Director: Dylan Cubbin
Running time: 32mins
Only occasionally in my time as an IFL reviewer, have I come across a movie by a filmmaker at the start of their career that is just so good it has left me scratching my head thinking – where did that come from? Well – this is how I felt after viewing Framing New Brighton.
Framing New Brighton is a short documentary directed by Dylan Cubbin who is pretty much fresh out of film school. The subject is the English holiday resort of New Brighton viewed through the work of three photographers who achieved fame and received critical acclaim for their picturing of the life of the town in the 1980s. The photographers are: Ken Grant, Alex Hurst, and Tom Wood.
For those readers who do not know New Brighton, the town is situated on the Wirral peninsular – a thumb of land pointing out from England into the Irish Sea with the estuary of the river Mersey forming the western side. New Brighton has sandy beaches and looks directly across the Mersey to the city of Liverpool on the eastern bank. Established as holiday destination for genteel visitors in the 1840s, hence the name; New Brighton later became a hub for mass tourism especially from Liverpool and the surrounding industrial area. Grand houses were turned into hotels and B&Bs. With the rise of cheap air travel, the resort like many other British seaside towns fell into decline in the years leading up to the time when our three photographers were working. However, with its proximity to Liverpool, New Brighton continued to attract Liverpudlians in search of a cheap excursion – so the subjects portrayed in the movie are decidedly not rich people.
A common trope of artists and filmmakers is to use the decline of UK seaside holiday resorts as a grand metaphor for national decay – the end of industrialisation and the failure of the imperial project. The benighted members of the precariat who continue to visit are portrayed as too poor or stupid to choose anywhere better.
In contrast, Cubbin, who has roots in the area, draws on folk memory as well as cultural identity to evoke a feeling of, what used to be known in olden times as, solidarity with the people who live in and visit New Brighton. Framing New Brighton is that rarity – a meditation on a British seaside resort that is a definitive feel good movie. As well as enabling us to sense the warmth and vim of his subjects Cubbin also manages to provide us with a sense of wonder at the natural beauty of the Wirral – the towering clouds rolling across the estuary, the limpid sunlight sparking over the Irish sea are shown to stunning effect. But being the UK, there is still a fair bit of swimmers braving the cold and people huddling in promenade shelters from the blustery rain.
Framing New Brighton opens with some archive home movie of the resort in its prime. We see a paddle steamer coming in to moor at the pier, children building sandcastles and a sign advertising donkey rides. The sky has the delirious blue so characteristic of mid-century technicolour. An idyll of time past.
Cubbin then provides us with a beautiful series of long lingering shots of the contemporary scene – strange patterns of seaweed and surf, a view across the estuary with the giant cranes of the docks in the distance with a lone metal detectorist combing the beach, the tracks of a dog imprinted in the sand. The series culminates in the title shot – the words Framing New Brighton set against the imposing mass of the concrete sea wall. A stunning opening sequence.
At this point, I realised the approach the director would be taking – they would be using contemporary filmed footage as a counterpoint to the work of the three featured photographers. The slow moving images would mimic and pay homage to the inert still photographs. Here, Cubbin is aided by the superb work of Daniel Frost, their cinematographer – the results are consistently powerful and, on occasion, breathtaking.
The body of the film is essentially a triptych formed by individual interviews with the three photographers again interspersed with archive home movies and the contemporary filmed footage. The credits do not show who was responsible for the editing – so I am assuming it was tasked by the director. Whoever – the resulting work was of a ridiculously high standard – the movie fits together so seamlessly.
The subject matter of the three photographers is identical – portraiture of residents of and visitors to New Brighton as individuals or in groups. However, the approach each photographer takes to their work is different and Cubbin alludes to the alterity by providing differing structures for the filming of the interviews.
In our current times with the ubiquity of high quality mobile phone cameras, more or less all of us are Amateur Photographers and most of us have some idea of the propriety of obtaining consent from out subjects. But in the antediluvian era when Grant, Hurst and Wood were taking the photographs that brought them fame things might have been different. Cubbin shows awareness of the issue by asking each of the artists directly as to the question of consent.
Grant who worked mainly in the open air on the seashore noted that they would engage with their subjects before taking a picture and would try and send them prints once they had had been developed.
Wood, by necessity, took a different approach. The focus of their work was a portrayal of the customers of New Brighton’s leading discotheque – the Chelsea Reach – the resort’s somewhat more downmarket version of Studio 54. As most of their subjects were at some stage of inebriation and were shot in the chaos of the dance floor, Wood observed that prior consent would have been impossible to obtain. Cubbin shows us Wood’s solution to involving their subjects in the artistic process. We see the Chelsea Reach’s noticeboard where Wood’s photos were posted for the subjects to take a copy. Wood takes us through the production of the book of Chelsea Reach photos that brought him fame – the elegantly titled Looking For Love.
Cubbin deftly inserts interviews with the owner, the DJ and the barperson from the nightclub to capture the memories and emotions – the zeitgeist that the book celebrates. In a poignant sequence, we meet the son of one of the subjects of one of the most celebrated of the pictures from the book, The Lipstick Lady. Their motherdied after the book’s publication and the son tells Cubbin of the importance of the reification of the memory of his mother to his family and the local community. Wood, a natural interviewee, tells us the book has been stolen from every hairdressers on Merseyside and, as the entrepreneurial artist, concludes the interview by disarmingly asking Cubbin – have you got a copy?
For the sequence focusing on Ken Grant’s work, Cubbin takes a more conventional talking heads approach. Grant talking to camera in front of bookshelves holding an impressive library of books on photography. Grant’s description on working within the limitations of 80s technology is full of fascination. At one stage – that in which he was taking his favourite photographs – he was using a look down camera that only took square shots. From the evidence that Cubbin shows us, Grant used the limitation to almost miraculous effect. Grant eloquently outlines the importance of slow working and involvement of his subjects in the creation of the art. He offers the hope that together the works will be taken as an evocation of belonging and cultural identity rather than a stark historical appraisal.
In contrast, the approach taken by Alex Hurst differs radically from her colleagues – hers is informed by a decidedly punk sensibility. At the time when she did her most famous work, Hurst was a young mother who would take her daughter in a pushchair on her photoshoots. Hurst’s take on consent, she tells us was never ask whilst noting that on one occasion she did run into some trouble with a group of women.
Intriguingly, Cubbin alludes to the fact that Hurst is notorious for never allowing anyone to photograph her own image. As a result, Cubbin uses Hurst’s disembodied voice as she talks us through a collection of her pictures – except for one well-crafted moment. Through his research, Cubbin discovered a photograph of Hurst, perhaps the only one in existence. He tracked down the owner of the flat where the photo was taken who tells us the story of the genesis of the image.
As there is no talking head on screen for the Hurst sequence, this gives Cubbin the opportunity to show a wide range of her work which tends to focus on women and children. There was one particular sequence that stood out for me and demonstrated Cubbin’s skills as a filmmaker. Hurst is telling us about one of her most celebrated works – a picture of an aged woman sitting on a promenade bench looking out to sea. In the grand Romantic tradition stretching back to Casper Friedrichs and beyond, we only see the back of the figure looking out on the infinity of the Ocean. Juxtaposed to Hurst’s still image, Cubbin’s camera shows us the same bench but with two young children gambolling passed in a blur of motion. The children might have stepped out of any one of Hurst’s early photographs – the reality of the movement has an eerie effect as though the past has become the present.
In one other area, Cubbin highlights Hurst’s difference in approach from her colleagues – historical appraisal. We are shown one of her powerful portraits – a man on the beach – cigarette in mouth holding a plastic bag. Hurst excitedly points out to us the Kwik Save (a UK budget chain store) logo on the bag and how important it is in anchoring the image in a historical period. Possibly, Cubbin is asking us to think here whether we should be interested in art and not archaeology and whether the Kwik Save logo is mere spindrift when set against the endurance of memory and belonging.
The triptych of the three photographers forms the core of the movie and gets us to think about the act of making art by photography and its relationship to the community in which a work of art is produced. The empathy for and engagement with his subjects that Cubbin shows is truly exceptional for a tyro filmmaker.
In the context of the movie as a whole, I have already mentioned how powerful the contemporary filmed footage is but would like to reiterate just how sensual the images are. I am sure other viewers will have their favourites but two in particular left me haunted and are worth looking out for. The pair of incongruous 70s tower blocks brooding over the town like the kaput of a feudal baron. The see-saw motion boat in the amusement park with giant statues at the bow and stern. Forever in motion, the statues rise and plunge as if on the ocean but going nowhere – I kept imagining that each was a PVC likeness of Casper Friedrichs condemned in perpetuity to gaze on the Irish Sea.
For some filmmakers when making a movie about still photography might have regarded the soundtrack as an afterthought – an add-on. Not so with Framing New Brighton – sound is integral to the film’s feeling and texture. Here, I would mention the fine work by the sound team – Finn Stewart Jones, Daniel Draper, and Sam Auguste.
I assume the music by Hypnic Jerk was commissioned for the film – it is so apposite. The music is acoustic guitar but on occasion, usually in the nighttime scenes to provide some edge, counterposed with some discordant layered electronic concrete.
The attention to detail is remarkable. I enjoyed the sound of the click of the shutter each time one of the photographers’ stills came on screen – acting as a punctuation mark to the contemporary film footage. With a very deft touch, the team use 80s music at very low volume as an aural backdrop to the Chelsea Reach nightclub scenes to evoke the atmosphere of the time.
On a second viewing, I picked up a series of sounds when the acoustic guitar accompanies the introductory section of contemporary film footage. The sounds appeared to be made by something striking the fret or the body of the guitar and they seemed to be a simulacrum of the later camera shutter clicks. Was the intention to say – regard the lingering film footage in the same way as you view the older still photography? Who knows? But such is the depth and power of the movie that this is the type of question it had your reviewer asking themselves.
I just read in the specification section of the submission the budget for Framing New Brighton was £500. A miracle – in biblical terms that is up there with the loaves and fishes. Yet it is a great demonstration of what an indy filmmaker who is committed to working within a community whilst celebrating that community’s values and identity can achieve on the smallest of budgets. I would hazard that in future years the movie will come to be regarded as a classic of the short documentary format.
For the director, Framing New Brighton is a remarkable achievement. I very much look forward to reviewing any future submissions. Actually, that is an understatement, I can’t wait to see their next movie. For IFL readers, try to catch the film when it screens as part of our festival next year!