Experimental Film – DIAGONAL (2022)

experimental film Diagonal

Director Statement

This is a new development in my film research into memory conceptualisation in Cinema. Using found footage from the late 19th and early 20th century I created a short experimental film in the style of a City Symphony. While not a true example of the City Symphony as it is filmed across serval locations it does retain the essential components of this rare genre film. This film is number 3 of 3 films sharing a similar aesthetic style, the others Vertical and Horizontal are still in production at this time.

Experimental Film Diagonal

These films have a number of common elements

– multiple layers
– movement in contrasting directions
– heavily treated and remastered source footage (colourised and stabilised), traveling pov shots (phantom rides)
– The imagery of vehicles and bodies in motion.
– repetitive music that matches the repetitive images and which is overlaid on the sound of a projector.
– They are primarily non-narrative, although the music and the movements depicted sometimes imply narrative development.
– They can also, obviously, be read as elements of larger narratives.

The use of masks is quite effective in complicating the relationship between the different images so that it is sometimes hard to see them as discrete layers. I think this effect – where it becomes difficult to see the separate layers – is really effective as a way of capturing a certain experience of memory (where images, moments from different times are conjoined and confused as we attempt to remember the past).

Also, I think the image of movement – of moving bodies – is a good way of suggesting and evoking both the idea of the complex and unstable structure of memory, and the sense of history as something that is dynamic and ever-changing, ever-moving, rather than something that is stable and fixed. Water is therefore an interesting symbolic image in this regard.

I think the use of clearly remastered imagery is interesting. It means this is not about nostalgia for analogue film, or for some authentic past, but instead suggests that new image technologies can give us access to the past. There is a broader significance to this conceptualisation of the past – and history – as something that has to be revisited and renarrated continually. (Bennett 2022)

Experimental Film - The CAHOOTIFY JustMakeIt! Film Conference
Official Selection The CAHOOTIFY JustMakeIt! Film Conference 2022

Remember – Experimental Short Film

Finding Alice

Finding Alice a short film produced by Smudgerhunt Film and in conjunction with Wolamywise Productions.

Film Festivals and Screenings

 

 

 

 

Finding Alice official selection for the XPO North Cultural and Film Festival, 27th – 28th June in Inverness Scotland. Congratulations team and our film production partners Wolamywise.

Berlin Flash Film Peoples Choice Award Laurels

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding Alice wins the Peoples choice award at the Berlin Flash Film Festival 2017

Berlin Fast Film Festival

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding Alice official selection for the Berlin Flash Film Festival 2017

Production

Finding Alice has been almost 2 years in the making, having been shot in four locations. These include Inverness in Scotland, the Lake District, London and Dorset using very limited equipment:- My trusty Canon 60D, a Canon Powershot and my iPhone 6.

Geetha Anandarajan
Geetha Anandarajan

Geetha Anandarajan is cast as the main character Annie along side the other main character Joshua Ward who takes the part of ‘The Narrator’ or the voice and controller of fate.

Directed by Smudgerhunt Films, Nor Hazlin Nor Salam and filmed by me Ian F. Hunt as Director of Photography, with everyone pitching in with camera as required.

The film is from an original script written by Geetha and Hazlin, the short version was used to produce this film and there is the idea to film and produce a longer version in the future.

For now the aim is to get it out to the Film Festivals for 2017 season.

Finding Alice - Annie gets a sign

The Synopsis

Finding Alice tells the story of Annie facing a crossroad in life as she seeks for truth in a world of lies. Does she succeed or does she succumb?

Directors Statement

This film ‘Finding Alice’ serendipitously came together through a brief discussion I had with my writer about a woman’s lost of faith in a patriarchal structure. In Annie’s existential conflict, she began to lose the voice in her head she believes to be ‘the controller of fate’. We then see her attempting to escape His shadows, as she reaches back into the object that defined her childhood innocence in hope that this would help find her way to a new life, a life free from stigmas and dogmas. The irony is in fact, that Annie in the end realises that there is no escape and that she could only succumb to i’ the omnipresent voice’ which was expressed through a lifeless ‘dance of death’. ‘Finding Alice’ is a story about the loss of faith, hope and the desire for autonomy.

Stills from Finding Alice

Finding Alice - The book has been answered Finding Alice = The Mad Hatter found in London Finding Alice - The answer is in the book Finding Alice - Wolamywise Productions