The Portfolio: Keeping in Touch

Following on from my post 'An Incident in Times Square' comes 'Keeping in Touch' a short film I made as part of the Irish Film Board's 'Short Shorts' scheme in 2007.

Featuring the recordings of almost three years worth of original voice messages that Patrick Dillon left on my mobile phone and inspired by Chris Marker's incredible 'La Jette', the film was made entirely with still photographs.

Frustrated with the US regime of then President George Bush, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the incessant ‘cellphone techno-babble’ that modern society thrives on Dillon, always popping up as an ‘unknown caller’ on my phone, vented his anguish in hours of voice messages that were eventually distilled into this short animation.

I had originally used the quotation below from Saul Bellow to introduce the film but it was made for the cinema screen and not the laptop and thus a little hard to read. Here it is in all it's moody glory...

"For Instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person?"

Saul Bellow, Herzog

Big ups to Producer Steven Courtney, composer Steve Lynch and of course the one and only Patrick for all their hard work on the project.