Today - October 14th - I deactivated my X/Twitter account for Voyageuse. It's exactly 11 years ago on this day I decided to make the film, after receiving a cursory two-line rejection email from Creative Scotland - a long and sorry story - I was and am ineligible for Screen Scotland funding - apparently I don't meet their criteria. It was the first and only time I submitted an application. When I asked for feedback as to why my project was rejected, their response: "we have other, higher priority projects" was a perfect summation of what I already knew.
That I made the film with zero funding remains an achievement. By summoning my inner Imp - I was an Imp in the Brownies long ago - I spent three years writing, designing, shooting, editing, grading and creating a sound design by applying what Robert Bresson described as "he who can work with the minimum can work with the most." It's a mantra I live by. My next three planned projects - God willing - will adopt the same model, if more nuanced and refined - using CGI, live action and life's little accidents, the serendipitous events that occur in real life that can change the course of a story, of a life.
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This is my first post in months. Since then I've had an emergency re-admission to hospital so I guess it's fair to say I've had better years. My only film-related work so far is an overdue return to writing the final draft script for the Tilo project and my voting duties for the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) in the Raindance Maverick category - this year there are 57 entries.
Those following this blog might know my story but sometimes I wonder myself how much of it is true. An online search for "May Miles Thomas" or "Elemental Films" lists articles about me/my work but virtually none tells the whole story, lost among trivial errors; misspelt names, incorrect dates and misquotes. Does it matter?
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I’m writing this in early May 2025, several weeks after surgery, my fourth operation in six years. I also moved house a week before being admitted to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. There’s only so much stress a mind and body can take, I reasoned, thinking it was better to struggle through two life-changing events in quick succession rather than stretch them into a distant and uncertain future.
It’s months since I last posted, so long that I had to remind myself what the point of it is. Indeed, at the end of last year, having sold our home and upended our lives, I wondered whether I should continue working at all because while I live to make films, there's something preventing me from doing the thing I long to do. What's going on? A psychic block? Opioid addiction and its attendant brain fog? Or could it be a lack of confidence in both myself and the project?
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At the age of 3 or 4, I wrote my first poem, Leaf. It was about a leaf on its way to the ground. For my tender years it was fairly advanced since I didn't come into contact with an actual tree until I was at least 5. In fact, I had no idea that leaves grew on trees or even what a tree was. Nor did I have any sense of the changing seasons, raised in a place where nature was limited to flies, rats, worms and weeds. Maybe I saw the tree on TV or in a picture book.
Where does this impulse to create come from? As children, do we all start from the same place only to have the urge knocked out of us? Growing up, it never occurred to me to become an artist, writer or poet. As a working-class child I had no role models or parents with ambitions, either for themselves or for their offspring. Not once did I visit a (free) art gallery or museum. The notion that art could be a job was ludicrous, yet it was my destiny.
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