East Anglian Shorts
This was an unrivalled opportunity to see films rarely showcased, and certainly not on the big screen.
There are some impressive full-length movies being shown as part of this year's Norwich Film Festival, but for the most part the festival's focus - arguably its USP - has been on curated compilations of short films. Ranging from five to twenty-five minutes, each day offers an eclectic mix, notwithstanding the session's overarching theme, with the East Anglian compilation a particularly varied selection. This was an unrivalled opportunity to see films rarely showcased, and certainly not on the big screen.
I should perhaps say at the outset that East Anglia is defined in the broadest way. I moved from Essex to East Anglia some years back, so it comes as a surprise to learn I had been there all along. Nevertheless, I think we can forgive the conceit, given the considerable contribution from Southend alone. I say that based on the pier I'm sure I saw over Oliver Dickens's shoulder in James Farrell's whimsical Good Choice, Joseph. The evening was punctuated by a few laughs, so Farrell's cheeky deconstruction of the voiceover was most welcome, albeit a false flag for the sobering collection of work that followed.
A case in point is the unsettling Where to Find Foxes, Leo Williams's reflection on motherhood, that has Laura Joy Pieters tunnelling in her garden in search of a baby alarm. Both in its abrupt gear change and tone, the film owes a debt to Ben Wheatley's Kill List, notwithstanding their contrasting starting points, but it's nevertheless a stunning piece of work. To say more would be to compromise its impact but this was as unsettling as it was memorable.
By way of contrast, Gary Kent's Bruised Sky signals its queasy intentions from the start, relying on a sense of impending doom and creeping dread to hold the audience's attention. This was a grimly entertaining horror show that confirmed, rather than defied, viewer expectations. Shades of Powell’s Peeping Tom bubbled away just beneath the surface, despite Geoff Bell's terrifying Dean, drug dealer to the youth of Essex, being a mile away from Carl Boehm..
Sandwiched in between these mighty contributions was the altogether more subtle Dust, written, directed and featuring Chloe Pirrie. It's a tiny gem of a film, barely five minutes long, its resolute focus on a woman's face enigmatically reflecting on the unsaid as she tends to her horse. Why Dust? The film doesn't let you in, but my thinking is that it's what we all turn into.
The festival reached out as far as Cambridgeshire for Love in Three Acts, a film that in its uncompromising intensity made for the most challenging watch of the night. Part photomontage, part video diary, I found myself mentally turning away from Michelle Wing-Yan Siu's cataloguing of family life during COVID. Not, I hasten to add, through any failing on her part, but simply because this felt too personal, too intrusive to passively engage with. The abiding message - that there is heartbreak and wonder in the commonplace - was timely yet oddly disconcerting.
Running Late, Alistair Nicholls's whimsical animated film, provided a welcome sorbet afterwards, its straightforward silliness offering up much-needed laughs that the audience readily responded to, before Harry Tomlin reminded us that You Told Us To Talk About the Weather. His witty conceit is that we Brits talk about the weather all the time – it is our social glue – and yet refuse to engage with actual climate change. Voiced by Michael Sheen, it's hardly surprising the filmmaker would grab hold of such a prestige booking but I thought it a shame we heard from a Welshman while standing in an East Anglian field.
What we then got was one last hurrah back in Southend, sharing its estuarine charms with Gilbert and George, seen here in Iain B. MacDonald's Daytripping Forever. The pair have long since completed the journey from enfants terribles to national treasures, and it was telling that MacDonald chose to populate his film with their less controversial work. They chatted amiably enough about their working methods while playing crazy golf, and Gilbert's hat was charmingly eccentric, but even as they travelled in the pier train, I got the sense that the filmmaker didn't quite know what to do with them. Their affection for Southend remained, in the end, a mystery.
Indeed, if I have a general misgiving it was that (with perhaps the exception of those set in Southend), the films shown had little sense of place. Bruised Sky was set in 1970s Essex, but you wouldn't have guessed either the time or place. Foxes could have been set in any suburban garden, Dust in any stables. It was a pity the unique landscape and character of the region wasn't better represented, but that said you can only show the films that have been made. Ultimately, I suppose, it is to the filmmakers, rather than the festival, that we should be looking to deliver this.
