Little White Feather and the Hunter

Artist: Anna Lucas
Location: Harwich, Essex & Jamestown, Virginia

Essex County Council Arts Development in partnership with Commissions East appointed artist Anna Lucas to work on the development of a visual art project which celebrates the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, Virginia by settlers who departed from Harwich. Aiming to provide historic insignt into the life of the early settlers and the native Americans, the project investigates issues such as trade, migration and settlement, and identifies ongoing links between the two countries.

Following an encounter with a lute playing anthropologist and a Pocahontas enthusiast at the Harwich Shanty Festival 2007, Anna Lucas travelled round Virginia, USA, using the legendary princess as a virtual guide. Filmed in the estuary landscapes of Essex and Virginia, Lucas's film is a loose re-telling of the Pocahontas story with voiceover from amateurs and experts on both sides of the Atlantic.

Anna Lucas makes work that develops observation of social networks and group dynamics in response to specific georaphical and architectural locations. Primarily know for her film and video work, she is interested in the act of making and viewing film as a means of generating a simultaneous detachment from and engagement with eveyday life, creatin contemplative work that inhabits the hybrid space between documentary and fiction.

The film was commissioned by Essex County Council in partnership with Commissions East in commemoration of the American connections between Essex, England and Virginia, USA, as part of the 'Jamestown 400' anniversary of the first permanent English speaking settlement in North America.