Private Project

Dead Line

Memories come to the surface of consciousness and float away as a fading mind thinks its final thoughts.

  • J Taylor-Jones
    Director
    One Summer on Earth, Baggage
  • Hope Rodgers
    Key Cast
    Baggage
  • Jude Pollitt
    Key Cast
    Baggage
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Student
  • Runtime:
    12 minutes 9 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    October 10, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    0 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Arts University Bournemouth
Director Biography - J Taylor-Jones

J Taylor-Jones is a non-binary filmmaker from Brighton, UK. Currently studying for a degree in filmmaking, they have an interest in experimental and avant-garde films, both as a viewer and director.

Having raised their knowledge of the craft on the likes of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and David Lynch, J has since immersed themselves in the work of Věra Chytilová, Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren and has used them as points of reference for their work since, inspired by their fixations on themes of communication, individual perception and the many forms of death itself.

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Director Statement

Given forty-eight hours over a weekend in October of 2022 to make a film in my local area, I walked fifteen minutes to a local nature reserve to film the network of pylons and telephone wires there. During this process, I developed a train of thought that focused on the conversations that were going on above my head, within the coils of metal and monstrous frames of steel that stood like giants surrounded by and merging with nature. I saw the world as it was, thought about what it was and thought about what it could be tomorrow, next week, next year and next decade. I imagined the conversations that would be happening then and imagined the conversations that discuss the day I was living.

With the help of an improvised conversation between two actors and a dark and downbeat soundtrack, I shaped a piece that captures the duality I see in the act of being alive; I see the life and the coming death, I see the two halves of one conversation, I see the past and the future and I see the pessimism and optimism. Dead Line is about all of these things, about the constant clash of opposing forces that creates a life force that drives us both forwards and backwards. It's about a beginning and an end, a sunrise and a sunset.

I have left the piece as abstract as I can, wishing that each viewer applies their own lives to it, their own conversations, sensibilities, thoughts and feelings, with the hope that it causes old memories to bubble to the surface of the mind and hopes and fears for the future to meet them there.