Elena Heatherwick’s documentaries on the West Yorkshire rhubarb triangle will make your day

Does the photographer and filmmaker see through the same lens? As many photographers try their hand at moving image, a succeeding film often comes as no surprise. But we always find the transference of style and power to be transfixing. There’s the author and photographer Caleb Azumah Nelson’s directorial debut last year with the southeast London-based film Pray, after years of photographing communities in the area and throughout Ghana; Lindsay Perryman extending their photographic focus on Black queer communities into a poignant short titled Tops; and Myah Jeffers lending her black-and-white motif to a visceral showcase of the housing crisis in the film Bathsheba.

In recent years, photographer and now documentary filmmaker Elena Heatherwick has found herself on that same voyage. After years of shooting a variety of personal documentary photography projects and commissions for the likes of Oxfam, Save The Children, WaterAid and The New York Times, she has found herself at a critical moment, putting stories on the move. This journey started after she met her partner, creative director and founder of Pal Studios, Angus Dunsire, some years ago. “We've been collaborating ever since; from a film about Manchester’s plane spotting scene to a now seven-month-old daughter”, and more recently a campaign for the Somerset-based fragrance maker Ffern, she tells us.

“Ffern reached out and planted the seed of an idea,” Elena shares, “a short doc about the rhubarb triangle in West Yorkshire to celebrate the main note in their forthcoming Spring scent”. After an initial meet with some of the area’s people and hearing their stories, the filmmaker found the basis for her approach to the campaign. “It opened up a whole world of ideas, which inspired three rhubarb-themed films that together make up Ffern’s spring campaign”.

Together the films comprise a wealth of perspective and first-person narrative on the area’s forced rhubarb production, shining a light on the farmers and wider community. The Rhubarb Triangle is the triangular area of land between Morley, Wakefield and Rothwell where farmers have been growing rhubarb since the mid 19th century. The first film in the series, The Rhubarb Triangle, opens with a salient shot of the sky, before Elena’s lens quickly turns to a farmer at work, discussing the decline of the trade in the area – from over 200 growers 50 years ago to roughly 10 at present day. And then we see a young girl tap dancing in her room; Elena makes it clear that understanding the triangle is about more than knowing the tricks of the trade, it’s about the many generations who have lived with it and built a life from it.

This people-first approach started last year when Elena and Angus visited Yorkshire to aid their research process. They began with a few days knocking on doors and conversing with the farmers over tea, before they were led to the Cooks, a family of growers who had recently revived their sheds. “This had been done by Jason Cook, a 24-year-old who is ‘the youngest grower in the rhubarb triangle’,” Elena tells us. Participating in the documentary came at a prime time for the Cooks as they were in the process of taking their rhubarb business commercial, so the documentary would also serve as exposure. “Something that feels integral to our approach to making films is that it benefits everyone involved”, Elena adds.

The second film, Ode to Rhubarb, takes on an unexpected spin with the Featherstone Male Voice Choir singing a rhubarb song “that they just casually wrote for us”, Elena shares. The couple first met the choir a few weeks before Christmas at Wakefield Cathedral where the men were singing. “During the interval we approached them and asked if they’d consider working with us on a song. Luck was on our side, because their talented conductor Edward Whelan jumped at the challenge,” she adds. Everything from beginning to end seemed to be destined, which made for a film that is wrapped up in the world that Elena wanted to create. Their rhubarb red jumpers and ties, and jaunty lyrics that lift the second film to an amusing watch – “put it in a crumble even marmalade and gin” the lyrics go. Here, a dynamic community is solidified, there’s no mistaking the pride that rhubarb evokes throughout the the triangle.

If the choir’s jolly and lighthearted rhubarb ode wasn’t enough, Elena invited them back to review Ffern’s scent in a third film. “Spending time with these men and delighting in their chat and banter, made us want to share that joy with Ffern’s audience,” she tells us. Throughout the film, the men quickly detect the rhubarb scent and begin linking it back to their own history. One says it reminds him of his parent’s back garden growing up and another shares that despite years of living in the triangle he had never noticed the smell of rhubarb until smelling the fragrance. “We wanted to allow the men’s personalities to shine through and give them an opportunity to speak about the scent in a more direct way”, a feat Elena and Angus have certainly achieved.

The project has had an impact on the community, allowing them to tell their stories and mark their intergenerational grit, but it has also opened up new avenues for Ffern. While Elena and Angus were casting, producing and filming the series of shorts, the team over at Ffern began to build their platform Ffern Cinema. It brings together all of their campaign films over the years, from Summer 2020 to today, surrounded by a rhubarb red showtime-esque theatre interface. With all things wrapped up, it would be difficult to minimise Elena’s impact, but true to her humble form, for Elena it always comes back to the community. “In the end, alongside making the film with the Cooks, we were able to connect them with lots of restaurants in London and did everything we could to make sure they could sell all their rhubarb at a good price.”