Tapes From The Revolutionary has been shortlisted for The Skinnys Film Competition 2015. Good times! In their own words, The Skinny Short Film Competition is The Skinny’s annual contest to showcase the best new short film making talent, and help new short filmmakers take their creative vision to new heights.
This year the competition was open to all of the UK so I am pretty chuffed for the film to be shortlisted. The judging panel for The Skinny Short Film Competition 2015 includes Glasgow Short Film Festival director Matt Lloyd, filmmaker and critic Mark Cousins, producer Rosie Crerar and The Skinny’s film editor Jamie Dunn.
Tapes From The Revolutionary is a personal film where I met Andy, a self-proclaimed communist revolutionary that documents his life on a Hi-8 camcorder. Aiming to understand the purpose behind the tapes I began to film Andy, however he had his own agenda for the project.
I wanted to experiment with what would happen if I gave full control to my participant as the filmmaker. This led to creative differences. We had arguments. I lost control of where the film was going. Alot was at stake, with this being my graduation film. What if I was to fail uni?
However by including this tension made the film richer. It became self-aware and asked questions about why filmmakers create and how others see the world. One year later, I received a phone call from Andy. Was there still tension between us?