Robert Perkins directs with carefully balanced skill, an eerie sense of menace infused throughout the whole film as we flit from 1916 to the present day and DoP Carlos de Carvalho works wonder in the darkness of the night, creating some gorgeous shots that are as beautiful as they are haunting. And there’s a chilling sense of how what some would consider the supernatural can be rooted in things that are all too real. Not one to watch just before bedtime!
The Lights and then the Noise
Described as a sci-fi music short, Mathy and Fran’s The Lights and then the Noise stars Emily Taaffe and punk band No Age in a visceral four minute burst that is as much music video as it is short film, cleverly juxtaposing the strangeness of an alien abduction with the fierce intensity of a first ever punk gig. It may be short but it’s punchily effective, vividly portraying a kind of out-of-body experience which is neither one thing nor the other, or maybe it’s both. The hallucinatory sonic and visual palette pulls us into the exhilarating sense of joy that comes from live performance and also relents to give us the crashing down back to real life as we come home and go to bed with a glass of milk.
Boy
The video has sat on my unwatched list for ages now and quite how those that were responsible for the recommendation managed to not give away the main reason they knew I’d like it, I do not know. For the film has a (uncredited) cameo from none other than my beloved Alexandra Gilbreath and I am so glad I didn’t know as there’s little pleasure so grand for me as spotting an actor I love. That the film – Boy – is as good as it is could well be inconsequential, such is my regard for the Gilbreath, but it really is a rather lovely thing indeed. Prasanna Puwanarajah’s film is a wordless affair, Alex Heffes’ plangent music dominating the soundscape, as Timothy Spall’s father processes the grief of losing a son.