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The Afterlight (2021 film)

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The Afterlight
Directed byCharlie Shackleton
Produced byCatherine Bray
Anthony Ing
Charlie Shackleton
CinematographyRobbie Ryan
Edited byCharlie Shackleton
Music byJeremy Warmsley
Production
company
Loop
Release date
Running time
82 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
Shackleton in 2022, during a screening of The Afterlight

The Afterlight is a 2021 British experimental supercut art film directed and assembled by Charlie Shackleton.[1][2]

Summary

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The film, produced by Catherine Bray, Anthony Ing and Shackleton, and distributed by their studio Loop,[3] consists of scenes of actors from old films who are no longer alive.[4] The only copy of the Afterlight exists on a single 35mm film print,[5] so that every time the film plays it will gradually erode until eventually it will diminish entirely and become a lost film.[6] Featuring cinematography from Robbie Ryan and composed of films from the 1960s or before,[7][8][4] the film is entirely in black and white.[9]

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Reception

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Jonathan Romney, writing for the British Film Institute, gave a positive review of the Afterlight, stating that "placed together, the images evoke a post-death existence, perfect, poetic and yet irreducibly desolate," and favourably compared the film to the 2010 supercut art installation The Clock.[11] Adrian Hui of the Michigan Daily gave a more mixed review, praising its concept and "seamless [editing] between shots from different films as if they were the same film and pieces of dialogue from different films," but stated that as an experimental film, the Afterlight was "not experimental enough," arguing that the film was "not quite bold enough in pushing the boundaries" of its source material.[12]

Release

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The Afterlight had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on 15 October 2021.[4] As of June 2024, the film has screened publicly 56 times according to its official website:

Screenings

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  1. 15 October 2021: BFI London Film Festival, London, England
  2. 17 October 2021: BFI London Film Festival, London, England
  3. 6 November 2021: Cinecity: The Brighton Film Festival, Brighton, England
  4. 10 November 2021: Leeds International Film Festival, Leeds, England
  5. 25 November 2021: Cambridge Film Festival, Cambridge, England
  6. 4 March 2022: Campus Theatre, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, United States
  7. 25 March 2022: Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
  8. 31 March 2022: Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark
  9. 4 May 2022: Prismatic Ground, Queens, New York City, United States
  10. 11 May 2022: Chicago Film Society, Chicago, Illinois, United States
  11. 14 May 2022: Ragtag Cinema, Columbia, Missouri, United States
  12. 16 May 2022: MDFF Selects, Toronto, Canada
  13. 19 May 2022: Visuals, Montréal, Canada
  14. 22 May 2022: Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, United States
  15. 24 May 2022: Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, United States
  16. 26 May 2022: Bellwether Series, Amherst, Massachusetts, United States
  17. 31 May 2022: George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York, United States
  18. 29 June 2022: BFI Southbank, London, England
  19. 30 June 2022: King Street Cinema, Ipswich, England
  20. 2 July 2022: Docs Ireland, Belfast, Northern Ireland
  21. 3 July 2022: Irish Film Institute, Dublin, Ireland
  22. 6 July 2022: The Electric, Birmingham, England
  23. 10 July 2022: Broadway Cinema, Nottingham, England
  24. 14 July 2022: HOME, Manchester, England
  25. 17 July 2022: Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wales
  26. 22 July 2022: Watershed, Bristol, England
  27. 24 July 2022: Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne, England
  28. 27 July 2022: Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow, Scotland
  29. 29 July 2022: Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland
  30. 31 July 2022: Genesis Cinema, London, England
  31. 2 August 2022: Roxie Theater, San Francisco, California, United States
  32. 7 August 2022: Melbourne International Film Festival, Melbourne, Australia
  33. 9 August 2022: Melbourne International Film Festival, Melbourne, Australia
  34. 18 August 2022: QAGOMA, Brisbane, Australia
  35. 20 August 2022: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
  36. 23 August 2022: Aero Theatre, Los Angeles, California, United States
  37. 17 September 2022: Camden International Film Festival, Camden, Maine, United States
  38. 7 October 2022: Refocus Film Festival, Iowa City, Iowa, United States
  39. 8 October 2022: Refocus Film Festival, Iowa City, Iowa, United States
  40. 15 October 2022: Widescreen Weekend, Bradford, England
  41. 21 October 2022: Museum of the Moving Image, Queens, New York, United States
  42. 24 October 2022: Yale Film Archive, New Haven, Connecticut, United States
  43. 1 November 2022: The Grand Illusion, Seattle, Washington, United States
  44. 25 November 2022: Austrian Film Museum, Vienna, Austria
  45. 6 February 2023: Warwick Student Cinema, Coventry, England
  46. 2 March 2023: Showroom Cinema, Sheffield, England
  47. 10 March 2023: DCA, Dundee, Scotland
  48. 29 March 2023: Forum Cinema, Hexham, England
  49. 6 April 2023: Lux, Nijmegen, Netherlands
  50. 10 June 2023: BFI Southbank, London, England
  51. 14 July 2023: Municipal Museum, Marienbad, Czech Republic
  52. 21 November 2023: The Regent, Christchurch, England
  53. 30 November 2023: The Ultimate Picture Palace, Oxford, England
  54. 10 April 2024: Kino Iluzjon, Warsaw, Poland
  55. 15 April 2024: Kino Iluzjon, Warsaw, Poland
  56. 12 May 2024: Hyde Park Picture House, Leeds, England
  57. 15 November 2024: Romuva Cinema, Kaunas, Lithuania


Loss

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After its screening at the Hyde Park Picture House, the 35mm print disappeared in transit to Lisbon, where it was due to be screened at the Cinemateca Portuguesa.[13] Shackleton initially declared the film lost in a post on X,[14] but announced two weeks later that the print had arrived in Lisbon.[15]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Film Screening: The Afterlight". Yale Library. Yale University. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  2. ^ Ghosts in the Machine: Charlie Shackleton's Afterlight Project — The Flickering Knight
  3. ^ Official trailer on Vimeo
  4. ^ a b c Dalton, Ben (11 May 2022). "Single print feature 'The Afterlight' sets self-distributed UK-Ireland cinema tour (exclusive)". Screen Daily. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  5. ^ Wexner Center for the Arts
  6. ^ Shackleton, Charlie (7 October 2021). "I made a film that's designed to be lost – and that's not so different from Netflix". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  7. ^ American Cinematheque
  8. ^ Living Ghosts at the Melbourne International Film Festival – Senses of Cinema
  9. ^ "The Afterlight". British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  10. ^ a b c The Life and Death of 'The Afterlight' - Film Cred
  11. ^ Romney, Jonathan (1 July 2022). "The Afterlight: a film of immortals en route to oblivion". British Film Institute. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  12. ^ Hui, Adrians (28 March 2022). "Ann Arbor Film Festival 2022: 'The Afterlight' is an alluring tribute to a bygone era of cinema". The Michigan Daily. Retrieved 24 December 2022.
  13. ^ "The Afterlight". Archived from the original on 26 April 2024. Retrieved 14 June 2024.
  14. ^ @charlieshack (14 June 2024). "Was holding off on announcing this in case it suddenly turned up, but: The Afterlight is now a lost film, having disappeared in transit from Leeds to Lisbon last month" (Tweet). Retrieved 14 June 2024 – via Twitter.
  15. ^ @charlieshack (27 June 2024). "Should have held off longer... look what just showed up in Lisbon six weeks late 🤦‍♂️" (Tweet). Retrieved 14 June 2024 – via Twitter.
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