Oska Bright Shorts - Review

In the aftermath of the second edition of Scarborough Film Festival, held 20-23 March I offer reflections on the Oska Bright short film selection shown over the weekend. On Friday 21, at the Stephen Joseph Theatre the audience were treated to the Oska Bright Film Festival’s selection ‘Wild Women’. Oska Bright is the ‘world’s leading festival for films made by or featuring people with learning disabilities or autism’, and this selection was an excellent diverse mix of styles and genres that all adhered cohesively to its central theme. 

Dead Cat

The first entry, following a female serial-pet murderer sets the audience up excellently for what is to come. The film balances the morbid with the humorous excellently and builds the tension in just the right way for the film’s final beat to stick the landing. 

Throughout the selection, the programmers mix styles and genres in a way that subtly highlights the similarities and differences between the 11 entries. The final two films in particular benefit from their juxtaposition. The all out horror ending of Don’t Wake Up leading into the opening of Bean Grenade lends the latter an extra level of ominousness and genre uncertainty until the ultimate nature of its story is unmasked. Don’t Wake Up’s maximisation of limited space to create an eerie dream-loop narrative works particularly well, and the digital early 2000s video-game style animation is thoroughly effective, leaning into this the low-res vibe allows the filmmakers to cleverly eschew the difficulties that can often go along with producing practical or visual effects on a limited budget. 

Contrasting and complementary tones of darkness and humour are particularly well balanced throughout, often within each entry. Julieta Tetelbaum’s Black Chalk was a mid-selection highlight with an expertly shot day in one woman’s life set against an intriguingly sparse black and white backdrop - the set design stood out in particular, contributing greatly to the enjoyable kookiness of the film. 

Pripyat Horse

A particular favourite in the more serious vein of the entries, Chernobyl Journey Pripyat Horse is incredibly beautiful. Combining filmed footage of Chernobyl with hand drawn animation is lovely and brings attention to the horror of how the Chernobyl disaster made natural spaces uninhabitable. The filmmakers highlight these themes by incorporating the drawn forms of Horse and Bird in the absence of observable life in these spaces.

The films celebrate the work of diverse voices in the film industry, and the celebratory spirit of the piece as a whole is invigorating - it was a perfect addition to Scarborough Film Festival’s exciting weekend programme. 

Special Screenings 2024

 During Autumn 2024, Scarborough Film Festival staged three screenings of films that speak to our present moment, providing windows into issues and events that are vital to the current state of the world but also reach through time in urgent and poignant ways. 

     Firstly, on the 24 October, we screened Godzilla dir. Ishirȏ Honda (1954), the original Godzilla outing, celebrating the film’s 70th Anniversary. Godzilla’s legacy endures and while the original Kaiju hasn’t ever really gone away, the franchise’s recent output has been especially notable with popular appearances in both Japanese (Godzilla Minus One, dir. Takashi Yamazaki, 2023) and American (Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, dir. Adam Wingard, 2024) releases in the last year. Going back to the original, however, I found that during the film I was thinking less of Godzilla as an originator of the Action Blockbuster, and more about Christopher Nolan’s time-hopping drama Oppenheimer (2023). 

The film has incredible effects for the time period, and the central attack on Tokyo remains hugely impressive and influential. But what really stood out was the time taken for the discussions about how to deal with the creature, should he be studied or destroyed, should the public be let in on the knowledge of Godzilla, how should the weapon able to destroy Godzilla be used and what are the implications of this weapon for global politics. The film is so unflinching in directly addressing and giving voice to the anxieties of Japanese society in the aftermath of the Atomic Bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and further on the Lucky Dragon Incident of 1954 in which US Nuclear fallout infected the crew of a tuna fishing boat and killed a member of the crew, Kuboyama Aikichi. This incident reignited fear of further US Nuclear testing in the vicinity of Japan, and clearly had a direct impact on the opening scene of the film. Godzilla’s emergence is directly caused by Nuclear fallout disturbing his home in the depths of the sea, and he can be read as a direct parallel for the Atomic Bomb, wreaking havoc first on the island Odo, before taking to Tokyo. One scene shows a mother comforting her children by telling them they’ll be with their father soon as they wait for their inevitable death, scenes that portray the inescapability of the destruction and the powerlessness of the Japanese public at the hands of the Kaiju. 

The film also reckons with the possibilities of how to respond to Godzilla’s attacks. When Dr Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) shows Emiko Yamane (Momoko Kȏchi) the weapon he has been developing to destroy the monster, initially we witness only Emiko’s scream of horror at his creation. Serizawa’s decision to burn his research and sacrifice his own life in the process of destroying Godzilla is incredibly heroic and his conflicted speech about the havoc his Oxygen Destroyer could wreak if it fell into the hands of governments reflects the conflicted nature of the discussion around Japan’s participation in the war and the horrors of the Atomic Bombs. This film echoes through time to give voice to the powerlessness many of us feel in the face of so many avoidable horrors of war. It serves as a vital reminder that when looking into the past we often encounter equivalences to the present moment and that we are bound to listen to the warnings at the heart of these stories or else be doomed to repeat the past.

     Next up, on 29 October, we screened Jumana Manna’s Foragers (2022) in collaboration with Mandy Apple, with all proceeds being donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians. In the light of the current genocide being wreaked upon the Palestinian people by Israel, this film is an important archival piece documenting and preserving experiences of Palestinians, while also shedding light on the way the Israeli state controlled and subjugated Arabs in times of relative peace. 

The film examines the ways in which Arabs are excluded from participating in harvesting and foraging plants that are central to their cooking, and have traditionally been harvested by multiple generations. Focusing on this lens through which to explore everyday life of Palestinians allows a deep insight into how their lives are significantly affected by the Israeli occupation on many levels, including financially, culinarily, and legally. The Israeli investigations of the Palestinians ‘caught’ foraging wild za’atar and ‘akkoub are quietly terrifying. The state legally restricts Arabs from trading these plants, with the authorities suspicious of anyone foraging even when simply for personal use. The creation of Israeli ‘akkoub plantations to control the crop and essentially force the Arab people to pay Israeli farmers to access the harvest, aims to eliminate the intergenerational practice of harvesting these crops and restrict the non-Israeli population’s connection to the land. 

A particularly illuminating interview with an Israeli farmer highlights the inequalities between the Israelis and Arabs - revealing how Israeli land insurance operates with kibbutzim being fully covered for crop failure due to weather, whereas most Arabs can’t afford land let alone the insurance for it. This film paints a picture of the way in which the Israeli state has been enabled to stack the deck in their favour and against the Arab inhabitants, importantly Manna counterbalances the film by showing ways that the spirit of resistance endures in the face of such systematic oppression. At one point despite being arrested and given the option between a 6000 Shekel fine or 30 day imprisonment, the defendant refuses to bend to the will of the judge. Throughout the film there are glimpses of resistance to a system that is rigged at every level, which provides grains of hope despite the darkness. 

     Finally, on 3 November, we were treated to a showing of Smoke, Sauna, Sisterhood, dir. Anna Hints (2023) at Bike & Boot. In the week following this screening I know I’m not alone in grieving over the state of women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights, spotlighted by Donald Trump’s second presidential victory. Hints takes a methodical approach to the construction of this film, and allows space to really absorb and sit with the women’s stories. The poignancy of women nakedly (metaphorically and otherwise) having a place to share their experiences with one another: both in the Saunas as a place of collectivity as well as within the film-space as an enduring record of their stories. In a time where we are witnessing the stripping away of women’s rights, this film feels so urgent in how it allows the women to talk plainly about their lives as women navigating the world in all their complexity. It is notable that there doesn’t feel a need for the women to excessively relate to one another or compare their experiences, as women we can be united as a sisterhood by the multiplicity of the female experience. The film doesn’t make any outwardly political statements, but it is impossible not to connect the womens’ stories with the multitudinous oppressions of living under patriarchy and not to think about how it is still a radical act to grant a group of women the space to talk intimately and to share these intimate truths with the world uninterrupted. With the Gisele Pelicot mass rape trial, we may hold space for hope in the way sexual assault is discussed in the media, but this is importantly a break from the norm within the legal system. The film culminates a woman powerfully sharing her personal experience of being raped - societally, rape as a topic seems to be discussed conceptually in the political sphere as a method of garering voter support or in film is most often the inciting incident in a revenge narrative. It is horrific that women actually sharing their stories frankly and publicly remains such a taboo. The way society discusses womens’ right to control over their bodies is rarely discussions which purely involve or are fundamentally led by women, and watching the conversations play out over the course of this film brought this issue to the front of my mind. 

The conversations are interspersed with different stages of the smoke Sauna experience such as beating the body with leaves, plunging into a hole drilled through the ice, dousing each other with snow, and scrubbing to exfoliate the skin. There is clearly an emotional catharsis in the telling of their stories, Hints uses the film language to signify this with the physical catharsis of the scrubbing away of dirt by depicting striking images and sounds of the washing and cleansing rituals. Like Foragers, Smoke, Sauna, Sisterhood is vital in its documentation of a moment and the way it enables a collective witnessing of everyday experience. 

SFF 2023 Final Day

The final day of Scarborough Film Festival brought us a programme of short films made by artists focusing on the coast and sustainability, and in the evening a double bill of music-related films: So, Which Band is Your Boyfriend In? a contemporary documentary, and Babylon a 1980 release about London’s reggae scene.

We were based at the SeaGrown boat for our first event, which was the perfect setting in which to view Julia Parks’ Seaweed, a documentary that follows the history and many uses of seaweed as a resource. Webb-Ellis’ For the First Baby Born in Space follows teenagers over the course of a summer in Whitby, using a split screen to show multiple perspectives reflective of the filmmakers’ working as a team rather than a singular viewpoint, which functions in shifting ways over the course of the film. Parks’ film follows, loosely chronologically, the history of seaweed harvesting and farming: the contrast between the care and knowledge of the practice in traditional hand-harvesting versus the efficiency and destructiveness of modern trawling is stark and the film ends hopefully with a glimpse into the more newly developed farming practices. The creation of a synthetic seaweed environment allows for greater control over the crop as well as allowing natural environments to be left alone as there is not enough natural habitat to harvest in a sustainable way, a topic that was explained further by Alice from SeaGrown in her presentation. Parks discussed her use of 16mm film and experiments with developing her film in seaweed. The placement of images of seaweed harvesting within pools of seaweed brings together the way she shoots the plants within the film with her use of archival footage. She discussed how her process was ‘a mixture of long term planning and being in the moment’, having carried out detailed research into the history of seaweed before scouting locations. Many of the defining features of the film were found more coincidentally than they were planned - the gaelic songs featured were discovered while she was working on the film in Scotland, for example.

Webb-Ellis’ film diverged from Parks’ in many ways, but the questions of continuity and looking to preserve for the future remained constant. The film commits to showing the teenagers’ perspectives, allowing them to meditate on universal philosophical questions as well as showing the everyday realities of their lives. Webb-Ellis’ discussed her ability to relate to her personal history spending summers in Whitby, which seems to have aided with a lot of aspects of the making of the film. She discussed the process of building trust with the teenagers, describing that as filmmakers they were ‘drifting around town’ and the camera drew the teens’ attention, she mentioned that the teens’ open and curious nature led to them needing to be more responsible in managing the ethical dimensions around this willingness as opposed to the hard work lying in the building up of trust and relationships. Webb-Ellis touched on her question: ‘is it possible to somehow capture the texture or feeling of a moment’, the use of choreographed dance in conjunction with the normal events of the teens’ lives conveys the sense of the universality of existing in this transitional period. The title of the film in combination with the theme of being in a ‘state of transformation’ expands this transitionality to its larger sense - not just in our own lives but as humanity as a whole. Concerning the dance sequence, Webb-Ellis asked ‘can we capture something that is not able to be communicated with words’, the ‘directness of the present’, which is an interesting link to Complicité’s Can I Live?, in which Fehitini Balougun discussed his desire to achieve the directness of music in the performance.

Alice from SeaGrown delivered a short presentation on the work being carried out on their seaweed farm. Located 4 miles from the coast of Scarborough, SeaGrown’s farm is the UK’s first offshore seaweed farm, and the company is creating new systems of farming seaweed sustainably. Alice mentioned that the seaweed crop absorbs excess fertiliser as well as contributing to the environment by absorbing carbon and releasing oxygen. The labs are located on the SeaGrown boat in Scarborough harbour, they have lots of information on their mission and practices as well as products on sale made with their sustainable seaweed.

In the afternoon, we headed to the Railway Club at Scarborough Station to watch So, Which Band is Your Boyfriend In?, a documentary that discusses womens’ experiences in the DIY music scene, filmed over 2016-2018. This film features an array of female presenting musicians who discuss their personal histories with and hopes for the future of this specific music scene. This documentary covers a wide range of topics, the participants touch on the many systemic ways in which women and girls are discouraged from taking part in music, especially playing instruments; the ‘boys club’ culture and how women can often be assumed to be ‘with the band’ rather than ‘in the band’; the pressures on women to arrive ready made as opposed to men being able to be publicly not as good straight away. Many of the women that speak in the film also discuss confidence and the need to put oneself out there despite being ‘bad’ initially. The spirit of punk clearly encourages musicians to play despite their technical skill levels, the musicians empower women to get out there and play, and for more people within the scene to support girls in their teenage years - ‘the more women there are, the more there will be’.

After this, local band The Hydrogen Trees’ album was played on the big screen before we returned to watch 1980’s Babylon. The film looks into the reggae scene in London at the time and the racism experienced by the central characters. We are firmly situated in the location and the culture of the time, the film becomes a kind of odyssey narrative in which Blue (Brinsley Forde) is tested by a series of tragic circumstances. The last bastion of support is in the community around the sound system to which he retreats. This film shows the power of community in the face of a constant barrage of state violence which encourages and normalises more forms of violence to proliferate throughout society. The state sanctioned violence of the police is intrinsically tied to that of the racist neighbours, the film demands our attention and refuses to gloss over the harsh realities of the characters’ lives. Despite being released over 40 years ago, this film remains relevant at its political core, provoking questions surrounding issues such as what constitutes justice in a system that awards you none, and intersectional privilege and how marginalised identities manage the various degrees of violence inflicted upon them.

Rebel Radics Soundsystem played out the end of Scarborough Film Festival with a set inspired by the film. Music as a medium through which to come together and communicate beyond language has been raised as a theme throughout the weekend’s programme so it was a fitting way to close out a fantastic first festival.