By Annie McKean
Now in its 6th year, the 2020 Stroud Film Festival is delighted to present a live performance of HOME, a work in progress pitch for a contemporary feature film with Stroud based director Marc Jobst (The Witcher, Marvel’s Daredevil, The Punisher, Hannibal)
At the SVA Goods Shed on Fri 21st February, Marc and the production team will run an immersive performance followed by dialogue with in a post-performance discussion.
The Witcher, Marc’s record breaking Netflix series, had 76 million viewers in its first 4 weeks. From Hollywood to Gloucestershire, his next film is a multi-generational dance musical about homeless young people in Bristol and Gloucester. Some of the team of beatbox/rap lyricists, co-screen writers and choreographers involved in the project will perform the script outline immersing the audience in the rhythm, rhyme, music and movement which fuel this story. This is film making in process: raw, intense, passionate, a journey which navigates the uncertain waters of the film industry and all of this before the cameras roll!
Marc Jobst on set for the final episode of the first season of the Witcher w/ Anya Chalotra and Therica Wilson-Read
Afterwards, the audience will be invited to discuss the project with the director and members of the production team who will welcome audience input. They will also discuss with the audience the treatment, the process of pitching an idea and how a film goes from pitch to commission, from commission to production and production to distribution. The film is being developed in the UK and the US.
Central to the narrative of HOME are Noah, Minnie and Fizz, three kids who meet on the streets of Bristol. They are there because the streets offer refuge from the conflicts of family life. They can’t escape the reasons for being there, but they find in each other the courage to break free and start anew. Rhythm, passion, music and dance are central to the story arising naturally out of the action and characters, reflecting the music and lives of the three generations that feature in the film.
HOME combines the immediacy of the street (Bullet Boy, Shifty, Straight Outta Compton), with the vibrancy, colour and music of Romeo+Juliet and Slumdog Millionaire. The story doesn’t duck the darkness in their lives, but it fizzes with energy, humour and attitude, to create a film that is vital, original and bold, set against the shifting generational values of our times. The film evokes the questions what is HOME to us? Is it a place? A family? An object? A person? Inside us? Is it different for everyone? Do each of us create our own understanding of HOME ?
The story and characters come from extensive research working with young people in Bristol and Gloucester. They all asked for a film that would be about them, not a film layered with the usual clichés of sink estate, drugs and violence, a film that only young people would be interested in. They wanted an honest film about their lives that their mums and grandmas would go and see. Marc wants to rise to this challenge and create a piece which will fulfil their expectations, a film that all age groups will come to so that each will gain a little more insight into each other. The young people he met felt they were separated from their homes for many, complex reasons but despite that, they still had tremendous warmth, energy and a passionate desire for life. The film doesn’t deny the difficulties in these young people’s lives, rather it explodes with the vitality the pulses through their veins. It is a film for the next decade that expresses phenomenal youth, effervescent youth, vulnerable youth, and is set against the shifting values of contemporary family life. These young people are the hope for our future and Marc is frustrated that their vitality is being wasted and that they end up being lost to society.
Jobst does not want to follow the conventional route of pointing the camera at the crime, conflict and dysfunction that often characterises the lives of young people dislocated and lost within society. Instead, he wishes to frame their lives, throughout the film with a strong focus on their energy and life force - their potential. One boy told him the story of his friend who had recently been stabbed and killed. He told his story with spontaneous rap, rhythm and movement; a story full of warmth, a sense of loss but also with energy and passion. Marc wants the film to reflect the creativity and potential embedded in the stories of these young people. During his work and research with the group Marc told them the story outline and together they re-wrote it to make it authentic - to fully reflect their lives and experiences on the streets.
Working alongside Marc (writer/director) are the production team which includes the choreographers BirdGang, a powerful international group who specialise in telling contemporary stories through movement and dance. Yolanda Mercy, a young Nigerian, is co-writing the script, and Conrad Murray, an award winning performer who set up the Beatbox Academy at Battersea Arts Centre (London) is writing the lyrics.
BirdGang
The production team will include young people involved in the first stage of the project as crew and extras in order to bring them into the film business for the first time. The involvement and potential employment of the young people whose lives were central to the initial research reflects the holistic and sustainable approaches embedded in this film making process. The opportunity for work and engagement with the film in production could potentially open doors to this group of young people and offer them life chances that have hitherto been denied them.
SVA’s Goods Shed provides the venue for this unique occasion on Friday 21st February at 7pm. For further info and tickets visit sva.org.uk and stroudfilmfestival.org
Annie McKean is an Honorary Fellow in Knowledge Exchange at the University of Winchester, a specialist in community theatre, and drama and theatre in education. Annie’s edited collection of writing about her work staging full scale theatre productions with prisoners is published by Intellect.