Bio
I’m a filmmaker working across narrative film, documentary and commercial projects, guided by sustained research into intergenerational memory, belief and archives.
Writing is central to my process.
I studied a BSc and later an MSc in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics. Anthropology’s emphasis on participation and embodied knowledge continues to inform how I work with people and places.
This approach extends into my ongoing engagement with urbanism through Freehold Magazine, where I focus on placemaking and everyday interventions into urban spaces.
Alongside my film practice, I work commercially with start-ups, fashion brands and cultural institutions. My commercial experience includes project management, branding, graphic design and creative direction.
Email: brandonstcatherine@gmail.com
Instagram: @beesaintcee
CV
BITTER SLEEP DOC 45456
INFO
Director: Brandon St. Catherine
Producer: Beth Troakes, Madeline Wright, Anton Blaubach
DOP: Penelope Corinaldesi, Adele Garbutt
Resarcher: Brandon St. Catherine, Ruby Duncan, Penelope Corinaldesi
4K Video
16:9
Colour
24 minutes 55 seconds
View on RequestDESCRIPTION
Bitter Sleep is a documentary rooted in oral history, shaped by the urgent need to record lived testimony in the absence of a robust archival record on the island of Montserrat. Once known as the “Emerald Isle of the Caribbean” for its Irish and West African heritage, Montserrat’s recent history has been profoundly marked by the volcanic eruptions of the 1990s, which led to mass displacement, the destruction of the capital, and the formation of a widespread diaspora.
The film approaches interviews not as direct access to memory or interior life, but as present-tense acts of reconstruction. Memory is understood as something carried not only through retold stories, but through accents, dialects, gestures, rhythms, silences and other embodied cultural codes. Spoken testimony therefore reveals contemporary social dynamics as much as past events. The documentary attends both to what is articulated at face value and to what is communicated more subtly, including how these encounters shaped the filmmaker’s own subjectivity.
The project marked the filmmaker’s first journey to his mother’s home island, bringing him into direct contact with family, landscape and cultural life for the first time. As the work developed, it became increasingly self-reflexive, shaped by the recognition that diaspora, the volcanic eruption and long-term displacement had produced significant generational differences in language, values, memory, religious belief and attitudes toward labour and care. Informed by anthropological training but grounded primarily in autoethnography, Bitter Sleep reflects on cultural continuity and rupture across generations.
The film includes footage from Plymouth, the island’s former capital, where homes and public infrastructure were destroyed following the eruption. A content warning accompanies the film.