This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Repetition and conversational fillers have been removed, while the interviewee\u2019s wording and meaning have been retained as closely as possible.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Could you begin by briefly introducing yourself and your background as a filmmaker?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tristan Crowe:<\/strong> I guess I\u2019m a filmmaker. I\u2019ve been working for about 24 years now. I\u2019m originally from the north coast of Northern Ireland, from a small town called Portrush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I originally wanted to go into sound engineering, and then I did a degree in Bristol and came back here and went to work for a small community TV station. I ended up doing camera as well as sound, doing a lot of community-based documentaries on a very varied amount of subject matter and in all sorts of different communities, which was great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We were filming every other day, so I think that gave us a good base. Because you\u2019re filming so much, you get to know all your equipment so well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During that time, because I\u2019m so interested in music and sound, I started doing a lot of music videos as well. One of the first music videos I did was based up on the north coast and was around something not dissimilar to The Witch of Glentow<\/em>. A band I was friendly with did a song about the Spanish Armada. There was a galleon that had crashed hundreds of years ago off the north coast, and the song was about people who had survived the shipwreck and come onto the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We did a music video that was based around The Wicker Man<\/em>. There were people running about with animal masks on and fire torches and things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I ended up doing a lot of music videos during that time, and then over the past five or six years I started moving more towards cinematic short-film and drama-type things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What first drew you to The Witch of Glentow<\/em>, and how did the project begin?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tristan Crowe:<\/strong> We had started doing some Ulster Scots-based films. Northern Ireland Screen has the Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund, which funds different Ulster Scots projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As part of that scheme, we had been doing a series of poetry films. They\u2019re almost like wee music videos, but they\u2019re poems. Some Ulster Scots-based poets who are working today would read their poems, and then we would make a short film around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A lot of them are about rural traditions, a lot about loneliness around being farmers and living with the land, and also the contrast between that and modern society. There are a lot of small villages that still live in a similar way to how they might have lived a hundred years ago. Maybe the farming machinery has changed, but the way of life hasn\u2019t changed that drastically compared to the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We wanted to look towards some older poems from that area. Glentow is an actual area up towards the north coast of Northern Ireland, and The Witch of Glentow<\/em> was one of the poems we came across.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We thought maybe there was something a little bit more that we could do with it, so we started exploring a longer piece. It was a natural progression for us from doing a short four-minute music-video-type thing to, I think, about eighteen minutes for The Witch of Glentow<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Charlie Gillen, the guy at the start of the film, is an Ulster Scots poet that we\u2019d worked with in the past. He had done some translation work for the poem itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was also about building on relationships, because we had worked a lot with the community up in Armoy on the north coast. The kids are from the community centre, and a lot of the actors are amateur actors from that community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a few more experienced actors throughout it, but the bulk of them are amateur actors. For some of them, it was maybe their first role in any sort of film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That part of it was lovely as well. You take the film back to them and show them it, and they\u2019re all excited about watching themselves on screen, especially the kids. Hopefully it gives them some sort of interest, and who knows where their careers might go.<\/p>\n\n\n You also mentioned that the small church in the film has an unusual history. How did you find it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tristan Crowe:<\/strong> That church was somewhere we had filmed before. It\u2019s in somebody\u2019s back garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An old farmer built it himself. He built this big yard, almost like a farm where he could bring kids around to meet the animals. But he built the church himself in his back garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not an old church \u2014 it might be about fifty years old \u2014 but he built it and filled it with things that he had found or collected over the years. It was lovely for him to let us film in it. It\u2019s amazing in its own right, that wee church just for him and his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I first came across it years ago when I was working for the community TV station. We were going around doing different little films and interviewed him there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I usually have a wee note in my phone of interesting locations that might be useful someday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s funny: just by being in those areas and getting to know everybody, you come across these places. None of them have a website. You can\u2019t Google them. Having those community contacts, and having the community involved in the project and bought into the project, is invaluable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What were the main challenges in translating the poem and its oral storytelling tradition into a cinematic narrative?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tristan Crowe:<\/strong> I think there\u2019s some leeway with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea of the short film is that Charlie Gillen, the poet at the start, translated the poem into an Ulster Scots version. He tells the kids the poem, he reads the poem to the kids, and then the idea is that the poem is in the back of everybody\u2019s minds, just like oral traditions are in the back of everybody\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you hear that there\u2019s a story of a ghost in the house next door, it\u2019s always in the back of your mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Normally, if you hear a noise, you might think it\u2019s just kids messing about. But if you hear a noise and you know that story, then maybe your mind jumps to, \u201cMaybe there is something.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having those traditions in your subconscious was the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then after that it\u2019s like: has the witch from that poem returned to this area? Loosely, things happen that are similar to the poem, like the drowning and things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So there\u2019s a bit of artistic leeway in that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the ways the idea came about as well was through Robert Eggers\u2019s The Witch<\/em>. It used this older form of English, and I thought something could be done in a local language here around that, and around local traditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s lots of language in The Witch of Glentow<\/em> that people outside that region wouldn\u2019t understand. People in Belfast wouldn\u2019t understand a lot of the language that\u2019s spoken there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But you get the meaning behind that language. You understand that something\u2019s going wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was always a balance we were trying to get: you understand what\u2019s going on, but you don\u2019t necessarily have to understand every word that\u2019s being spoken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m okay if the audience is confused and doesn\u2019t understand everything. I\u2019d rather that than it being too clear or too by-the-numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019d rather it was a little bit too strange than too standard. It\u2019s always about striking that balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Does that mean the atmosphere created by the language can be more important than understanding every individual word?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tristan Crowe:<\/strong> Yeah. And I guess that\u2019s the same across the globe as well. There are lots of different dialects and different languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Especially here, we find that rural languages are looked down upon. People don\u2019t respect rural languages and rural words as much as words that are spoken in the cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s also a challenge in these communities with the importance of American culture. All the kids watch Netflix. A lot of them even develop wee American accents because they\u2019re watching that much American culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So it\u2019s battling against that, giving people something that is in their own language and that the people next door speak, and having it in a short film as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not a lot of people are doing that, so I thought there was a wee niche for me to do something interesting in there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some images in the film particularly stayed with me: the butterflies, the animal-headed figures, the landscape, and the use of extreme slow motion. How did you develop those images, and what influenced them?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n Tristan Crowe:<\/strong> The super-slow-motion stuff was shot on a camera called the Chronos camera, which shoots at about a thousand frames a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because it shoots at a thousand frames a second, it needs tons and tons of light. It\u2019s quite awkward to use because it only records about eleven seconds at a time, and then after you record those eleven seconds, you have to wait before doing the next shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So it\u2019s a whole process, which is quite awkward, but it was something that I was interested in experimenting with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first time I really came across that sort of thing was many years ago in Amsterdam. I was walking through the main plaza and saw a big sign that said \u201cTristan\u201d above a door \u2014 Tristan\u2019s Ascension<\/em> by Bill Viola.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had no idea what it was, so I walked in. It was a visual installation. There was a guy lying on a kind of plinth, and this massive amount of slow-motion water came down on top of him, and then the body rises up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was amazing. It was on a massive screen in a church, with this big soundscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That piece really hit home with me, and then I looked into more of Bill Viola\u2019s films and installations. He did a lot of slow-motion work with water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was also influenced by Lars von Trier. Some of the slow-motion work in Antichrist<\/em> was lovely, and Melancholia<\/em> had that kind of slow-motion, almost Ophelia-type, painterly imagery as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there are the local traditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are obviously traditions in a lot of rural areas around ghosts and fairies and things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s also a reference in the film to homemade alcohol \u2014 poit\u00edn-type alcohol. In these regions they would have made their own alcohol at one time. You can imagine the varying strengths of the alcohol, or something being in the alcohol, and the effect that might have on people\u2019s minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are also traditions around that area connected with the Christmas Rhymers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Christmas Rhymers would have been a collection of people who visited houses around Christmas. They would knock on the door, be invited in, and do this little mini-play with a very strange story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They would be dressed up in strange homemade outfits. Some of the masks were wicker or straw. Then they would tell these stories and be pushed out again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So there\u2019s a mix of all those different influences in some of the imagery, and also something like The Wicker Man<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the witch, the thought behind it \u2014 though it\u2019s not very clear in the film \u2014 is that she\u2019s drawing her strength from nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She might be drawing her strength from the butterflies, and then the butterflies die. She\u2019s having this effect on nature and drawing strength from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are lots of different bits and pieces thrown in there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And a lot of the time I think as well: what\u2019s going to look good? What would make a nice image to put on the screen?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes that\u2019s as important to me as anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of the film, is the woman really the witch returning, or could she represent other women who were persecuted as witches?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tristan Crowe:<\/strong> I leave it open to interpretation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even those images that are put through the film \u2014 are they hallucinations? Are they real things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end, what she\u2019s doing isn\u2019t particularly supernatural. She\u2019s just hitting somebody with a peat spade. So I don\u2019t know, to be honest. I leave it open to interpretation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But whenever you\u2019re talking about women in general around that time, one of the reasons why people were persecuted as witches was that, whenever a woman\u2019s husband died, she might have been thrown off her land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then she might go around other houses begging. If somebody said no, she might put a hex on them or curse the house or say something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then if something bad happened in that house, coincidentally, people could say: \u201cThat person\u2019s done that. She\u2019s a witch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then she gets persecuted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I think there are little bits of that through the film: the persecution of women and women being blamed for things that aren\u2019t their fault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess that\u2019s part of the basis of the witch trials in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s also a book written by King James called Daemonologie<\/em>. He explained what witches were, and it was one of the influences around the witch trials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are references to that in the film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The minister in the film is coming from Scotland, where King James was from, and he is bringing that information over to these local people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea is that he has read this book and is saying, essentially, \u201cThis isn\u2019t just a tradition. I\u2019ve got this information. This is fact and you need to do something about it. It\u2019s not just a ghost story; it\u2019s something real.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So he\u2019s bringing that information into a small village that hasn\u2019t heard that kind of information before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it\u2019s not meant to be too on the nose. It isn\u2019t explained too much. He\u2019s simply from Scotland and bringing information across, while that book and the existence of that real book sit behind the character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In many folk-horror films, an outsider enters an isolated community and is overwhelmed by its traditions. In your film, the conflict seems to come from within the community itself. Was that an important idea?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tristan Crowe:<\/strong> I guess so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You wonder where that poem originally came from. What was the influence on that poem? Was it based on some sort of oral tradition that was passed down? Was it based on any sort of fact?<\/p>\n\n\n\n A lot of that stuff would have been undocumented in these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And with rural traditions, especially in those times, you\u2019re so reliant on harvests, on the crops doing well. You\u2019re reliant on the sun coming out at the right time. You\u2019re reliant on storms and insects not destroying the crop, or some sort of disease not going through the crops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So religion and hope and nature are ingrained in your thinking, because if nature isn\u2019t kind to you, then you\u2019re doomed in a way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess I\u2019m drawn to that: working with nature and rural, isolated communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re at the mercy of nature, really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is there anything about the film that you feel audiences often misunderstand or overlook?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tristan Crowe:<\/strong> I don\u2019t particularly mind the plot. I don\u2019t really worry if people understand it. I think most people get that there\u2019s a witch and there\u2019s particular imagery throughout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But one thing people do misunderstand is Ulster Scots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ulster Scots has a certain connotation here. Like I said earlier, rural languages across the globe can be looked down upon, especially in urban areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also seen as more of a Protestant culture, which it\u2019s totally not. There are a lot of misconceptions around the language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whenever people see \u201can Ulster Scots horror\u201d in the description, sometimes it\u2019s discounted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve had discussions with people who would say they\u2019re very left-wing and open to new ideas, and surprisingly those are sometimes the type of people who come to me and say, \u201cWhy are you doing that? That\u2019s all nonsense and made up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So it\u2019s strange seeing that side of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s always one of the issues doing stuff in Ulster Scots, alongside trying to make something that is authentic to the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But then people see the film and say, \u201cMy granny used to say that word and I haven\u2019t heard it in years and years,\u201d or, \u201cI\u2019ve never seen those words in a short film before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I find that great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even films like Trainspotting<\/em> use very broad Scottish language and working-class Scottish accents. I don\u2019t think that was seen too much on the big screen before Trainspotting<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think there\u2019s scope to do that for us as well: to have more local things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s an importance in having that, so it\u2019s not just American accents and we\u2019re all watching Netflix. There can be local films that people watch for entertainment, as well as giving them some sort of context for where they\u2019re from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, what are you working on at the moment, and where can people follow your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tristan Crowe:<\/strong> At the minute I\u2019ve got a couple of music videos on the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I released one recently that was a kind of Wes Anderson-inspired music video by a band called Good Swim. There\u2019s another one I\u2019m working on which is more of a retro dance-performance thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also do a lot of sports work. I make wee inserts or small pieces that go onto BBC broadcasts as part of the GAA matches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m working on a number of longer-term projects as well. We\u2019ve got a project doing a kind of audio trail of Divis Mountain, which has a little bit of Ulster Scots and Irish involved in it as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m also doing a couple of installation pieces, and I\u2019m hoping to do more of that kind of art-installation work. One is around nature and the body, with quite abstract ideas around that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And obviously we\u2019re looking at more short films in the future as well. We\u2019ll be writing up a few scripts and seeing if we can get any interest in getting them made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/eutopiajournal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/78\/2026\/08\/Witch-Still-Vertical-1-576x1024.jpg\")
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