Pascoe and film-maker Anna Lucas.

“We have been living in Brighton for 25 years, sending out kids to school at the bottom of Roedean Road. We knew the hill as a place where people went, we didn’t know it was home to one of the oldest Neolithic enclosures in Europe.”

It was former collaborator Matt Pope - who worked with the pair on their 2011 South Downs-set project Chalk - who opened their eyes to the history of the hill.

“He grew up playing on Whitehawk Hill,” says Easterby. “He took us on a walk up the hill and told us about the Dig Whitehawk archaeological project which he was a part of.”

The hill is now home to Brighton Racecourse and a large phone mast, but in the Neolithic period it may have been used as a meeting place. Excavations in the 1920s and 1930s revealed human bodies, animal bones, pottery and flint tools, but no evidence of settlement. Some of the archaeological finds which relate to the film will be on display in the screening room.

“It was evidence that people gathered there for some kind of communal activity,” says Easterby. “We had to imagine what people might have been doing.”

Rather than create a story with a narrative or make a documentary film, Red Earth and Lucas decided to draw parallels between the hill’s history and its use today by working with the project abandofbrothers over the course of a year.

The charity works to give young men “rites of passage” experiences, with the view of helping them turn their lives around. The group is made up of mentors from all walks of life – ranging from local businessmen to actors – who act as role models for young men experiencing difficult life situations.

For White Hawk Hill the activities reflected the history of the site, including working with Neolithic tools and making pots following ancient designs. It culminated in a summer barbecue where Pope butchered a deer which was cooked over a fire.

“If you look at the Neolithic life expectancy of people they died when they were about 30,” says Easterby. “By the time they were 17 or 18 up to their mid-20s they were leaders in their societies with huge amounts of responsibilities. We were looking at the parallel between the value of young men in that society and the marginalisation of young men in areas like Whitehawk.”

With the filming running from autumn 2014 to the end of summer 2015 the seasons play a role in the finished piece.

“It’s amazing to watch it change,” says Pascoe. “There were times in the summer when we were crouched down in the landscape filming sunny scenes in this extraordinary wilderness.

“On Whitehawk Hill you have two hospitals and a graveyard – there’s a whole journey for the average Brightonian from birth to death centred around the hill. It’s a very marginalised site, but it has a cultural and physical prominence.”

This is the first time Red Earth has worked exclusively on a film – although they have used film as part of their live work.

“Our motivation was to celebrate the hill, to get people out of the museum to value it again,” says Easterby.

“It is an amazing archaeological site protected by English Heritage, but it is not known about.”

As for the future Red Earth is currently working in Berrington Hall, in Herefordshire, on a series of installations celebrating designer Capability Brown’s last completed work. And they are working with Adur Festival on a new summer project.

And they hope to take White Hawk Hill out of the museum and into the community to engage different people where the film might have a resonance.

“We are interested in the medium of film,” says Easterby. “But for me it will never replace the experience of being in a place. We want to encourage people to go back out onto the hill and really use it and experience it, to celebrate it with a new dimension of knowledge.”

Open Tues to Sun 10am to 5pm, £5/£2.80, free to Brighton residents. Visit brightonmuseums.org.uk/