Festival Blog by Jonnie Hurn Part Two - The Screening...

Saturday (Pang Nak Prok) June 12th

“The Naga King protected the meditating
Buddha against heavy rainfall.”

During the shoot in France Cristina Corazza, our makeup designer, looked into my eyes one morning as we sat on the edge of the forest and told me they were green. My eyes are not green, they are brown. I checked in her mirror. My eyes were green. I found out later that Stéphanie, who was in Brocéliande working hard behind the scenes to make life easier for us generally by appeasing the community who were not used to having a film crew around, had spent the night with the local Pagan Priests and had arranged for a protection spell on me. I felt that protection when I went into the lake.

Suddenly three days to promote the film isn’t enough. I miss breakfast again. Too little sleep and too much still to do. Today is our preparation day both technically and spiritually. John heads back to Chalong beach to flyer the bars while Paul and I head to the venue to check the equipment. We are screening behind The Green Man Pub, built and run by Howard an ex-pat Brit who knows and understands the magic of Brocéliande.

On the wall is a single ancient map, not of his native Devon but of Wiltshire, my home county. I locate the tiny village where I grew up and think about Stéphanie and our daughter who are there visiting my parents. We discovered she was pregnant in France during the shoot. Two weeks ago we celebrated our daughter’s second birthday. That is how long this film has taken to complete.

The screening venue is a Pagan Temple behind the pub, adorned with images of Egyptology, something Stéphanie wrote a book about. At the time the film screens tonight she will be flying in a twin seat plane photographing crop circles, the subject of her next book. We are 6000 miles apart each following our own passions. She would understand what all the symbols and images mean, I only recognise the three giant figures, Horus the All Seeing Eye, Osiris and Isis, the latter of whom is facing the screen.

Paul does the technical checks and masks the time-code as best he can. That is not the biggest worry though, our beautiful 5.1 surround sound mix that we spent months to achieve will be compressed into a single mono speaker. This certainly will not be the Asian premier we had planned. We set out a few chairs and hope.

A quick scout of the already battered island road map and we head off in the Elephant Mobile once more this time to Wat Chalong, a huge Buddhist Temple and purportedly home to a shard of Buddha’s bone.

On the way Paul and I have an amazing frank and deep conversation about what has happened since we last met in November. He is now convinced that the problems we have encountered since arriving in Phuket were fated from the moment he first went into the Pagan Temple exactly a week ago.

At the end of the film there is a prayer dedicated to the Goddess of Still Water, a manifestation of Isis. Paul believes that Isis wants to see the film and so has conspired events to make it happen here where we will be together at a screening for the first time. That would explain the possessed look he had on Thursday. I tell him about the book I am reading about the “Rite of Isis” and how I started to read it a year ago but gave up half way through. I started it again just a few days before leaving France.

I’m starting to sense an holistic feel about this trip.

In the Temple Paul buys a large yellow candle and we light incense and offer prayers for guidance and help. Like Paul did earlier, I take a divination asking about my life and how I can break free from the difficulties of the past few years. I shake the tin and free two sticks. I seek out the relevant cards but they are written in Thai. I take some time alone and meditate in one of the smaller Temples that is full of carved elephants. After an hour or two we head for a waterfall but en route Paul feels the need to visit the Big Buddha instead.

The Big Buddha of Phuket is a giant statue built on a hilltop overlooking the south eastern side of the island. Still under construction it was until a few weeks ago covered in scaffolding but now sits happily above the trees, the sunlight reflecting off the white stone surface.

The Elephant Mobile shudders and moans its way up the steep hill threatening to abandon us there at any moment but eventually we crawl into the car park at the top and pass through a temporary Temple and up the winding stairs decorated with tiny bells and flags of all nations to the seat of the statue. A giant bell awaits us. We ring it five times crashing the large wooden baton against it. The sound echoes out across the site and subconsciously across the island along with our thoughts directed down to our right at The Green Man Pub below. We dedicate one of the thousands of white stone tiles that will be used to cover the base of the statue to the film. On it I write “The end of one journey, the beginning of another”. For me that is what Phuket and this film festival represents, the transition between two chapters in my life.

Every chapter needs a dramatic climax.

At 6pm we meet up with John, check the equipment again and prepare for the screening which is due to start at 7pm. At 6.45pm there are 8 people, two of whom have to leave due to illness.

At 7pm we are up to 12. Although scheduled for that time it was never going to start then, it was a Thailand style 7pm not a UK one. Scott arrives and is convinced we will have no more than 20, so much so that he didn’t even bring any tickets to sell. He speaks to me for only the second time but at least it is positive “Hey Jonnie,” he drawls. “You got a big schlong!” Even that is a lie.

By 7.25pm John and I are hauling more chairs into the back of the room to accommodate the sudden late influx of people. Apparently Scott congratulates John but I don’t hear it. In the end we have an audience of 90 and one dog, the largest audience of the festival. Scott’s face is a mixture of surprise and embarrassment, mine one of red-stress and relief. I rub in more coconut oil and learn that unlike every other film festival (this really is unlike every other film festival) there will be no award ceremony on the closing night, the awards are given out 3 weeks later, no amount of audience reaction can tip the balance in our favour here. That doesn’t fill me with confidence.

This is the first time I have seen the film on anything larger than a computer screen, the anticipation has been immense, the wait too long, the result…

I can hardly hear it through the slightly distorted lone speaker, I struggle to understand the dialogue even though I wrote it, the picture is washed out and a little fuzzy and the whole film looks less like a 3 year labour of love and more like an overblown home movie.

I sit on the floor at the back of the room at the feet of Isis so as to block the flickering of the candle light from affecting the screen and as the scenes roll on the peace and joy I had experienced earlier in the day drains away quicker than the monsoon rains. By the time Callum and Malika get into the forest I am empty of feeling.

The audience is quiet, they don’t laugh. This is nothing like the fun-filled screenings that Paul and Julie had in the USA. Some people leave, one breaks a glass, the distraction is evident, the audience feels uncomfortable but not as much as I do.

When I first wrote the script I had visions of making it on a micro budget with a few friends, shooting it in Wiltshire and maybe screening it in the local village hall exactly like this, but it grew and grew from those humble origins into a stunning multi award winning film yet now it seems to have gone full circle and back to that initial idea. Had we made the film as I first thought I would have been proud to see it projected on 10ft screen to 90 people and a dog, even in mono, but now with expectation I am mortified by it. I can sense that John too is wondering if it was really worth the money he paid for us to come? It probably isn’t.

Maybe that is the lesson I need to learn here – Expectation leads to disappointment.

The Q&A afterwards is a little subdued but on the whole positive, the audience seem to have enjoyed it more than I did. Scott then congratulates us on our achievement but doesn’t part with any of the box office to help cover the rental of the equipment. Eventually he donates 300 Baht (2 and a half tickets). We hastily get some donations but are left with a shortfall of around £200, which we have to cover.

I head to the cash point.

When I planned to come here I had a budget of just £100 to spend in 5 days, but with the snorkeling, car hire, printing & petrol costs I have nearly doubled that already.

The first cash machine is broken, at the second one my card is refused, there is no third time lucky, I only have this card left, the others are useless.

Again I have to ask John for money, of course he agrees to cover the bill – for now. I am blessed to have him as a friend. Thankfully Howard offers us a free meal and some drinks and we settle in to watch England’s opening world cup game.

The cocktails keep appearing for the next few hours including the driest martini imaginable and by the time we leave at 5am we have all washed out our individual emotions from the inside and share them between us. Paul is surprisingly upbeat. John is a little disappointed. I just feel empty.

Tomorrow is the post mortem...

PART THREE CLICK HERE...
 

Three Elephants and Howard the Hero