Short Film Review #48

Eclipse Theatre’s 10by10 project was a series of short films “exploding the myth of a homogenised Black British culture”, all directed by Dawn Walton but written by and starring a wide range of some of our most exciting writers and performers. Filmed in 10 different cities across the UK, the hometowns of the playwrights in fact, and each shot in a single day, these make a fascinating insight into a wider cross-section of British society that perhaps is normally seen. Part 2 of 2.


Music in the Bones

Yusra Warsama’s Music in the Bones begins with Wunmi Mosaku’s Somaliwoman Amina running through a Manchester backstreet and quickly moves into flashback mode to tell us why. Mosaku has a beautifully modulated voice which is perfect for the narration here, aching with longing and loss and confusion and compassion. Beautiful. 

Omar

Starring the impossibly handsome O-T Fagbenle as the titular character, Maurice Bessman’s Omar follows a guy who goes to Amsterdam for his stag weekend but before he’s even toked down on his first indulgence of the trip, a brutal attack and a case of serious mistaken identity shakes his world upside down and then some. Dawn Walton’s direction never quite hits the necessary ambivalent darkness to make this as disturbingly disorientating as it should be but the film does get there eventually, mainly through Fagbenle’s slow awakening to the direness of his situation.

Perfume

The delight that is Middlesborough’s shopping centre features heavily in Ishy Din’s Perfume as brothers Sham and Nad run a scam in order to make some cash in order to buy some ganja. Naturally, things aren’t quite what they seem (a running theme in these films)

A Blues for Nia

Representing Bristol, Chino Odimba’s A Blue for Nia sees Sharon Duncan-Brewster’s Nia stride with purpose through St Pauls with her 5 year old son, striding with a purpose of which she gradually informs us as she vents her spleen.

Babydoll

Susan Hunter Downer’s Babydoll takes place in Sheffield’s city centre as Everal A Walsh’s tramp hunts for treasure amongst the bins and is taken by surprise when he finds a suitcase that he can’t open that he just knows will contain something good. Just what that is, well you’ll have to watch!

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