Six short films from Watersprite 2014

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19 May

This is a review of a screening at the bar of The Arts Picturehouse of the top films from Watersprite (the international festival for student film-makers, @WaterspriteCam) – it fell in two parts, the first being on Monday 12 May 2014


1. Wind [link to the film on Vimeo]

Much has been written about this inventive film already by TAKE ONE, which covered the Watersprite Festival. As with the one that followed at this screening, it plays with being the wrong side of safe, and some have said that it is about adapting to extreme conditions.

Yet, although one can have a stylized haircut that depends on the wind blowing, one gets one’s nose cut off, it is not. The adaptation itself seems to be to something that is of these people’s own making, for we see shifts being changed at the plant where the wind is being generated, and where the outgoing worker has had time to grow a lengthy beard before being relieved : a symbolic depiction, but we need reminding that we sometimes create a problem, sometimes psychologically, and then learn to live with it, rather than seeking a proper solution.



2. Border Patrol [link to the film’s IMDb page]

This is a story that does not quite take one where it might, when it has the potential of the older officer Franz having ‘got one over’ on his dismissive younger colleague Carl, but instead settling on a relatively modest and benign punch-line (if at the cost of an unfortunate victim).

It is well resourced and acted, and there is tension, but director Peter Baumann seems to have reckoned that the latter is dissipated by the film ending as it does, whereas it really ends as a sick comment on people in authority passing the buck (and at the expense of the person who suffered).



3. Echo [link to a ‘teaser trailer’ on Vimeo]

There was disagreement, following the screening, whether Caroline ends, through having cried wolf, in a different place from where she began. Even if she did, it is not obvious enough that she is not just ‘up to her old tricks’, and they are really what is more interesting, for she reminds of Jeune et Jolie (2013)’s Isabelle (Marine Vacth) in acting / seeming to act immorally.

At first, Caroline appears to be the one in danger, because she has strewn the contents of her bag on the floor and we fear that she may come to regret being so trusting. As things develop, and, when she is at home, it is clear that her mother had no message from her, it seems like a scam on her part, but maybe one to which she is addicted as Isabelle is. It turns out to be rooted in truth, whatever weight the ending bears : is Caroline, as Lady Macbeth does, repeating the distressing experience over again, because she can do nothing else, and not for gain ?



* * * * *



4. How to Count Sheep [link to the trailer on Vimeo]

After the interval came what felt the least effective film – not for the visual quality, or for the imagery of such moments (which spoke volumes) of tracks going towards and right up to a tree (a disappearance seemed implied, rather than a tree-climbing sheep), but for the lack of overall coherence.

Maybe it came from being in the invidious position of the first after the break, when concentration was not at its greatest, but it never seemed to come together to say something : was it life striving to imitate dreams, or dreams that were too rooted in the over-worked idiom of the folklore of going to sleep – or did we, despite its title, mistake, if we though that it had either aim in mind ? The title may simply have been an over-reaching claim, for it seemed like exploring being awake, but with a forced notion of what dream and its elements are…



5. Born Positive [link to the trailer on Vimeo]

Forget who mimes best to the real voices*, who have been disguised by having actors stand in for them : this is a powerful piece of film-making, well edited and treating of the three stand-in actors together and individually. It is a way of engaging with people who want to speak, but remain hidden, that proves very impressive here, not just because of the subject-matter.

At first, the three actors are on a roof-top space together (as can be seen in the trailer, talking in turns (and a place to which we return)), and we become used to them as a group with the unfamiliarity that this face is not really speaking these words – though all that links those speaking is having found out that HIV had been passed on to them (and the film ends with remarkable figures about how low the incidence now is amongst babies born to mothers in the UK with HIV).

One suspects that no more than with exact age that the ethnic origin may not have been kept the same as that of the speaker, to add a greater level of making the voices difficult to recognize, for Zachariah Fletcher (as Mark) did not sound as he looked, and Trevon Paddy (as Blake) seems older as an actor than the role that he was playing. The important thing about the film is, of course, what it tells us, but that it has Zachariah owning an outdoor location gives a vividness to what his character is telling us.

Blaming others for what happened, then finding, with reflection, that maybe they had guessed at what they did not know when a parent had not been around to ask, and working out how to tell others that they have HIV, and who needs to know – these strong questions that people ask about themselves and their identity in all sorts of contexts have a special poignancy in the context of statistics given at the end.



6. A Man Came From The Sea [link to the film at The University of York]

This was another film that seemed less strong : it is preceded by the incongruity of a tango reconstructed in arrangement (score by Kattguldet), a cynical evaluation by the well-played pair who find The Man unconscious, and a beautiful location, but – unless it meant to draw attention to itself – also a title-song in no way as convincing as those are in The Wicker Man (1973).

Here, because there was not the uncertainty inherent in How To Count Sheep, it was evident that the plot was wafer thin, dwelling on the theme of the refugee, and what makes, or does not make, someone worth while in the eyes of those who do not know him or her : not a skit on Yorkshire hospitality, but on all forces that will have someone ‘sent back’ because his or her ‘story’ has been discredited (albeit in an impressive long shot, and to what is now the stridency of tango-writing).

Unfortunately, the political staginess of a man made welcome and as soon rejected, was matched by the inevitability of what happened. With opening and closing sequences so long (1:23 and 1:34, respectively, out of an overall 10:28), and so no time for conflict where we might feel something more for this man with Scandinavian tones, we might just condemn the instance, but can overlook it as happening there – as if it could never happen / does not happen here.


End-notes

* After all, there must have been some matching of lip-movements to the target audio in the editing process. (One may also fear for the speakers that, from his or her voice alone, someone might know who he or she is, and so know things about him or her that were only being shared anonymously – one hopes not…)


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)