But you have alot of friends...

That's the first thing she said...as Anamaria Marinca stood there in the corner of the Young Vic stage in July 2009, dressed in jeans and a white vest top, standing against a background of a wall with two narrow exits each side ,nothing more, nothing less. And so 4.48 Psychosis Psychosis began...my first experience of watching a one person stage play. I had loved Anamaria Marinca in '4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days', was surprised to see her pop up in the brilliant 'five days of heaven' and found it to be great pleasure when I got to meet her at the 2009 world cinema awards, as she gave a heartfelt thank you speech as herself and Cristian Mungiu accepted the best film award. At first I thought she was nervous and didn;t know what to say as she followed Cristian's speech with 'this film is for all the lost ones...we shall never forget you.' I ran into her during Berinale 09 a few months later, at an incredible Romanian party!

4: 88 Psychosis kept my attention, I throughly enjoyed it. After about an hour and fifteen minutes straight performance, she never moved from her one spot on the stage. It was a truely challenging and fantastic role to see her in.

My first stage play to be written with a one person would only come recently, as it coincided with me seeing Meera Syal act it alone in 'Shirley Valentine', a very talented woman whom I always enjoy watching, it was fantastic.

The one person stage play is a challenge...I plan to see more and hope that my first one person stage play, is the first of many more to come...

2 days in Paris

Marion: "It always fascinated me how people go from loving you madly to nothing at all, nothing. It hurts so much. When I feel someone is going to leave me, I have a tendency to break up first before I get to hear the whole thing. Here it is. One more, one less. Another wasted love story. I really love this one. When I think that its over, that I'll never see him again like this... well yes, I'll bump into him, we'll meet our new boyfriend and girlfriend, act as if we had never been together, then we'll slowly think of each other less and less until we forget each other completely. Almost. Always the same for me. Break up, break down. Drunk up, fool around. Meet one guy, then another, fuck around. Forget the one and only. Then after a few months of total emptiness start again to look for true love, desperately look everywhere and after two years of loneliness meet a new love and swear it is the one, until that one is gone as well. There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time, well you still can't live without him. And even if he wakes you up every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes more than anyone else's kisses. "

Chequered History

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/22/fashion.middleeast

Somewhere in-between sunrise and sunset

'Memory is a wonderful thing, if you don’t have to deal with the past…'

My mate took a girl to his place for a date once, whilst we were at uni, to watch Before Sunrise. I had never seen it up until to this point. My mate told me 'oh you'll love it, it's just two people walking around a city and talking.' Sounded great to me!

I don't recall the frist time I saw the film...I think it was on videotape, perhaps the same one my mate used for his date...uni is a strange time, framented in places. A few years later, I heard about a sequel, Before Sunset, much to my sickness. A film which is originally about two people finding something in each other, the bravery of trust, the magic one night can bring and what really is love. In the end, is love a few hours spend together, leave it at that, make love, share and say goodbye, cut all strings loose?

And so Before Sunset seemed like it was to cut all this away, as it intruduced with the tagline...'what if you had a second chance, with the one that got away.' Before Sunset became the most commercial of the two films, confusing new audiences over which one film came first (America entitled the second one, Before Sunset 2) I remember the first time I saw Sunset, I had just finished my degree and gone back home, from Farnham, to London. My house was in a decorated mess, I had no bedroom, nowhere to really work, no job, only a laptop and a library down the road currently with an offer of free DVD's. As I watched Sunset, something came over me, as I ended up watching the film five times in a week. Was it the joy of seeing two people having the chance to be happy, did I just fall in love with Julie Delpy's character, was it the city of Paris, did it encourage optimism for love within me?

Being in a relationship at the time, I showed it to my girlfriend, who had not seen the first one. After watching it, she said...'it's not real.' What did she mean? Can two people not find such chemistry as is shown in the film or did she mean the film is so polite about the idea of chance, romance, chemistry?

I recently showed both the films on a date...perhaps if the date was the bit better, I might have got a better response than the one I got, which was that 'the first one was better.' It was at this point that I knew this date was over, perhaps I have the 'Before' films to thanks for this realisation.

When I saw Julie Delpy's on a panel discussion in Berlinale 2008, an audience member said to her, 'before sunrise and before sunset are two of my favourite films of all time, will there be a third one?' Julie Delpy was currently promoting her directing debut 'two days in Paris', a film which attempts to capture what a real relationship is like, can be argued in a more pessimist way, she replied to the audience member 'well, you're a romantic.' Perhaps that said it all...why I watched the second one five times in a week and why I'm writing this blog...

To end...

Jesse: Oh, God, why didn't we exchange phone numbers and stuff? Why didn't we do that?
Celine: Because we were young and stupid.
Jesse: Do you think we still are?
Celine: I guess when you're young, you just believe there'll be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times.

London Recut

It was the middle of June, I had recently had a blast for a week in Hamburg at the film festival, I had a week left before I was to head off to Edinburgh for their film festival. With piles of work for me to do, I always have a bad habit of adding more work to my palette (I never want to miss an opportunity) which London Recut was indeed. I found out about the competition (funded by both Film London and UK Film Council) on my way to work one morning, whilst reading the Metro. I immediately became excited at the prospect of working with footage which has made up the city I've grown up in and love to this day.

That same week on a Friday evening, I got to work, sifting through the footage, searching for a direction. My initial thoughts were to make a film connecting me and London. With footage ranging from 1900 through to the 1970's, being of a first generation here in London, I found this quite difficult to achieve. I started to look through the underground footage, a mode of transportation which has been a huge part of my life, going to school, going to work, travelling within London and began to attempt to construct a film. At this point, I had only images but no links, no subject, no idea. I didn't know what I was making and I wasn't sure I was going to get anywhere.

With time being a constraint, I suddenly clicked on the London at war folder. I didn't know it that evening (it now being sometime after 10pm) at the time but the human spirit seen clearly in the footage, is what inspired me to make the film 'Air.' A few hours later, (2am) half of the film had suddenly disappeared (the online editing program had some faults but essentially it was a good simple program) However, the fact that I had lost half of the work suddenly, was exactly why I was still up editing that night. I decided not to rely on technology, to keep going and finish the film I had in my mind, not thinking about the next day or how much sleep time I had left. I finished and successfully loaded the film online at around 4am (maybe later than that?)


As I jetted off to Edinburgh, I was very pleased to be shortlisted and of course, told by the producer Kerry McLeod towards the end of the festival that the Jury's decision was unaimous in choosing 'Air' as one of the four winners of the competition. As the journey continued with 'Air', meeting with Kerry, putting together the publicity, editing the film at Mosaic studios, looking at all possibilities for where the final version of the film could go and finally the having the screening. Andy Robson was extremely helpful with his archival knowledge, Anton Califano brought alot of ideas to the final edit of the finished film and Kerry kept the project on track, they were all a pleasure to work with. In all, I loved every moment of it.

At the screening, I finally had the chance to meet the other three winners (me being the only guy) and of course, having the pleasure to view all their films.

In my interview about the process of making the film, I was asked what would I say to someone if they were going to fund a project similar to this, I replied that I think it's very important not to ignore archive material, as time moves on, the past disappears and begins to seem less real but with a photo or a moving image, it reasures us that it was there, that it did happen, for happy and sad occasions. Preserving archive material is crucial, allowing others to view it and work with it is very important, as all this material helps us understand the world we live in more today.

Finally...here is where you view and edit archive footage, read about all the winners, as well as watch the films.

http://www.londonrecut.co.uk/

Special thanks to Mosaic Films for this opportunity, it's something I would love to do again.

Your screenplay sucks

http://yourscreenplaysucks.wordpress.com/

Red Riding

In June 2009, I had the great pleasure of meeting the screenwriter Tony Grisoni, for the second time. The first time had been a few years before at the eat our shorts festival at the BFI. As we got ourselves a drink, we got onto talking about the Red Riding Trilogy, in which Tony adapted all three screenplays from which the books are based.


Tony asked for my opinion, concerning my viewing of the three films, with not so great results. At that point, I told him how I found it very hard to watch the first part in the trilogy, as I didn't believe the main character of Eddie Dunford played by Andrew Garfield. Tony listened with great interest before descending into black humour regarding my lack of taste, as I wasn't able to watch the other two films as a result. As we discussed the joys of being a screenwriter, the conversation ended with me wanting to give the trilogy another go, this time seeing all three of them through, and here is the result...

1974: I was pleasantly surprised at as I watched it this time. I was throughly interested, as opposed to my first outing with it, which I was so distant from. My feelings about the main actor's performance, him not convincing me, wasn't as bad this time and I suddenly became intrigued by this story about police corruption and child abductions.

1980: I was really excited to getting around to watching this second installment, with both Considine and Clarke as the main leads. This second part I felt was quite an amazing piece of filmmaking. Through incredible cinematography and thoughtful direction, this was a fascinating piece to watch and probably, for me, the best in the trilogy, in many ways.

1983: David Morrissey's performance in this final installment, blew me away, he was simply masterful in this role. This last film had an eerie edge to it, as the missing girls over the years were shown in portraits before the Red Riding title card. I thought it was a fitting end to a large story that had alot to say.

All together, I think that the Red Riding trilogy was a very, very dark piece of British drama, that I haven't seen on British primetime TV in a long time, unless there's something I've missed. This was about topical issues and subjects, that have been going and are still going on today. Extremely intelligent, not spoonfeeding the audience but challenging them until the very end. I loved it, am throughly impressed and am thrilled to have seen it.