About 80 people turned out to enjoy six short films in the cosy comfort of the Chambers last night.
First up was the epic, effects laden extravaganza that is Secret Thoughts of Angels. Nuff said about that already…
Then came ‘Petals Fall’, by Michelle Goessen (dir) and Lisa Newman (dp). Through the clever intercutting of dream sequences and dance, ‘Petals Fall’ tells the story of a woman jilted at the altar. I particularly liked the music in this film, mainly piano, but well written and setting the tone perfectly. Some of Lisa’s visuals were particularly effective too, giving the piece a very dream like quality and effectively conveying the confusion, sadness and anger of the main character.
Continuing the theme of struggling females, the third film was the Camera Girls, ‘The Return’, the tale of a woman trying to come to terms with the loss of her baby. Although the Camera Girls are North Kent based, David Motta did the sound and James Newton (see below) did the lighting. There were some rather nifty tracking shots which I thought were quite good too.
After the break came Shane Record’s very short film, ‘Water Portrait’, in which Shane literally paints a portrait… with water! The whole process of painting (in this case onto blue sugar paper) and then the ‘paint’ drying (yup, it evaporates) is compressed into just under two minutes. I thought it was a very interesting exploration of the concept of impermanence (so much so that I drove home humming ‘Removables’ by the Manic Street Preachers).
Then came the premiere of James Newton’s ‘The Crusader’, which was, I thought, jolly good. It tells the tale of Ritchie Pritchard, a young, somewhat impressionable Christian keen to make his views known. However, his studies in the Good Book go somewhat astray and he is drawn to darker material such as Nietzsche and Nazi Propaganda. As the film progresses, the posters on his bedroom wall change (images of Hitler and the Third Reich begin to pop up) and he sinks into a dark world where he begins to think that he is the cure to peoples problems. The film is on the whole quite humorous, with a dark ending.
Zachary Cooke’s ‘Mis-happy’ rounded the evening off, another tale of woe and misery, but this time with a nice upbeat ending, it tells the tale of a woman in an abusive relationship. What really sets this film alight is Clayton Thompson’s music, which matches the emotional ride of the lead to perfection.
The thing I really liked about this film (and both Petals Fall and The Return) was the strength of the visual story telling. Totted up, there’s probably 45 minutes of film between them, but none of them had more than a handful of lines of dialogue. Excellent stuff.
All in all a top evening, only marred by the lack of availability of Old Thumper (bah!).
Big thanks to all the filmmakers for showing their films and turning up to talk, Chris for compering and Zach and James for organising everything.
There’ll be more Digifests very soon, so if you’re a Kent based filmmaker and would like to show your short, contact info@digifest.co.uk