Playing under the normal distribution circuit radar at selected venues in the UK and around the world (there have been knit-along screenings), this is a scrappy but endearing documentary about mostly female artists and a traditionally feminine art form.
It explores how yarn – that protean substance that’s the very stuff of knitting, crochet and so on – plays a starring role in the work of different artists. Like a complex brioche pattern, there are multiple strands at play. Graffiti artist Tinna Thorudottir Thorvaldar nails little stars and slogan-festooned squares on to buildings in her native Iceland and Cuba, while Polish mono-named woman Olek makes more aggressively provocative gallery pieces and performance art with people swathed in crocheted camouflage suits. Elsewhere, Danish circus troupe Cirkus Cirkor deploys massive skeins of super chunky rope for a knitting-themed show about world peace.
Yes, some of it is a little wince-inducing, but there are some insightful and wise contributions from Japanese artist Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam who makes play structures for children out of intricate, luminously coloured nylon nets. Threaded throughout, Barbara Kingsolver reads from her own exquisite prose ode to yarn and making, Where It Begins, as charming little yarn-made animations unspool.
There’s a lot of material related to the subject that this film only glancingly touches on, such as the tension between art and craft and how and why knitting and crochet got hip again, but we fibre fanatics will take what we can get for now.
