The thing that started my slow and spurious film-making habit, in the summer of 2024, a film called The Morning Run - the first time I ever picked up a camera with anything like intent - is having its first ever screening, in my home town of Oxford next month.
It’s a single-shot film documenting my daily rural run, which becomes a contemplation of our species history, and a personal skirmish with nature, ageing and art. But with, you know, jokes.
After the screening there will be a brief Q&A before the evening moves on to hear from amazing speakers in James, Louise and Paul, as below. You can buy tickets here.
Also in the month of May, I’m happy to have the second film I ever made, The Library of Unwritten Books, screening at the 7th edition of the Dreamer of Dreams Film Festival, May 7th, where it is nominted for the Best Art or Poetry Short.
The festival is held at the Close-Up Film Centre in Shoreditch, which looks like some kind of paradise, and honestly the other films selected look courageous and bold and reflect so well on the organisers, Massi and Jan.
The only downside for me is that I’ll be in Athens and will miss the chance to receive nourishment from watching the work of others. You can buy your tickets here.
Screening the next day, Friday 8th May, at the 10th Edition of the Eastbourne International Film Festival is the third film I made, Analogue Digital Dead Alive. Again, Athens rules me out of this festival which is so well organised and has such great comms and such expert, eager people working on it. Sad to be missing this myself. You can buy tickets here.
And there are two new films in the works. The plan is to make short films during the course of which a work of art is created, and then to show the film next to that created work of art.
I’m doing this twice right now, making films along with the art which accompanies them, and I’m having eighteen types of fun, even as the content of the films inhabits my go-to zone of laconic misery - BUT WITH GAGS.
And finally, in what is becoming a festival of extraversion for a usual near-hermit, I did a talk and a reading of my novel Floaters on Thursday night for the organisation Wild Oxfordshire in Shipton Under Wychwood.
A proper crowd turned out - not for me, I was the warm-up act for the real life people on whom the Channel 4 drama Dirty Business was based.
The campaginers at the heart of that Ch4 drama are such tenacious and informed people. Yes, the UK’s sewage crisis was the only topic of conversation last night, but I felt that another apparent crisis was indirectly addressed too. With much talk about the crisis of masculinity it was excellent to experience the immovable morality of the four guys on stage, here pictured with host of the evening, Ruth Weston. You want to see what a good man looks like, take your pick from the picture below.
