After many months of doing the rounds of releasing a film, preparing DVD releases, becoming enmeshed in the relative horrors of distribution and exhibition, tangling with release events, social media promotion and, step by step, losing the shine and inspiration of all the amazing people who bleed to make your film as you fall into step with the cynics and misery-peddlers who sit around at the end; after all this, it's easy to forget the bliss of shooting.
A couple of months back, we filled my brother's van with a bunch of friends whose abilities traversed acting, cinematography and production design and, for three days, we hooned around town and shot this clip on the sly for an old and inspiring friend, Joelistics. These were the people with whom there exists an easy shorthand and where the ability to create something ephemeral and difficult to articulate is possible because there exists a shared sensibility and understanding of what we're all reaching for.
The last story I told with this crew and these actors was one of a love destroyed just at the instant that it happened, so it felt right to create a story that is more like those loves that we experience; one of duration and hardship, or one where the love takes a different, albeit more wary form, after heartache, disappointment or deception; but one where there still exists tenderness and beauty and moments of levity.
There are moments in here - the woman played by Lily Sullivan, casting her eyes back over her shoulder as she walks down a rainy street, or the man, played by Aliki Matangi looking up to the apartment where he knows his future might lie - that make me as proud as anything I've been involved in. This seems, after Small Mercies and Galore, like a footnote of heartbreak with, at last, more hope than hurt.
Monday, December 1, 2014
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