Marking the Turn

At Holkham Beach in Norfolk, a path opens from forest to dunes, then out towards the wide edge of the sea. Light moves over grass and sand, while the colours of the shoreline change with the shifting weather. For filmmaker Tayo Rapoport, this place has long held family memories. He grew up partly in Norfolk, and his mother’s family has returned to Holkham over generations. In recent years, he has invited close friends into that history, among them poet, artist and filmmaker Rohan Ayinde.

Together, Rohan and Tayo have created a film in partnership with TOAST and NOWNESS, inspired by our seasonal theme, Marking the Turn. Set in the Norfolk landscape, it celebrates a recurring journey made by friends who have returned to the same coast for five years. The film is led by poetry and movement, with Rohan appearing in front of the camera alongside friends Elisha Robin and movement artist Yewande YoYo Odunubi. Tayo also appears with his son, Yimika Kane-Rapoport, whose presence brings the work into the realm of inheritance and future memory.

The collaboration between Rohan and Tayo began in London on 22 October 2015, a date Tayo remembers because musician Andrew Ashong played at Rich Mix in Shoreditch that evening. “We sparked up a friendship pretty much immediately,” he says. Soon after, Rohan and Tayo arranged to meet at the Southbank Centre. For Tayo, that conversation became “a genesis” of their collaboration, “and first and foremost, our friendship.” They spoke about their experiences of Blackness, and how those experiences might be expressed through poetry, photography and film. “These stories of friendship, of meeting one another, of building community, informed the conversations that we started with, and fundamentally, our creative collaboration ever since,” says Rohan.

Their first major piece of work was Finding Soul, an exhibition initiated by Rohan through photographs he had taken of his community. He invited Tayo to make a film in dialogue with the work, and their friend Yewande helped bring together archival material. At its centre was a question of what community is. Rohan describes the inquiry as exploring “what myths are coming together, and what kind of texture is that? What does it feel like? And what does it mean to pay attention to that feeling, and to look about?”

Their latest film Marking the Turn traces back to their early work, with a focus on friendship and shared history. Holkham became a place where the group could see how much changes as the years pass. They returned to the same forest paths and dunes at different stages of their lives, first as five friends, then with children. The film draws on this shared history. “It felt even more impactful to tell the story by casting ourselves and telling it through our own lived experience,” says Tayo. “It’s a place that really charts this journey for us.”

The presence of Tayo’s son Yimika made the work even more significant. Tayo speaks of “Marking the Turn” through life cycles, ancestry and future generations. Casting his son became a way of acknowledging how the group had moved from five adults to a wider family. It also allowed the film and poem to become “a dedication to him,” he says, “to offer him a window into this time.” Yimika was turning four, the age at which Tayo has his own first memories. While filming, he imagined the images of Yimika with himself and Rohan as “glimpses of memories” that might return to him later.

For Rohan, “Marking the Turn” speaks to ritual and change. He recently shared a photograph with the group from their first Norfolk trip, taken before the children were born. In the image, they are younger versions of themselves, standing together before the changes that would follow. Returning to Holkham allows those changes to be felt and seen across time. “It is a marking of return,” he says. “It’s a marking of these years, how they’ve changed. The photographs tell that story.”

Rohan and Tayo’s process relies on trust built over many years. Rohan is often in frame, captured by the camera while also helping carry the direction of the work. “Being co-directors is a real honour,” says Rohan, “to be able to share responsibility with somebody, and in so doing, also learning how to see with another person.” There is a shared vision, and also spaces where something unexpected can happen. “We learn to see together,” he says.

The day of filming followed a heatwave. Rain was forecast, and the crew prepared to meet what came. In the forest, a light rain registered on camera. In the dunes, blue sky and sun opened across the sand, allowing the group to lie down, gather and talk. As Yewande moved, a deep grey thundercloud formed on the horizon, lightning visible in the distance. The storm drew closer, passed overhead, then opened into sunset as everyone gathered by the ocean.

“That day was a collaboration with the natural world and with the landscape there,” says Tayo. By the end of the shoot, after the crew had left, he and Rohan were among the last to cross the beach back to base. They had passed through rain, sun and storm together. “We were in awe of what had just happened,” he says. “There's an element and a layer of magic that you just can't write for, that you can't plan for. That is one of the charms and beauties that this film holds.”