Mighty Mighty

My friend Sara curates the Mighty Movie Mash screenings at Mighty Mighty every month. For her second event she asked me to contribute one of my films. I have been thinking about how much I liked my Wellington Portrait, but that it was hard to screen, not having a storyline, and being more of an installation piece than a film. But I thought I would give it another try, since it has only been screened at film school so far.  As it turned out, I was right to have doubts. I still love the film, but the venue was all wrong. First of all, the film was bracketed by Leo's short Collaborator and a very slick horror short from the UK, so the audience was totally baffled by  this switch in content. Then, since the film has no audio, all the background sounds of a bar and the street outside were very audible (to me, anyway). And lastly the screener had not managed to show the film in full screen from his MacBook, so the time remaining was very visible in the bottom right corner of the screen and made it more of an exercise in waiting till it's over. So the way forward with this piece is to put it in an exhibition space, where the audience expectations are different to a cinema audience. Plus, there I might be able to show the extended 30 minute version. Another idea someone suggested was to film more and make this an extended piece. So I am planning to look into getting film permits in South Africa and Dubai and film more portraits of strangers.