I was thrilled to discover that LIN won the Best International Short Film prize at this years Raindance Film Festival 2010 in London. I was lucky enough to go to the screening at The Apollo Cinema and sense the audience and their reactions to these arresting and beautiful images unfolding on the screen and igniting inspiration.
In short - LIN is the touching, tender story of a middle-aged woman who walks out of her front door and keeps walking, she walks down her street, down the road, until she is lost and found but I don't want to give too much away.
However, most notably I feel, there is a real craft and skill to story-telling and starting a tale in the middle of the story. It is generous when this occurs in books too, we are given freedom to be intelligent and imaginative enough to assume a past and to paint a possible future. Quite literally it is as though we have been picked up by a giant and thrown into the plot, and as audience, we are launched into the head space of our lead character. Here in his new film LIN Piers Thompson has created exactly this, illustrating a narrative chunk, the gap between the two ends of a piece of string, the fork in the road.
I have been fortunate enough to have seen all three of this set of short films and find Piers Thompson has an unmistakable tone, a flair and style very much of his own. Stark, understated and never screaming at the audience, but leading them gently to use their own experience and intelligence. These films are loaded with meaning, symbols or clues to unveil meaning and the materials of the spirit, the characters experience. Inparticular in the story of LIN I felt we were reminded of the nature of intention, that the more we do alone, the more we can do alone, and the more we accomplish alone, the stronger we become, until we are unaware we are alone.
In all three of Piers Thompson's short films his signature note and trademark is the survival of the core of human strength. In his first short, the award-winning WAVERLEY he examined the end, old age and frailty. Next Hector Films produced K where we met the misunderstood runaway teen, the difficulties of coming-of-age. And here in LIN we come in at the middle and meet the isolation of after-summer, the middle-age. It is relevant and important to note that although they are not the same person, his main narrators have all been female. And all of these female characters are alone, be it in old age, in puberty or in middle-age. The films flow with themes of birth, sex and death as seen from a female perspective. There is a solitude, vulnerability in these three stages of the career of womanhood and it is treated with such intimacy it is as if we are spying into a very private world, the world without the mask.
Throughout LIN we examine routine and choice, we are permitted to imagine we can change our minds even if it may be easier to continue on the same road. There is such a quiet storm in this key character, alienation, a sense of the world making a noise that makes no sense. Piers Thompson has a way of creating characters we empathise with, we fall in myth with, we feel alone with. Most interesting of all is Thompson's ability to leave enough space and time so you cannot help but compare yourself with the lead narration.
There is a brutality and sharp honesty with Piers Thompson, the man, the writer and the director and because of this, these stories are clear and clean. Such raw truth is poetry and it is rare. These stories are difficult to portray, as in life, villains are not always villains and victims are not always victims, and also as in life the hardest step is the first one.
Lastly in Thompson's work is the underlying kindness, that it's the smallest things that count. Acts so simple but necessary are lifted and highlighted inexplicably. In these frames we are inhabiting cold spaces, harsh truths, stark worlds and isolation, but we meet people willing to do the right thing, often the small thing, often the wordless and thankless. We do rely on the strangeness of kindness, the kindness of strangers. Piers Thompson's work in this new film moves me. It is his understanding of human nature that astounds me, and I mean real human nature, flawed and broken. Three stages of the female career are blown open, ripped open like fruit to reveal the stone heart of the matter.
Watching LIN I was left with many questions. But most of all I burn with the question: what would happen if I started walking, walked out of my house, walked out of my life, got on a train and just never turned back? I have surely considered it before. Is it simply all about letting go of the sides, letting go of the past, letting go of the safe to go into the unknown – which is your choice and your life. I suggest you look out for these films currently screening at numerous international film festivals - next stop LIN will feature at The Cork Film Festival, Ireland. I wholly recommend LIN to you, I believe you will also ask yourself these questions and if you are very lucky, perhaps you will also find some answers.
In short - LIN is the touching, tender story of a middle-aged woman who walks out of her front door and keeps walking, she walks down her street, down the road, until she is lost and found but I don't want to give too much away.
However, most notably I feel, there is a real craft and skill to story-telling and starting a tale in the middle of the story. It is generous when this occurs in books too, we are given freedom to be intelligent and imaginative enough to assume a past and to paint a possible future. Quite literally it is as though we have been picked up by a giant and thrown into the plot, and as audience, we are launched into the head space of our lead character. Here in his new film LIN Piers Thompson has created exactly this, illustrating a narrative chunk, the gap between the two ends of a piece of string, the fork in the road.
I have been fortunate enough to have seen all three of this set of short films and find Piers Thompson has an unmistakable tone, a flair and style very much of his own. Stark, understated and never screaming at the audience, but leading them gently to use their own experience and intelligence. These films are loaded with meaning, symbols or clues to unveil meaning and the materials of the spirit, the characters experience. Inparticular in the story of LIN I felt we were reminded of the nature of intention, that the more we do alone, the more we can do alone, and the more we accomplish alone, the stronger we become, until we are unaware we are alone.
In all three of Piers Thompson's short films his signature note and trademark is the survival of the core of human strength. In his first short, the award-winning WAVERLEY he examined the end, old age and frailty. Next Hector Films produced K where we met the misunderstood runaway teen, the difficulties of coming-of-age. And here in LIN we come in at the middle and meet the isolation of after-summer, the middle-age. It is relevant and important to note that although they are not the same person, his main narrators have all been female. And all of these female characters are alone, be it in old age, in puberty or in middle-age. The films flow with themes of birth, sex and death as seen from a female perspective. There is a solitude, vulnerability in these three stages of the career of womanhood and it is treated with such intimacy it is as if we are spying into a very private world, the world without the mask.
Throughout LIN we examine routine and choice, we are permitted to imagine we can change our minds even if it may be easier to continue on the same road. There is such a quiet storm in this key character, alienation, a sense of the world making a noise that makes no sense. Piers Thompson has a way of creating characters we empathise with, we fall in myth with, we feel alone with. Most interesting of all is Thompson's ability to leave enough space and time so you cannot help but compare yourself with the lead narration.
There is a brutality and sharp honesty with Piers Thompson, the man, the writer and the director and because of this, these stories are clear and clean. Such raw truth is poetry and it is rare. These stories are difficult to portray, as in life, villains are not always villains and victims are not always victims, and also as in life the hardest step is the first one.
Lastly in Thompson's work is the underlying kindness, that it's the smallest things that count. Acts so simple but necessary are lifted and highlighted inexplicably. In these frames we are inhabiting cold spaces, harsh truths, stark worlds and isolation, but we meet people willing to do the right thing, often the small thing, often the wordless and thankless. We do rely on the strangeness of kindness, the kindness of strangers. Piers Thompson's work in this new film moves me. It is his understanding of human nature that astounds me, and I mean real human nature, flawed and broken. Three stages of the female career are blown open, ripped open like fruit to reveal the stone heart of the matter.
Watching LIN I was left with many questions. But most of all I burn with the question: what would happen if I started walking, walked out of my house, walked out of my life, got on a train and just never turned back? I have surely considered it before. Is it simply all about letting go of the sides, letting go of the past, letting go of the safe to go into the unknown – which is your choice and your life. I suggest you look out for these films currently screening at numerous international film festivals - next stop LIN will feature at The Cork Film Festival, Ireland. I wholly recommend LIN to you, I believe you will also ask yourself these questions and if you are very lucky, perhaps you will also find some answers.
