High comedy, tragedy and a crop of witty and polished cartoons
The Oska Bright film festival showcases the work of learning-disabled film makers from across the world. It took place over three days in Brighton at the end of 2015. The festival began in 2004 and has gathered influence and increased its reputation ever since, catching the eye of the mainstream film-making world. This year’s entrants, short-listed from a large and highly competitive field, were evidence of a growing talent-pool breaking out from the learning disability world. Simon Jarrett reports.
Bastion by Ray Jacobs A crack in everything by Ablevision Ireland (Director Martin O’ Donoghue)
Sons and mothers by Christopher Houghton and Louise Pascale
A true gem of a film
A completely bald man walks into an empty barber’s shop, the barber idly reading his horse racing paper and clearly not expecting to be busy anytime soon. “Do I need an appointment or can you squeeze me in?”
From this delicious beginning, Ray Jacobs’ wonderful film Bastion proceeds, the barber giving an imaginary haircut while the pair of them discuss the customer’s imaginary hair (“I didn’t realise how out of hand it had got till I caught sight of myself in a butcher’s window this morning”). The barber, recognising money for old rope when it’s on offer, enters with increasing enthusiasm into the fantasy.
No plot spoilers here but you can catch the whole ten-minute film on You Tube and see how it all turns out. The chemistry between the barber (Denny Hodge) and the customer (James Doolan) is exquisite, with more absurd lines than a Samuel Beckett play and more long pauses than Harold Pinter’s Caretaker.
It was this rapport between the two actors that particularly pleased director Ray Jacobs. In an interview with Community Living after the screening Jacobs described how he had based the film on a Simon Armitage short story, then developed it through workshops of learning disabled and non-learning disabled actors. The spark between Doolan, a young actor who has autism, and Hodge, was apparent, and Doolan generated many of the lines as the script was worked up. Bastion may be short but it is many-layered. A true gem of a film.
Love divided
From Belfast comes Ablevision Ireland’s A crack in everything. This compelling film takes an oblique look at the enduring communal divides that persist in this city through the eyes of a young learning disabled couple, Maeve (Nicola Cowen) and Billy (John Gillespie),deeply in love but living on opposite sides of the Protestant/Catholic ‘peace wall’.
It has echoes of Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story, as the respective fathers try to prevent contact: “We stick to our own, stop causing trouble. You stop this side.” The absurdity of the divide is captured by the symbol of a ball, repeatedly thrown backwards and forwards over the towering ‘peace wall’, with its barbed wire summit. This is a story about how more unites us than divides us, how the love that grew in an unsegregated special needs class conquered the sectarian divide in a troubled city.
But there is no sentimentality here or easy feel good factor. When Maeve climbs onto the wall and parades a stitched together union jack and Irish tricolour, Billy’s father responds with a cynical “OK, very good, nice statement”, while passing boys lob stones at her. Brilliantly shot, very ably acted and engaging throughout, this unique exploration of the sectarian divide deserves a wide audience.
Theatrical love-letter
Finally a mention for Christopher Houghton and Louise Pascale’s Sons and mothers. Survivors of the terrible battles of World War One often recounted how the last word uttered by dying soldiers was ‘mother’. This full-length Australian documentary explores that complex mother and son relationship. It follows seven men with learning disabilities, members of an all-male theatre troupe, who set out to create a theatrical love-letter to their mothers. For some, that mother was never known, for others she has now died, for the rest the relationship is still in progress. The unerring honesty of the film, its deep intimacy and its unflinching gaze as these men work out what ‘mother’ means to them, is at times deeply uncomfortable.
Taking a camel to Cairo
Soldiering On Jez Colborne
Hardcore on Tour Zombie Crash/
Carousel
Kairo Barner 16 and Aron Krause
The group of music videos featuring learning disabled artists and performers short-listed for the festival did not disappoint.
Are things finally looking up for performers with learning disabilities in the music business? The fine selection of music videos at Oska Bright suggests they are.
The music video has been one of the more interesting art forms to emerge over the last 40 years. This is perhaps because it flips on its head the standing requirement that music should enhance film and gives film the job of supporting and enhancing music. Leading the pack was Jez Colborne’s Soldiering on.
Colborne is making a name for himself as a distinguished composer, instrumentalist and singer and this is a stunning piece about a young man wanting to join up with his friends in World War One. He is not a
