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Live Action Movies Shorts

Being Someone Else

Director – Øyvind Aamli – 2020 – UK – 9m

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A 13 year old autistic girl makes preparations for a cosplay event – available to watch for free online (pay what you can) as part of the Raindance Film Festival 2020 until 23.59 this Saturday, October 7th.

At its heart, this film is a piece of portraiture. There are films, documentary or otherwise, that are often described as ‘character study’ but for Being Someone Else, the term ‘portraiture’ seems to fit better. In painting, that would be about recreating someone’s likeness on, say, canvas. (That’s obviously a simplification and one could talk at great length about what that actually means.) Film is a different medium. Like painting does with a static image, so a moving picture camera can preserve a moving image of a person in time. On top of that the film maker has a whole other arsenal of tools at their disposal. Sound. Editing. And so on.

Imogen, 13, is autistic and suffers, like many of us, from stress. In her case and in the immediate context observed by this film, she’s preparing for an upcoming Cosplay event. A contraction of the words Costume Play, this involves dressing up as a character from popular culture, often anime.… Read the rest