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The Opening, the sumptuous new film from Owen Tooth, will be coming to film festivals all over the world in 2007.

What do you do when you are trapped? Trapped inside your own head because you have lost your voice.

The Watchmaker wants to tinker inside and find the cogs and screws, take you apart and put you back together.

The Blacksmith wants to use his hammer to beat out your screams.

The Opening is about madness and fear; the claustrophobic terror that comes from within and turns every helping hand into an enemy.

Owen Tooth has created a fantastical new mythology based around his own brushes with madness and his love of nature.

Starring the visceral Rupert Procter, lost alongside a cast of misfits including Elaine Davidson, officially the world's most pierced person with over 4500 piercings.

Filmed largely on the grounds of Elvaston Castle, Derbyshire (location for the imfamous 1969 film 'Women in Love') The Opening made the most of beautifully mouldering decrepit sets and stunning scenery. The rooms had been untouched for decades, crumbling away, inches deep in dust, the ashes of the past. Elvaston Castle is a popular haunt of mediums and psychics as it has had a very long and colourful history and many violent ends have been met there.

Elvaston Castle as it stands today was created by the 3rd Earl of Harrington and his beloved wife Maria nearly 200 years ago - they wanted to create a gothic fantasy to celebrate their love.

The Opening is especially poignant as even as filming was taking place, arrangements were being made to bulldoze the grounds to make way for private golf courses and the like, turning historic Elvaston into some ghastly soulless executive hotel. We like to think we brought the place to life one more time.

The Opening 2007. Running time 12min53sec

Cast: Rupert Procter - Clinic. Jon Glentoran - Blacksmith. Elaine Davidson - Watchmaker. Olivia Barnard-Firth - speaking lady. Emma Simcock-Tooth - silent lady.

Crew: Owen Tooth - writer, director, cinematographer, editor. Emma Williams - producer. David beard - music. Grant Bridgeman - sound. Paul Allen - gaffer.

Emma Simcock-Tooth created the above painting (Clinic I ) in response to the beautiful decay of the sets in the film and the fragility of the main character, the bizarrely-named Clinic. It is one of a series of paintings.

"As the posibilites at Elvaston Castle unfolded themselves to us I started to see beautiful 'moments' in the rooms; for example, a corner where the bricks were crumbling, rusted cans untouched for decades, inches of dust. This is when I was inspired to paint the portraits. It was a case then, once the image of what I wanted had crystallised in my head, of waiting till we started filming then as we wrapped on a scene I would just stop the actors, and say 'can you just crouch down there for a minute' or whatever, move the lights around etc and have a brief photoshoot for reference pictures. It was the textures above all which inspired the paintings"