Alien on Stage: The Documentary
Oct. 18th, 2021 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerAlien on Stage: The Documentary is a documentary about a stage show of the movie Alien put on by a group of Dorset bus drivers as a replacement for their regular Christmas pantomime. The documentary directors caught a performance and were so enchanted that they decided to try to get the play an opportunity to play in London… which is how it ended up at the Leicester Square Theater in the West End, where it has played for one night only three years running, all proceeds to go to charity.
I’m not sure exactly at what point in this process the documentary directors actually started filming the documentary. Whenever it was, it’s an interesting case of a documentary where the involvement of the documentary creators clearly had a huge effect shaping the story! This is something I wonder about sometimes with documentaries (ironically, it’s worse when the directors try to be a discreet fly on the wall; the fact that they try to hide their presence makes me wonder about it more) so it was nice to see it acknowledged here, although this is definitely not a meta-documentary and has no interest in digging into, IDK, the Implications that this might have about the making of documentaries and doesn’t the act of documenting in itself change the thing being documented etc.
What it is interested in is the mechanics of putting on an amateur theater production (the parts about the special effects and the costumes, particular the Alien costume, are particularly fun), the reasons why the participants were interested in amateur theatrics, and just the overall fun of the stage show. It’s sold out in Leicester Square all three years it was performed, and the audience from the showing documented in this film is clearly having a rollicking good time watching it: it seems to have hit the sweet spot of “campy good fun” but also “good enough that it’s actually enjoyable to watch,” as campy good fun can only carry a performance so far.
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And that wraps up Heartland Film Festival for this year! I picked out a particularly good slate this year: in the past there's generally been at least one dud each festival, but this year I enjoyed them all. (I had some reservations about Set!, but it was enjoyable to watch and I've gotten an ENORMOUS amount of conversational mileage out of the woman with the taxidermy in her tablescapes.)
My favorites were Belfast and Firebird (that one in particular haunts me). Definitely worth watching if you get a chance!
I’m not sure exactly at what point in this process the documentary directors actually started filming the documentary. Whenever it was, it’s an interesting case of a documentary where the involvement of the documentary creators clearly had a huge effect shaping the story! This is something I wonder about sometimes with documentaries (ironically, it’s worse when the directors try to be a discreet fly on the wall; the fact that they try to hide their presence makes me wonder about it more) so it was nice to see it acknowledged here, although this is definitely not a meta-documentary and has no interest in digging into, IDK, the Implications that this might have about the making of documentaries and doesn’t the act of documenting in itself change the thing being documented etc.
What it is interested in is the mechanics of putting on an amateur theater production (the parts about the special effects and the costumes, particular the Alien costume, are particularly fun), the reasons why the participants were interested in amateur theatrics, and just the overall fun of the stage show. It’s sold out in Leicester Square all three years it was performed, and the audience from the showing documented in this film is clearly having a rollicking good time watching it: it seems to have hit the sweet spot of “campy good fun” but also “good enough that it’s actually enjoyable to watch,” as campy good fun can only carry a performance so far.
***
And that wraps up Heartland Film Festival for this year! I picked out a particularly good slate this year: in the past there's generally been at least one dud each festival, but this year I enjoyed them all. (I had some reservations about Set!, but it was enjoyable to watch and I've gotten an ENORMOUS amount of conversational mileage out of the woman with the taxidermy in her tablescapes.)
My favorites were Belfast and Firebird (that one in particular haunts me). Definitely worth watching if you get a chance!
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Date: 2021-10-19 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-19 02:40 am (UTC)