[dropcap style=”font-size:100px; color:#992211;”]A[/dropcap]wards season blasts itself into the winter consciousness with the overbearing kitsch of a feather-cut auntie sozzled on prosecco.
Golden Globes frock choices and wearily worthy feature films of Great Import battle to colonise the no man’s land between vacuous celebrity worship and the conscience-salving contrition felt when overprivileged white people bestow prizes upon feature films showing overprivileged white people feeling really bad about being overprivileged white people.
Give it a rest, eh?
To the independent film-makers then, by which we mean the really independent film-makers, not the shiny Sundance version of ‘indie’ (where it takes five minutes of corporate sponsor ident animations before the titles even roll). We mean the little guys, the guys with a camera, a story, and the blind faith that it will get done somehow.
Some years back, Trebuchet reviewed a pop & poetry act called Skint & Demoralised. An entertaining and thought-provoking show although, in the opinion of the reviewer, dominated by frontman Matt Abbott:
– ‘it becomes clear that while Abbott is eager to engage with the audience the rest of the band need to project a bit more’.
Project a bit more. Please excuse the unintentional pun.
David Gledhill, fellow member of Skint & Demoralised, has made a film.
Hope, trauma, humour and despair. Gledhill’s script traces the journey of a bereaved protagonist following a list of instructions written by his late wife. Poignant, certainly, and, set against the backdrop of a wintery Lake District, visually beautiful too.
Initially Gledhill wrote the script inspired by his own chronically ill partner Tracey. By the time director Kerry Harrison was onboard and filming commenced, reality mirrored art. Tracey’s death propelled the film into the realm of lived experience – turning it into a close interpretation of how the experience feels; a mirror image of the world that Gledhill had attempted to write about within months of it becoming a reality.
‘We’re Here For A Good Time Not A Long Time is a story of love, loss and a list. It is slow, it is subtle, it is emotional and it is tender.
But more than that, it is also an incredibly brave and poignant piece of art; tackling one of life’s most haunting inflictions.’
In January We’re Here for a Good Time Not a Long Time received a test screening at Hyde Picture House, Leeds. Still very much in the embryonic stages, Gledhill and Harrison hope to find a distributor for the film.
You can follow their progress at goodtimefilm.tumblr.com
Some of the news that we find inspiring, diverting, wrong or so very right.
