Emily Wardill

Game Keepers without Game is a film that recreates the genre of the feature film melodrama. Formally it is based on the theatre play La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream) by the Spanish dramatist Calderón de la Barca. Wardill transposed the plot to present-day Great Britain. The film consists of acted scenes in which no-one touches. Still pictures showing status symbols, evidence of crimes or theatre props are intercut.

Emily Wardill works mainly with film and video. The starting point for her works is the relationship between materiality and idea which she knows how to depict in a way that is original, amusing and critical. She combines various film genres and bundles them together with historical, scientific and philosophical information to generate unorthodox insights. In 2010 she won the prestigious Jarman Award for film art.