First Take; The Art Film
Title release coming soon ….
See the Film
07 JUNE 2025 – 14 SEPT 2025
GALLERY 3 at the Open Eye Gallery , 19 Mann Island, Liverpool L3 1BP
The Journey
In June 2024 First Take began its Reel Queer Art Filmmaking course with the aim of teaching and creating film for exhibition. As part of the course we started working alongside The Liverpool Biennial to create a piece for their 2025 theme of “Bedrock” and international artist Katarzyna Perlak who delights in working with liminal spaces, folk lore and has been widely exhibited including at the V&A Museum in London.
In our first sessions we focused on the difference between filmmaking and Art Film by looking at local exhibitions; Michelle Williams Gamaker’s”Our Mountains are Painted on Glass” at the Bluecoat was our first stop. The exhibition, in collaboration with Dahong Hongxuan Wang, centred around the work “Thieves”; a retelling of 1924 silent, black and white film “The Thief of Bagdad”, with the marginalised characters at the centre of the story. The space interweaved props with the films into spaces for sitting or opportunities to view costumes, props and even scripts in more detail as an added layer to the viewing experience.
Our second stop was FACT to see R.I.P Germain’s “After GOD, Dudus Comes Next!” an immersive installation that highlighted hidden worlds and gate kept spaces. Alongside, Sara Sadik’s “Xenon Palace Championship“ an interactive film and installation environment that reflected on belonging. Both exhibitions were in response to FACT’s theme of “Care” with very different interpretations.
After that it was time to start being creative, building collages of our own worlds and responding to everything we had seen to get our imaginations flowing and into the headspace of an Art Film.
Ideas Time!
Taking in all the inspiration from the exhibitions, it was now time to think of some ideas for our own Art Film. Our Reel Queer course participants worked with Katarzyna exchanging ideas of workflow, process, narrative, visuals and theme with many ideas stemming from their own creative practice and influences.
Writers Room
Working with the ideas put forward by Katarzyna and the group, a very strong theme of “Horror” emerged narratively and visually. By merging First Take’s narrative driven filmmaking with Katarzyna’s Visual Art film approach we divided the film into seven sections between writers who each focused on building some narrative and visual imagery, taking inspiration from our research and integrating the themes of belonging to a space and retelling narratives with our core horror theme. The final scene was then decided to be a culmination of all these ideas and narratives coming together.
Location
We knew location would play a massive part in creating the film and capturing the right energy. Katarzyna had previously visited Liverpool before, suggested the Adelphi hotel after falling in love with the aesthetic. Combining this with the theme of horror naturally took us to scoping it out as a filming location. We found that the hotel provided so much narrative and visual inspiration to the film while also linking back to our research of hidden worlds. There were so many forgotten rooms, secret doors and interesting spaces that provided the perfect backdrop to set our horror Art Film.
The Shoot
Finally it was time to shoot in February 2025. Working together with local Liverpool performers, our own Reel Queer community and Maria Joranko from Katarzyna’s previous films, we created a cast of ghoulish characters to fill our haunted hotel.
