Year of release: 2009
Original format: Super 8mm
Running time: 5 minutes 40 seconds
Screening format: Blu-ray and DVD
Directed, filmed and edited by Stuart Moore
Producer: Kayla Parker
Production: Sundog Media
Supported by a Major Research Award from the University of St Mark and St John
Distribution and sales: Sundog Media info@sundog.co.uk
Description
The poetry of Plymouth Sound and city seaside culture captured in glorious Kodachrome Super 8: meet the young tombstoners who gather on the cliffs under Plymouth Hoe at high tide to launch themselves into the waves below.
Winner of the Media Innovation Award 2010: Independent Film. The Media Innovation Awards celebrate the innovative use of media and design: the judges described the film as “a very atmospheric and nostalgic production that was beautifully produced.”
Winner of the 2010 London Short Film Festival Trick of the Light Award “for the most gorgeous looking film.”
Production notes
Shot on the last few remaining rolls of Super 8mm Kodachrome 40 colour reversal film before the processing lab closed, with location sound recordings. The film Sea Front focuses on the area of Plymouth Hoe next to the sea known as the Foreshore, where the once-grand man-made structures built into the limestone cliffs in the nineteenth century are now cracked and crumbling. This space between land and sea is the site of rites of passage for modern-day Plymouth youth, who gather here at high tide throughout the summer months to leap into the water.
Sea Front, directed, filmed and edited by Stuart Moore, and produced by Kayla Parker, is the first film to be released from the Sea City project, ongoing collaborative research with Stuart Moore that explores the perimeter of Plymouth along its boundary with the sea.
Publication and comments
Sea Front features in the British Council’s Britfilm Catalogue 2011 in the Experimental Shorts section.
Philip Ilson (2010) The art of short films Film Features, The Quietus. 8 January 2010.
Exhibition
2012
Marine Screen Marine City Festival, Royal William Yard, Plymouth; evening screening outdoors presented by Plymouth Arts Centre, Dartington Barn, and Peninsula Arts (15 September 2012). Showing as the 2011 Deluxe telecine version. Other films screened are Cinematic City and Yessling, showing before Jaws.
2011
Small Wonder programme, Cine-City, the Brighton Film Festival. A selection of Super 8 films from around the world, curated by Ian Helliwell (19 November 2011)
Plymouth Arts Centre’s Cinema City Mobile Cinema, at various locations around Plymouth; in the Sensing Place programme (4 - 8 July 2011)
2010
International Program 2 at 7:30 pm Thursday 27 May in Capitol Theatre, Windsor Ontario, at Media City international festival of experimental film and video art held in Windsor Ontario in Canada and Detroit USA (25 - 29 May 2010)
East End Film Festival Adventures in Experiments programme at Rich Mix, Shoreditch: “a selection of work from artists, filmmakers and animators, exploring the limits of new form and creative expression” (programme description) (26 April 2010)
Experiment 4 programme (Guild Cinema 14 April) at the Experiments in Cinema festival in Albuquerque New Mexico: Experiments in Cinema is an annual collaboration between Basement Films, and the Department of Cinematic Arts at the University of New Mexico (14 - 18 April 2010)
2010 London Short Film Festival, Rich Mix, Shoreditch (13 January 2010)
2009
Assemblage exhibition, Peninsula Arts Gallery, Plymouth University. As large scale projection onto gallery wall (premiere, 2 to 5 November 2009)