FILMREEL.
One Long Journey. Emma Roy-W illiams.
One Long Journey is an upcoming documentary about Vik PengillyJohnson, a man who, at 70, bought a derelict boat for £100 from eBay with the intention of fixing it up to travel from Manchester to Windsor along the canals and waterways of Great Britain. The film is intended to evoke David Lynch’s The Straight Story, in which 73-year-old Alvin Straight decides to ride a lawnmower from Wisconsin to Mount Zion in Iowa – a 263 mile journey – to see his estranged brother Lyle. He has no driving license due to his poor eyesight, but decides he must mend relations between him and his brother before it’s too late. His friends and family warn him against such a risky venture but Straight steadfastly refuses to give up. Similarly, when Vik told his family he’d bought a boat he said they responded with “horror”, but he bought it anyway. Visual anthropologists Tom Turner and Ben Cheetham will be documenting his journey, co-producing is Kieran Hanson and their Anthropology tutor Andy Lawrence, who taught them at The University of Manchester, will be directing. It was Andy who first met Vik and came up with the idea of making a film about him. “I’ve made films all over the world but the story of Vik and his boat journey is one of the best documentary subjects I have ever come across,” said Andy, who lives on a canal boat himself, as does cameraman Ben. They’ve each experienced the lifestyle for four years. I met Vik on the shipyard in Lymm where he has been living on his boat for the past three months. Within minutes, he was enthusiastically showing me around his boat before I’d even asked him any questions. A former army radio operator, safari park warden and river cruise captain, he has led life to the full and now wants one more adventure. Having been married five times, it seems settling down doesn’t suit Vik. Listening to Tom’s and Ben’s thoughts, it becomes clear that much of the boating community is made up of divorcees and men on their own. Tom thinks that this may be down to the fact that if the boat breaks you can roll your sleeves up and fix it, whereas repairing a marriage might not be as easy. So the film will be “kind of about Vik, but also English boating life,” Ben explained. “It’s pretty English, isn’t it? To retire and live on a boat.” I asked Rik Warren from Walk, the band providing the score for the film, what sort of themes appealed to him when writing the music. He said, “The need for change and his desire to achieve something, at that stage in his life.” He also cites Lynch’s The Straight Story and how “you’re inspired by the fact that, all right, you could get run over by a bus tomorrow, but that forward thinking perspective is nice to have.” After Walk performed live on Marc Riley’s Radio 6 Music show there was an anonymous £2,000 donation to the Kickstarter campaign that helped to reach their target of £6,000 to fund the film. Whoever the donor was, the money has allowed them to film without the typical strict schedule or budget of a professional TV crew. It has been invaluable to Ben and Tom, who have been living alongside Vik on the boatyard for the past two months in a 50-year-old caravan without earning any money. I asked Vik what he thinks will be the biggest challenges on his journey: “Going through the locks is going to be the hardest thing – I’m not HePAGE 42
Man,” he said with a chuckle. But Tom and Ben are reluctant to help as they want Vik to complete the journey on his own, even if that means watching him fail. They are committed to remaining detached from events. The plan is to complete work on Vik’s boat and lower it onto the water by mid-May, then travel the 243 miles to Windsor, hopefully by mid-June. Ben and Tom will be with him all the way, camping at the side of his boat so they can capture every minute of his journey. There are certainly quicker and easier ways of getting from Manchester to Windsor but where’s the fun in that? As the old saying goes, it’s not so much the destination but how you get there that counts. onelongjourney.allritesreversed.co.uk
COASTAL SHELF. REVIEWER – ROBERT PEGG.
There’s something about being an island race that involves storytelling and water. This rain battered city was made greater than it already was because the monumental feat of engineering that is the Manchester Ship Canal took its place amongst the veins and arteries of Great Britain while William Etty’s magnificent, restored painting ‘Ulysses And The Sirens’, which warns of the dangers of temptation, has its rightful home in Manchester Art Gallery. Coastal Shelf, the debut film from Fresh Loaf Productions, tells the story of Simon who, having broken up with his girlfriend, spends a long, dark night of the soul before encountering what appears to be a latter day siren, Taryn, washed up on the beach. What then unfolds in this gentle and confident debut deserves to take its place amongst the pantheon of mythical tales of the sea. Taryn, the siren in question, serves as Simon’s muse and conscience, encouraging and guiding him in how he really should be dealing with his break up while the subplot of his ex-girlfriend’s new relationship plays out. Director Jade Greyul captures well the isolation and loneliness of open spaces while knowing when to close her camera in on the characters so ably and charmingly played by all the cast members. Writer Joe McKie brings an intelligent maturity and a subtle underlying symbolism to his script. Beginning on a canalside and ending by the sea itself with the connecting theme of tangible washed up objects representing intangible washed up relationships, Coastal Shelf reminds us that all souls, like all waterways, are somehow connected. Deliberately ambiguous in places, in lesser hands this could easily come across as muddled and confused, but here it works. The finale of this engagingly short story draws us, as all myths rightly should, towards the sea. Maybe that’s why we’re so attracted to tales from the water – they take us to where we belong. freshloafproductions.com