In an Ideal World I'd Not be Murdered
by
Chaucer Cameron
Helen Dewbery
In an Ideal World I’d Not Be Murdered is a poetry film. Written by Chaucer Cameron, it’s both a fictional and re-enacted story, and contains fragments of memory from a lived experience of prostitution. Chaucer collaborated with Helen Dewbery to make the film.
Content: In an Ideal World I’d Not Be Murdered is about prostitution which covers many subjects. It aims to visually represent traumatic experience without re-traumatising, fetishizing, or stereotyping.
Best viewed on a full screen - just select the expanding arrow icon in the bottom right of the film screen.
Captioned version is available via this link.
Short on time? Here's a link to the trailer.
We would love to hear what you think of the film. Also let us know if you would like it to be shown somewhere.
Get in touch at:
chaucer.cameron [at] gmail.com
hcfd [at] btinternet.com
Who is it for?
In an Ideal World I’d Not Be Murdered is not overtly political, it’s a personal story. But wherever it's been shown conversations have started with survivors as well as sex buyers, and with people who have not given much thought to the experiences of women in the industry. The book has also had similar impacts.
The film and the book are suitable for professionals (campaigners and health workers), a general audience, poets, artists, filmmakers.
Poetry film, in similar ways to written poetry, is an ideal vehicle to express the non-linear, fractured nature of memory and in particular traumatic memory. Memory that is fragmented and ambiguous and not necessarily experienced in a linear, time specific way - even though some moments may be remembered in acute detail. This poetry film collection contains those fragments of memory from a life once lived in prostitution - told in twelve poems, 3 voices, one city. Poetry film is also a perfect form for telling personal histories. It can present situations that repeat or change, can switch from light to dark, and can bear a burden that sometimes seems impossible.
What Others Have Said
As a society we must process prostitution not just intellectually but emotionally. I would recommend this film to anyone interested in the prostitution issue.’
- Elly Arrow, podcaster and activist
Rather than giving us provocative images Helen choses bus stops, street corners and grass verges, but imbues them with foreboding. Silences, blurred music and distortion mirror the way memory of trauma is revisited and fragmented through time. There are no happy endings here or resolutions but a strong sense of witness and lives that need to be revealed.’
- Lucy English, Professor of Creative Enterprise, Bath Spa University
‘The film has something priceless to give.’
- Jane Glennie, filmmaker
‘Unforgettable. A masterpiece.’
- Deborah Harvey, poet
‘Thank you for bringing to the world such a tender, delicate and utterly authentic depiction. I keep on coming back to certain scenes that have lodged themselves in my mind. I believe that you have produced a work of Art like no other I have ever witnessed.’
- Jessie Currie, filmmaker
Some of the places where it's been shown and discussed
In An Ideal World I’d Not be Murdered was launched during November 2023 in Bristol, UK, on the Sebastian Lightship. The audience were people that we knew and who knew us (although few knew the story that was told that night).
Early in 2024 we were invited to show the film in Houston, Texas, for the Reel Poetry Film Festival.
In London at the Club for Acts and Actors in Covent Garden, the audience sat around café style tables. The audience were fully engaged in a shared experience: “the collective unconscious” as Carl Yung described it.
In a stately home in South Yorkshire we discussed the work and showed extracts of the film to a large group of Soroptomists, they were keen to know who to write to in Parliament and locally, so that women and girls were better protected.
One of our favourite venues was a large living room in a house in Glastonbury. The intimacy of the selected audience (including the cat) led to some very important conversations.
In An Ideal World I’d Not be Murdered has also been shown at Aberystwyth Poetry Festival and The Wilson Art Gallery and Museum in Cheltenham.
Podcasts and talks:
Red Light Exposé: Processing Prostitution Through Poetry. Interview with Elly Arrow and Merly Åsbogård.
Sisters are Doing it For Themselves : Life AFTER the Sex Trade. Women talk about their life and work now.
Hosted by You My Sister)
Process Video
How could memory and traumatic experience be visually represented in poetry film, without re-traumatising, fetishizing or stereotyping? How important is poetry film for Chaucer Cameron’s writing? This short video essay offers some insights into these questions.
About Us
Chaucer Cameron is author of In an Ideal World I’d Not Be Murdered which was published by Against the Grain Press in 2021.
Her poetry has also been published in journals, magazines, and anthologies and she has performed poetry extensively including at Athens Poetry Film Festival. Chaucer has spoken in several podcasts about trauma and writing. She was invited to speak at Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin supported by the British Council.
Helen Dewbery has taught poetry film extensively, in person and online. Her work has appeared internationally at poetry and film festivals, where she has also presented talks and curations.
After a late start in life, about which Helen describes “through observation, I learned to assess complex situations and to read the room long before I opened a book”, she ran a supported housing project for care leavers and then had a career as a senior manager in social housing.
In an Ideal World I’d Not Be Murdered by Chaucer Cameron
How to Make a Poetry Film by Helen Dewbery
In Depth Review by Jane Glennie
In an Ideal World I’d Not be Murdered
reproduced with permission
A perfect title to a magnificent piece of work by Chaucer Cameron and Helen Dewbery. On Wednesday 30 October 2024 I was fortunate to be able to attend the live event at The Club for Acts and Actors in Soho (London UK).
The audience were presented with a 10-minute ‘making of’ film about In an Ideal World I’d Not be Murdered that introduced the audience to the hard facts that the film deals with prostitution and sex work and that the work was based on Chaucer’s direct experience of that world.
In an Ideal World I’d Not be Murdered is described as a film that is:
“…both a fictional and re-enacted story, and contains fragments of memory from London’s underworld of prostitution in the 1980s. Told in 12 poems and 3 voices.”
Then in the ‘making of’ film, both women express some of the thoughts and processes that went into the development of this piece as a work of poetry film, Chaucer talking about the writing and her experiences, and Helen talking about her approach to filmmaking and the decisions she made with this film.
This was an unexpected way to start their presentation, revealing some of the film before the actual event and discussing what it does and how, before watching. A ‘York Notes’ if you like (for many years the classic book series for UK school students to cram their English Literature study for exams without necessarily reading the actual literature).
But on reflection now, I think it was a masterstroke. It gently eased the viewer into the themes and the subject matter and gave context and purpose from the creators themselves. This is a film not aiming to shock or illicit debate. Helen’s website explains:
“Prostitution is often depicted as a spectacle. What’s not represented enough, particularly in film, is the mundane. The mundane together with the constant stress of anticipation. So, I wanted the film not to screech ‘this is my traumatised, victimised body’, but more simply ‘these are my wounds, my ordinary body wounds’. Prostitution narratives often end in some kind of triumph or rescue, but life is more nuanced, and can’t be neatly captured, it’s often not quite legible. The realities for anyone in these situations are constantly gaslit by others who tell a different story or who don’t allow them to tell their own stories. The realities expressed in this poetry film-collection are ongoing. The end leaves the living and the dead side by side. It’s not concluded, the narrator is ‘hooked’ – somewhere, somehow, we are not told.”
So then, onto the film itself, presented next. It is a stunning success. I was very excited to see the finished work because I’d been present at an early reading of some of the poems given by Chaucer at the International Poetry Film Festival in Athens in 2019. Then I had seen an early draft, and then a later version, of one segment – Hooked – which I was honoured to curate into a screening of films last summer. So I felt I was celebrating the end of a long creative journey.
It is a stunning success. I was very excited to see the finished work because I’d been present at an early reading of some of the poems given by Chaucer at the International Poetry Film Festival in Athens in 2019. Then I had seen an early draft, and then a later version, of one segment – Hooked – which I was honoured to curate into a screening of films last summer. So I felt I was celebrating the end of a long creative journey.
The film exceeded my expectations. For me, Helen’s aesthetic treatment for the film, the variations she introduces into her imagery, and the pace, work effectively. A favourite moment is when Helen combines text and image into the digital advertising screens seen in the film. The film is long for poetry film, at 32 and a half minutes. But it doesn’t feel that long. It feels like it achieves what Chaucer Cameron has set out to do, and left me wanting more or to see it a second time.
The trauma in this film is a difficult theme to discuss or respond to as someone who has experienced nothing comparable. But it is a valuable film to be absorbed, and if not understood fully because it is so far removed from personal experience, then it is to be drawn from. Delivering more compassion for others in extremely difficult or harrowing situations would be a start. While for those who do understand the kinds of burden represented, I imagine the film has something priceless to give.
“The trauma in this film is a difficult theme to discuss or respond to as someone who has experienced nothing comparable. But it is a valuable film to be absorbed, and if not understood fully because it is so far removed from personal experience, then it is to be drawn from. Delivering more compassion for others in extremely difficult or harrowing situations would be a start. While for those who do understand the kinds of burden represented, I imagine the film has something priceless to give.”
I can, however, reflect on a comparison with the work of Mike Kelley which I saw recently (a major retrospective exhibition is at the Tate Modern, London UK until 9 March 2025). Kelley has made many works that I confess I love. More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid and The Wages of Sin (1987) was as compelling to see in reality as it had been in images. Kelley has made works that explore memory, repressed memory syndrome, and traumatic experience (including Educational Complex, 1995 and Sublevel, 1998) and has stated: ‘We’re living in a period in which victim culture and trauma [are said to be] the motivation behind every action.’ (Interview with the writer Dennis Cooper, 2000)
At one level, Kelley’s work examines and challenges popular culture and its treatment of trauma experiences and the expectations that popular culture generates. He questions, not validates, repressed memories and trauma. I understand Kelley to have been, therefore, on a wholly different track to Chaucer and Helen. But it feels pertinent to consider his work in relation to In an Ideal World I’d Not be Murdered. Kelley’s work highlights the problematics of trauma ‘culture’, while this film has been sensitively and successfully navigated to avoid those problematics. This film isn’t a provocation.
But I’d also like to offer the contrast that Kelley’s work is often literally big and loud. He achieved a big art world career, now firmly underlined by that Tate Modern retrospective – putting him alongside Picasso and whoever else you might think to name. The assured, bold approach is easily available to many men. Yet so many women creatives I speak to are so often quieter, less confident to take up space in the world with their work (literal or metaphoric space), yet their work is no less important. As when I chose to screen a segment of what became ‘In an Ideal World …’ in my curated programme in Cambridge last year, inspired by what is so illuminatingly described by Mary Ann Sieghart in her book The Authority Gap, the opportunity for women to tell their own stories with assurance, with confidence that they will be heard, and knowledge that their authority to do so will be respected, is still limited.
‘In an Ideal World …’ is currently existing largely under the radar and, sadly, unlikely to be screened in Tate Modern any time soon (There might be a more appropriate venue but equally why not there or somewhere similar? You take my point at least). The inappropriate popular culture around traumatic personal experience has not yet been blown apart, and the authors of this film understandably feel they need to tread extremely carefully and lightly.
This film deserves to be seen widely, and I wish Chaucer and Helen every strength to find (and show it to) more audiences, because the opportunities to do so likely won’t fall in their laps. It doesn’t fit the profile of most poetry film festivals who principally show shorter films with wide appeal. I wish too, that we had an art world that opened its doors more readily and more supportively to work like this one, and was less filled by the large or loud.
Film Credits:
Written by Chaucer Cameron
Film, sound design and edited by Helen Dewbery
Voices - Kim Hicks, Chaucer Cameron, Jon White.
Music – Sarah R., Suzie Self, Simon Jomphe Lepine, Kevin Macleod
Sketch – Bea Colborne
(Poems were originally published by Against the Grain Press, and I Am Not A Silent Poet.)
Specifications
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Runtime: In an Ideal World I’d Not Be Murdered 32 minutes 35 seconds
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Completion Date: Nov 28, 2023
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Country of Origin and filming: United Kingdom
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Language: English
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Shooting Format: Digital
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Aspect Ratio: 16:9
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Film Colour: Colour