NTS short films: Future Acts
Filmhouse Edinburgh 3/10/26
National Theatre of Scotland (NTS)
For this set of six short films made under the NTS banner supported by the BBC, conditions have been imposed, a bit like Aristotle‘s Unities: running time 10 minutes, cast of two, shooting in one day, post-production one week. As the overall title suggests, all had themes of the approaching future: climate, technology, apocalypse. For me the last two films were the most satisfying, so I’ll talk about them in more detail.
‘Smoke’ (director Rianne White) is a choreography piece, or more accurately free dance, with a voice-over monologue. The words by Kieran Hurley are kind of stream of consciousness in the style of Molly‘s monologue in Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’. It's voiced by Shirley Manson, singer of the rock group Garbage, making, I believe, her debut as a spoken word performer. She delivers the text with passion and drive. The movement too was engaging and ambitious. It begins with the dancer (Nicolette McCormack) flowing expressively over the seats of a cinema. This gave an oddly mirror effect to us who were sitting in just such rows of seats. She goes on with movements challenging and imaginative, mixed in with images of clouds, flowers, ropes and all variety of things. Demanding and beautiful to watch.
‘Still alive’ (director Hope Dickson Leach) is an unfolding string of ironies, surprising to the main character and to us. It opens with a close-up of an eye, an echo of Dalí and Buñuel’s ‘Chien Andalou’. A man (Keith Fleming) is waking from an operation; it turns out he’s a billionaire who’s chosen to be transferred from his 80-year-old body to a clone of his 40-year-old one. The wonders of cryptotechnology have kept this on ice till now. With difficulty he manoeuvres himself onto the floor and finds his mobile phone among his clothes. He calls his wife expecting her to be delighted. But she is horrified, only wants to be the glamorous younger member of the partnership, and nixes him. In similar vein his business partner rejects him. His banking app can’t recognise his face. He looks for help from the attendant nurse (Nadia Albina), but it seems his 80-year-old body has already been trashed. The best she can do is offer him a cup of tea. They walk away through a gloomy tunnel. He’s trapped, isolated in his new body.
The other four films bring humour with varying degrees of success to such futuristic themes as time travel and coastal erosion. The sextet will be made fully available early next year, including on the BBC. Well worth watching.
This is a new venture by the National Theatre of Scotland. i enjoy theatre, but because they don't have a theatre building of their own, and work in co-productions with other companies like the Lyceum, the Traverse, Dundee Rep etc (who organise their own publicity and ticket sales), I often think that their work seems low-profile. The NTS 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' starts its Scottish tour this week and next at the Lyceum, and I was told that it's almost sold out. I wonder how many of the Lyceum audience know this is a National Theatre of Scotland production?
