Exciting and enigmatic artist Emily Wardill premieres her film Game Keeper Without Game today (Saturday, December 12) at the Spacex, Exeter.
The melodramatic script from the artist who finds embarrassment quite productive is of a family and their relationship with their child and started out as a performance.
As the Guardian says, Emily ‘puts her viewers between a rock and a hard place’, and her Game Keepers Without Game feature film looks set to continue in that theme as it tackles difficult social issues.
The formal structure of the film is based on Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s Life is a Dream, that was written in the 17th century. Emily translates the story to contemporary London.
She spoke to Mike Sperlinger on afterall.org before filming.
“I wrote a script for a melodrama about a family who had a child, who put the child up for adoption when she’s eight because she’s displaying psychotic tendencies. Later the father decides to bring her back into the family home, but when she comes back into the home she doesn’t understand the objects the house is full of, which are built up as status symbols but then have the status of props and finally of evidence.
“I want to shoot it like airline food, so you have this sense that everything is separate and nothing ever touches. At the end when she murders the father, you’re as shocked to see him touching this axe, or this axe touching his head, as you are that he’s died. When the objects get destroyed, you feel like a character’s been destroyed.”
For the sound track – complex drumming – was formulated during the initial live performances which made up the the early ideas of the place, with the math rock musicians Nought.
“It’s useful doing performances like that,” Emily told Mike, “because you work through your ideas in this way that’s really intimate and social, and you’re forced to embarrass yourself with your ideas before they’re fully formed. I think embarrassment can be quite productive.”
Emily Wardill, is at the Spacex, 45 Preston Street, Exeter, EX1 1D from Saturday, December 12 – Saturday, February 20
