Thursday, May 2nd, 2013
Official Selection 2013
Struggling to write his father’s eulogy, a bereaved man takes a walk and recounts his father’s life. A film about loss and the mystery of fatherhood.
Director: Brian Harley
Producer: Brian Harley, Libby Fielding
Writer: Brian Harley
Key cast and other credits:
Man – Ben Thorne
Director’s Statement
‘Henry Ward Beecher once said that every artist dips his brush into his soul and paints his own nature into his pictures. I couldn’t agree more with this. For me, the best art is often that which comes from personal experience. As a filmmaker, I believe you should savour the forces that shape your life because they are, in essence, what gives value and relativity to your stories, from small idiosyncratic moments to dramatic, everlasting events. With that in mind, Eventide is in some part anchored by my own experience of losing my father and the growth and wisdom that I have gained from that.
Given this then, Eventide represented something of a creative risk but one that I was keen to take, because I wanted to demonstrate a more measured dimension to my writing and directing work. I wanted to make a film that was personal and yet related the universal sensations of losing someone. I didn’t want to make a film that was indulgent and emotionally exclusive. With Eventide, I was determined to get the dosage just right. I wanted to purify the vision as much as I possibly could. To begin to do that, I think you have to be conscious of an audience before you write. The script then consists of some of the observations I wrote for my dad’s real eulogy knitted together with some fictional elements to give the piece its ambiguity and some narrative structure. Eventide is still very much a personal film though, but I left hatches open so audiences can access it on an emotional level too. It’s simple, it’s nameless and it’s universal and I think that maybe that’s why it works. It’s a personal film that everyone else finds personal.’
Brian Harley
Online Links
http://www.shortnightfilms.com/#/eventide/4557520246
Posted in: Official Selection, NFF2013, 2013 Films In Detail