Underskog

Heated Gloves William English (video from film, UK, 2015,118 mins)

Captain Maurice Seddon was a British eccentric who preferred to heat his body than his house, and so he invented electric clothing. This curious portrait is also a striking piece of media history, as it partly comprises Seddon’s countless TV appearances, for instance in the David Letterman Show.
Seddon was a life long bachelor, heir to a lost fortune, aficionado of raw garlic and inventor of a range of electronically-heated clothing. He was also English’s close friend from the early 1980s until his death in 2014, and as a subject he is never shown merely as a kook or freak.
English’s own meditative 8mm, 16mm and video footage – recorded over a period of 20 years at the inventor’s ramshackle home – results in a work that reflects on time’s passing, technological redundancy and alternative ways of living.