Moon And The Sledgehammer

Moon And The Sledgehammer

Although the film opens and closes with shots of cars wending their way down a suburban English street, the only vehicles glimpsed during the balance of Philip Trevelyan's 1971 documentary The Moon and the Sledgehammer are of a considerably less contemporary orientation. That's because the film's subjects, the Page family, lead an isolated, defiantly pre-modern (though not pre-industrial) life, subsisting without electricity or running water while confining themselves to their six acres of wooded property south of London. While the women occupy themselves with gardening and embroidery, the men take on intensive mechanical work, rehabilitating an old steam engine, building a boat from scratch, their labor a throwback to an outmoded artisanal tradition that, in concert with the men's stated philosophies, stands as a corrective to the prevailing curse of "push-button machinery." 

Moon And The Sledgehammer

 Moon And The Sledgehammer

 Moon And The Sledgehammer

 Moon And The Sledgehammer

 Moon And The Sledgehammer

 Moon And The Sledgehammer

 Moon And The Sledgehammer

 Moon And The Sledgehammer

 Moon And The Sledgehammer