UMBRA continues on its amazing festival run. Last year premiering at the Sydney Underground Film Festival, then going on to win “Best Short Film” at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, followed soon after with screenings at another four Australian festivals, including Revelation – Perth International Film Festival. It is now hitting its stride with international screenings in UK, Spain & France.
But the story behind the film is stranger than the film itself, in fact it’s vampiric-like rise from the (un)dead is quite eerie.
REDUX is a short documentary that tells this remarkable story; the rebirth and transformation of one film into another. Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, an immortal vampire, or a re-booted Frankenstein, it lives!
UMBRA is a 5min experimental vampire film that began its life 20 years ago as the ambitious 30min vampire film PENUMBRA, shot and edited on u-matic tape!
After languishing in a suburban garage for the 20 years slowly gathering dust, each year its magnetic particles gradually returning to their north-south polarity, its writer/director Bryn Tilly decides not give up on his dream.
So in 2014 he approaches Michael, his friend, colleague and editor with the idea of re-editing the film into a shorter, tighter more experimental form.
So begins an amazing adventure into modern filmmaking, the technology and the zeitgeist align and the fairytale becomes real!
REDUX picks up the story as we head off to Spain where our film is screening in competition at the world’s number one festival for horror and fantasy, the Sitges International Film Festival. The Brigadoon Section of the festival, in which it is competing, is in fact one of the few “feeder” festivals for the Academy Awards, win this one baby and it’s instant Oscars consideration!
For writer/director Bryn Tilly this is of course a dream come true. As writer/journalist we will follow him as he covers the Festival highlights, as well as seeing him pitch new scripts/treatments and meeting like-minded filmmakers.
REDUX will layer our own pieces to camera; part travelogue, part enquiry and ongoing amazement, with interviews with various festival organisers and other filmmakers. It will be shot on a pocket cinema camera and iPhones, in a cinéma vérité ob-doc style embracing a grimy filmic texture, reflecting the film that is of course at the heart of this doco.
It will stride to be modern, edgy, quirky and cool but at the same time capturing the hopes, frustrations and final denouement that the filmmakers seek. Why has this little vampire fever dream has been so successful? Perhaps the answer in some part lies here at Sitges, the Mecca of fantastic cinema, the bleeding heart of international genre films! At the same time we will also examine the broader questions around festival selection, popular culture and the zeitgeist. It will be a heady and at times emotional tale of hope and belief that will resonate with the many who refuse to give up on their dreams!