Muddy Flicks

On Wednesday night the Rowden White Library undertook a transformation, it was still the same relaxed, cosy place it always has been, but those kicking back with a comic book, or blatantly ignoring the request to 'please do not study' were absent. The lights were dim and deep within the labyrinth of shelves, screens were flickering to life. And so began Muddy Flicks.

Featuring over 30 short films, screened over the course of three hours, Muddy Flicks invited visitors to move between screens and spaces, to view a series of different films at their own pace. It is perhaps not practical to mention every film in this review, and as it happened, I regrettably wasn't able to see them all.

My night started with a cosy armchair in the screening room, with a set of headphones that were a touch too big. Almost as soon as I had sat down, the film began. Opening with a violently red, yellow and orange landscape, we slowly focus on the pale face of a young boy. He looks lost, frightened, hopeless in a desolate world that burns behind him. The film that followed was a beautifully realised story of one man, perhaps the last on earth, living out his days in Bunker 14 after a massive nuclear explosion. It was, I think a good film to start with. The films I watched after snuggled in an equally cosy armchair in front of the projector followed similar themes. The filmmakers of Muddy Flicks explored the horrors and quieter moments of war, of grief, of frightening worlds where women are scarce and valuable commodities. Difference was pondered and celebrated, sometimes with humour and sometimes with poignancy. We travel the country with a young boy who learns that a well rounded education does not come from a tape, learn the adverse affects of smoking from a young sunflower, who once found her Dad's cigarette butt in her noodles. But by the end, like the man in Bunker 14, we find there is the possibility of a world with hope.

Muddy Flicks certainly celebrated the talent of some amazing filmmakers, talent that one day we shall hopefully see on the big screen.