father (1988)

This is my Third Year Graduation film from West Surrey College of Art and Design.  It was selected as the Best of British category in the international film festivals:  Stuttgart (Germany), Los Angeles Animation Celebration (USA), Gent (Belgium) etc.).  It was also nominated for a BAFTA award and was shown on BBC2 twice.

It took three months to make and was filmed in one continuous day and a half session.

***

Christmas break, only 7 months until graduation, and I still had no clue as to what to make a film about.  Nothing grabbed me.  I had flunked the Non-European Cultures course of lectures and so was in a bit of a bind.  The faculty accepted a creative essay as an option instead and so I grabbed it.  One of the topics was to write about your father.

Two pages into the essay I realized I wasn't writing about my father at all.  I was writing about my step father.  I guess as a child you have the ability to lock away that which doesn't conform to normality.  It was the only explanation I could think of.

I do not recall what course my essay took, but it received top grades and was asked if I'd consider making a movie about the one day that my world collapsed about me.  The day I found out my father was not who I had thought he was.

The months following that Saturday are still lost to me.  But I found my real father and we write often, I am happy to say.

***

Hope you like this dated film.