Gilligan (note: the film starts and ends on black and is silent)

Gilligan is a short silent film shot in Belfast, which asks who has the right to speak in the perpetually-regenerating city. A series of seemingly expressionistic marks are explored insistently by the camera and an obscured message is eventually pieced back together. The significance of this text is never explained but it is, in essence, the same story that is told about similar plots of land in every city: a story of dispossession, exclusion, privatisation and clearance. The bright exterior shots, and the panning movement used in them, are contrasted with a series of interiors, some in total darkness, filmed in an old industrial service elevator.

Gilligan is usually exhibited as a loop, emphasising the timeless and placeless nature of the themes evoked in the piece.

Written, filmed and edited: Daniel Jewesbury

© Daniel Jewesbury

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