‘Often During the Day’ opens with a series of still images of a kitchen, photographs that have been delicately hand-tinted by the film-maker. A woman's voice is heard describing a particular kitchen space, through its geography – every minute detail of which she is familiar with – and through the various activities taking place within it. The room is referred to as the centre of the house and the voice describes the traces left by the users of the kitchen (the spatterings of food left on the floor round the saucer after the cat has finished eating – the little pieces of hair washed from a razor after a man has finished shaving). She reflects on the tasks of cleaning and repair, the “small unnecessary” tasks, the caring for a space. Gradually the film pulls us in to its way of seeing so that we identify with and at the same time must question what is being represented.

I want to take notice of the small and regular activities that occupy a big proportion of my time. I expect a recognition from other people. I made the film in the odd hours over the past two years and the activity of making it was quite close to the activities it describes. 

– Joanna Davis 

The film catalogues specific areas of anxiety in one woman's relation to a kitchen, but draws the viewer into the woman's obsessions so that by the final enacted breakfast scene, we share her crushing responsibility for every crumb of dirt: a strategy of recognition which works as a subtle polemic. 

– Jane Clarke, Time Out 

Description source: Circles Catalogue (circa 1983). Compiled by Helen MacKintosh and Margaret Gillan. Edited by Felicity Sparrow.