It's Calling

It's Calling is our third collaboration with the mighty and creative Lowe Alpine, our first two being Operation Moffat and The Bothy Project. In the middle of four months on the road in the US and shortly before getting stuck into shooting the mammoth Yosemite sequences of Psycho Vertical, I got an email asking if I'd get involved in this project and could we start now... erm... tricky timing but YES.

Joe's idea was to shoot in four countries with four filmmakers yet somehow combine all those stories into one. Many pages of notes, mood boards and one hell of a detailed brief later, crews in Australia, Switzerland, Scotland and the USA got to work. It was interesting as footage trickled in from around the world, one filmmaker's style informing and influencing the next in line to shoot.

It was an interesting and challenging edit, using all my forces to weave these adventures together and to write a voice over that would serve as glue. But weaving is what I love most, and we're very proud of this short film which celebrates our want and need to get outside and challenge ourselves, however we choose to do it. Enjoy!

Dirt

I’m a grubby woman in a pizza place. I know I am, but don’t realise the extent of it until I go to the bathroom and look into the mirror.

So. Grubby.

Black fingernails and five day old socks. Scratched legs. Deep brown face - part sun, part dust - hair standing up, up and over and around from that same dust and sun and dryness. I take a little time here to look at myself. From the corners of their eyes other women look too. I want them to look, and to see that I’ve just been somewhere and done something, spent time somewhere they may never get to know. My reflection is my proof. I must look awful, but in that mirror I am beautiful, I am queen.

Later I peel off my clothes before I shower. My ankles are black bands. My legs have gone furry, my hair doesn’t change when I take the kirbies out. I’m reluctant to wash the layers off because they will go, out and off and away. I want the change in me to be visible, to stay there - my full body tattoo. But I wash it all off and it disappears down the drain, my ankles three or four times before the black bands are gone. It’s dirt, after all.

Maybe some of the scratches will turn into scars.

John Horscroft Review

When you make a film you have a pretty clear image in your mind of what it is you're setting out to make. Then you film it, and you get to the edit room and you realise it has turned into something quite new, so you start editing and make something else again, and this leaves you with a mixture of what you set out to make and what it is you actually made, although the roots are the same, and you're not always exactly sure what that is because you're so darn close to it.

So on reading this review of Operation Moffat from John Horscroft, I felt like the film had been crystallised to me - what it is, why it's important and even why we were so drawn to Gwen in the first place. Thanks John for your considered words.