London Calling

A short film is like a butterflies-in-the-stomach date gone sour. Forget the long-term commitment of a full-length feature or investing expectations in a character: a good short will suck you in then spit you straight out again. Now in its eighth year, the London Calling shorts programme offers us the bittersweet privilege of spending up to a maximum of 15 minutes within a cinematic snow globe, courtesy of the capital‘s most promising new talent

‘What I’m trying to do is nurture an independent filmmaking culture,’ says Maggie Ellis, head of production at Film London, whose job is to narrow 200-300 applications down to a select few each year. Susanna Wallin’s ‘Eddie Proctor’ made the cut, affording us a gentle ride in the passenger seat of one man’s soon-to-end life.

‘It’s a very tricky thing in short films to really go into the emotion of a character. It’s more about getting a glimpse of them,’ says Wallin. Can the allocated time of a short be at all restricting? ‘Some stories should be told in just a few minutes. If I had a longer amount of time to tell it, it would be another story.’

While length is a major variable, location is another. ‘I’ve worked as a cameraman here in London for nearly ten years,’ says ‘Border Work’ director Tom Wright. New York will kick its doors down for you to ensure the logistics of your short run smoothly. The Big Smoke, in contrast, ‘is a city that’s visually very diverse but in terms of practicality can be difficult place to shoot in’.

Most of the London Calling shorts were filmed in the capital yet none of them scream Big Ben or Gherkin. Actor-director Matthew Day is discrete in sketching the defining moment in the lives of two drifting city gals in ‘Wish’, a film inspired by a newspaper cutting. ‘The way we were working was quite guerrilla style because we didn’t have much of a budget,’ Day explains about filming in London. ‘You need to know exactly what you need and get it fast’.

Ellis proposes some further advice: ‘There’s no point trying to make a feature of a short film. If you try to cram too much into too short a space the story will get lost and I think films have to breathe.’ This isn’t to say the reins are getting pulled on anyone’s ambitions. This technically and textually diverse line-up wraps up with ‘Cherries’, an impressive production with a cast buzzing full of teenagers. BAFTA nominee Tom Harper deserts us with a disarming take on the possible consequences of UK foreign policy. Feature films can just as craftily end on a whim but there’s a more immediate experience to be channelled through a short. Like Wallin says: ‘I’m allergic to the moments where everything is resolved. I don’t necessarily believe that life is like that’.

London Calling Shorts screens at BFI Southbank on Mon 29 October at 9pm 

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