Bait

Bait

Two brothers watch with distress as their parental home is turned into a picturesque Airbnb, London yuppies take over all of the parking spaces with their Land Rovers, and they even lose their place at the bar to drunken tourists on pub crawls.

 

Chloe Lizotte: At the same time, the hand-crafted way that the film is processed emphasizes the film’s tactile details. You’re rooted in close-ups of hands, and boots – you see a hand becoming a fist, and you think of the capability of that hand, and its daily routines. What was your approach to crafting this visceral atmosphere?

Mark Jenkin: I shoot with a manual clockwork Bolex 16mm camera, and I have to physically hold the shutter down. I’ve got two choices for what I can do with the other hand: I can either pan or tilt the camera, or I can focus pull. So this aesthetic was borne out of what I could do with that camera, and its limitations.

Chloe Lizotte in conversation with Mark Jenkin1

 

“I don’t go into anything until I’ve got a huge list of limitations to work within, because where I shape all of the work is within what I’m not able to do. Working at small budgets helps because you’ve got a huge limitation straight away so you have to start working in different ways. Not everybody has that luxury of a low budget, which is why some people make such terrible films.”

Mark Jenkin2

 

screening
KAAP, Ostend