PRESSED/BLUEBELLS

A short film shot in Super8 format with no editing, except in-camera editing, for the Straight 8 Competition.

Premier: June 2022, Cannes Festival

Script: Alina Rios
Director: Anastasia Vorotnikova
Producer: Lydia Martland, Dog Eat Dog, London UK

SCRIPT

it’s bluebell season

and it’s short
I’ve been going every day since/
after work

Fields of them
standing proud in their lavender blue
so proud

I’m sorry I haven’t called
or or answered your/ 
muted you actually. 
You’ve left me something
but I can’t can’t/ 
since you found out
I just can’t bare to/
my heart
and my chest
and home is the last place I/

So I go to the park and watch 
little blue heads move in the breeze
so flexible, so adaptable

I want to bring some home
a reminder
but I can’t
I mean can you fucking imagine?
Me with a bunch of bluebells on the tube?
everyone would stare
everyone would
they’d know
they’d know I don’t belong don’t fucking belonged never belonged
this odd-shaped grey person with the most beautiful of things
the nerve!

So I bring a journal and I pick just a few
whatever fits on the page it could be two sometimes three
press the covers together with my fingers till it hurts
it hurts to keep them pressed so tightly
but this this carries me home this through the tube
and the 
nobody knows
nobody sees
nobody
the pain is here the pain sees the pain knows
and I know it 
and that’s as honest as honest as I can be right now

except

it’s your fucking birthday
and it’s time

I want you to know me
I carried these all the way from London Fields.

Everyone looked.