My Summer With Raúl

A newsletter meets home movie, made by an experimental filmmaker who was constructing a paper mâché skeleton but whose leg (the filmmaker’s) suddenly went wrong. It got fixed, but (spoiler alert) that’s just kind of incidental. 

Possibly a diary but probably not a documentary: this is a play with form, animated with glee, edited with joy.

That summer I set out to make a fact-based short film. That doesn’t sound like much of a deal - there are millions of documentaries out there, after all - but that wasn’t what I was aiming for.  I wanted to attempt a newsletter: something domestic, about matters ephemeral, but combined with the moving image glee that experimental practice affords.

It’s the kind of thing I’d done with my last two pieces for Tintype gallery (gadabout and a celebration of sides) - but this time rather than referring to specific subjects outside myself (pigeons, Essex Road + postcards in those instances), to let myself be led by what happened in my life. Or what didn’t. 

Because it’s all very well making a factual piece about a historically interesting or socially relevant subject, but how to capture the mundane without it being… dull.

So, this is the result. Admittedly this isn’t a straight diary, but all facts, events, thoughts and locations are for real. It’s also kind of a road test for a range of strategies and methods, which I’d every intention of exploring further…