This film is great. It showed genuine competence and confidence in its vision. I got a sense of the filmmaker’s talent and of the tone and personality of their work.
This is something I keep banging on about, but what I also got here was an appreciation of film as being an artistic composition and not simply dry, visual journalism.
Dry, visual journalism is the scourge of British documentary – but sadly the fast-track towards getting a commission. It¹s a real tragedy. Film is not just a story. It’s not just an A to B narrative. It shouldn’t be a newspaper or magazine article. It is a physical and sensory experience. So many filmmakers – particularly in the world of documentary – show absolutely no regard for this. This filmmaker did show an appreciation of film as being a medium that should display artistic merits beyond its factual content – because it is that which will ultimately give a film longevity after you have absorbed its basic information and message.
Most importantly I got a real sense of the place. The emotional soul of the place. I got a real sense of the town’s history, (or rather the filmmaker’s imaginative relationship with the town and its history. This filmmaker’s Amersham will be different to another resident¹s spiritual and emotional conception of the place). It made me want to go to Amersham and it made me want to hunt its soul and to feel it inside my own. I want the same feelings of kinship towards the town that I think the speaker within the film had towards Amersham.
However, my Amersham is Edgware, and that’s the world I’ve been shackled to. I shuffle around in those shackles with a smile on my face. Love or hate your town – more often than not it will leave a deposit or residue inside you that empowers who you are. I hope that I see traces of this in the rest of the films I watch on FourDocs.
Comments
I agree the visuals are pleasantly rich evocative. I do not however find the film to be particularly personal. In fact I think it’s a little cliched. Is there not hundreds of places/towns around the UK this film could be documenting by simply changing the title?
There is something strangely haunting about this film. I like its texture and its obtuse nature. But fails to tell me anything. It remains cold and like the earlier comment pointed out, impersonal.
nice one, this is incredibly atmospheric, we want more, it reminded me of La Jetee
a beautiful film.
The film is ANYTHING but cliched! A great use of atmospherics that really GRABS attention. Excellent work
A rich and haunting piece of film, that involves the viewer on a number of levels. I really enjoyed the experience of the various emotions elicited by both the film, script and atmospheric soundtrack.
I liked the film very much. It is good to see something that can bring up so much emotion in such a short time
A haunting melancholy film that left me with a feeling that we live in a destructive, selfish and uncaring society that hasn’t really changed for the better over the centuries. I enjoyed the film very much and agree with mario that the filmmaker has managed to capture the imagination of the viewer very effectively on many levels.
A brilliant concept for a sense of place documentary; this film is both dramatic and engaging. It tells an interesting story and informs the viewer.
Haunting and dramatic visuals are used to tell the rough history of a town. I believe that this is evolving the genre of documentary in an exciting and creative way. I think that the aim of the competition was to inspire documentary filmmakers to think more like this and I’m really enthused by your idea and your scripting. Keep up the good work.
This was one of my favorite films of this comp in terms of visuals. I also like the idea of the hypnosis for a short- it’s a neat way to fit an lot of ideas into a short spcace of time. I thougth the script was ab it weak at points but overall the film moved me and I suppose that’s how I gage how good a film is on a very base level…Well done Marco!
Thanks for all the feedback. It is so great to be able to get a proper review, we don’t get them in film fests.
I made this film with a lot of help from Emma Lamont, the producer and voice of the film. Firstly, with the wonderful help of the Amersham Museum, we obtained a large selection of archive photographs of the town.
The idea was to do something a bit left of centre, we wanted to make the history an entertaining and unique experience. For this I made contact with Tim Ross who is known for his ability to see spirits and energies with his eyes wide open, working with photographs to correct energy imbalances and heal past lives. He was clearly over qualified. Tim came to Amersham and was able to give a real insight into the town’s history. Tim felt that I had been in the town before and felt I had a strong personal connection with it, so we embarked on a past life regression. The result of which we scripted so that we could craft it with the archive images and blend in the info on local myths. Everything is historically acurate.
To achieve the look we shot Amersham on old Super 8 film stock and an old camera so that our new footage would blend with the archive footage.
Nick Kemp provided the Music. Nick makes music which takes you to different places and communicates to you on many levels; this aided the whole feel of the film and, allied with the hypnosis theme, was intended to transport the viewer to a different space. Tom Mackewn then gave us a great voice recording and mix.
I am really grateful for all the help I got and especially thankful to fourdocs for giving us this opportunity. There were some really great entries.
I hope you like the film.
Thanks.
A film which provokes us to think about our values. Marco takes us back to the raw experience of people living in Amersham five hundred years ago, struggling to understand the Bible for themselves and so committed to what the Bible says that they were prepared to die for their faith. How many of us are prepared to stand up and be counted for what we believe to be right?.
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