Filmmaker Laoisa Sexton on the struggle to find funding for her new Irish short, The Pitch Black Lonely . . .
Laoisa Sexton is an Irish actress and playwright originally from County Clare. She got inspired to make her own films, after creating promo trailers for her plays. She has written three plays that have premiered off Broadway, New York and in Canada and Ireland. To date she has written and directed three short films that have had hugely successful screenings both home and internationally. In her debut film, I Didn’t…I Wasn’t…I Amn’t she starred opposite veteran Irish actor Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones) in an unromantic tale about female desire, the film was nominated for a ZeBBie Award by the Writers Guild, and picked up several awards internationally. Her second film The Lucky Man picked up three Awards at Bafta recognized LOCO (London Comedy Film Festival) for BEST SHORT, BEST SCRIPT and BEST ACTOR as well as receiving other awards and nominations in its long festival run. It also screened on RTE Short Screen. Her recent film I Can’t Go On was awarded funding from Screen Ireland as part of Focus Shorts and will enjoy its Dublin premiere at this year’s exciting Dublin Film Festival.
Laoisa is currently fundraising to make a proof-of-concept short film, which has been adapted from her own successful off-Broadway play. A proof-of-concept film helps investors see the potential of the story for feature production, who may not initially see the nuances and complexities that are present in a screenplay, or that may not have the references or film knowledge. Many stories that are not nodding to what has been done before, can be easily dismissed, especially stories with more complex subject matter, stories that seem harder to realize or challenge genres. Many successful feature films began their journey as proof-of-concept short films, for example Tyrannosaur by Paddy Considine or Boogie Nights by Paul Thomas Anderson. Making The Pitch Black Lonely as a short film, will help show the potential for the feature in a multi-layered fully textured piece, and will be paramount to getting the feature made. The intention is also to make a short film that will stand on its own, as irresistible, darkly comic, funny-sad, and above all entertaining! And set off on a fruitful film festival journey that will help raise awareness and support for the feature.
Laoisa has raised half of the budget privately, but has started a crowdfunding campaign to raise the rest of the funds needed to bring the film into production. Crowdfunding remains one of the only viable avenues to getting short films made, and allows other more marginalized voices to push through. The Pitch Black Lonely will be filmed on location in Ireland in the spring, however with a challenging set build, it is imperative to hire a professional team of artists who can bring this to its magical realization. The film has a rich textured crusty dusty look and is set in the middle of nowhere rural Ireland. It is a nocturnal experience and deeply atmospheric, the use of Irish folklore in the film is used in a very real modern context, so we are stuck between tradition and modernity, in an evocative moment in time where disparate forces co-exist and overlap long enough to disturb your equilibrium and expose the “pitch black lonely” of human fallout.
The film sits-in a liminal space, on a threshold between folklore and fact, nature and neurosis, searching and stasis, and the clash of the old and the new makes for a fecund, beautiful darkly comic melancholia. It asks the question what it would be like if you were not connected to anything, not consuming anything? If you’re not on Insta or TikTok, if you’re not “connected” – if you can’t Google, take a Selfie, get Satnav – are you even here? What would you do if you have one bar left on your phone and you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere? It is a simple idea, but there’s a lot to be mined in this tension. Rural Ireland at night can be a terrifying place, if you’re off the grid, with no street lights and windy roads that stretch into the pitch black lonely. The nocturnal atmosphere will awake the viewer’s senses to the ominous feeling that maybe we are not alone, that there is something more, out there. The film underlines the clash of our cultural past with our modern world, our lack of connection to land and to each other, as our humanity hangs by a thread in an increasingly modern, capitalistic, homogenized world.
If you would like to help the film and join in its journey with a small donation or a larger one for a producer credit, you can read more about the film on the DONATION LINK https://gofund.me/ff01a13d
FOLLOW: Instagram @laoisainsta
