Renzo Vidal Premieres Short Film Honoring Late Mentor

The film opens on an empty workshop and stays there for four minutes before anyone speaks.

Shows like this one tend to be remembered for a single room, and the argument about whether the rest earned it starts on the second weekend.

Renzo Vidal, the director, who trained under the film's subject for nine years, has been close to it from the start.

What changed

Shot over three years on a borrowed 16mm camera, the film follows the workshop through the seasons after its founder's death, as his apprentices decide what to keep.

It took three attempts. The first was abandoned at the end of the first month, the second survived until costing, and the third is the one standing.

The hardest cut, Vidal says, was a nineteen-minute sequence of hands sharpening a chisel.

He talked while he worked. I did not have to write anything.

Vidal

How it works

There is no narration. What explanation exists comes from tape recordings made in the 1990s, which Vidal found in a drawer under the bench.

The measure will be whether anything changes afterwards, in the collection or the programme, rather than in the press release.

It has been well received by the audience it was made for and largely ignored by everyone else, which the team says is the outcome they wanted.

They are careful about what they claim. Two of the decisions that look deliberate now were, by their own account, the only option left by the time anyone noticed.

What happens next

It screens at three festivals this autumn before a limited run in April.