And I Refuse To Forget

April 30, 2008 4:38 AM

"And I Refuse To Forget," the three-minute sci-fi thriller from 21-year-old director Nuru Rimington-Mkali, has won the grand prize in the Filmaka feature film competition. Judges include Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Neil Labute and many others. For his efforts, Rimington-Mkali wins the director's chair of his first feature film, to be produced by Filmaka. (Lots of other great stuff on Filmaka, too.)
posted by jbickers (24 comments total)

Wow. At first I thought it was going to me a lame rip off of Memento, but it wasn't even close. It goes in a totally different direction. That's an interesting premise, and pretty good film. I would love to read a short story or short novel expanding on this idea, it could be awesome. Thanks for pointing out Filmaka, that's where I'll be wasting today.
posted by Science! at 4:56 AM on April 30

A little bit Memento, a little bit Equilibrium, pretty decent. I'm going to watch that again later.
posted by cashman at 5:17 AM on April 30

Shows what you can do with no budget but a bit of invention... I actually wanted it to be longer which is always a good sign.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:36 AM on April 30

Nice. the narration shouldn't be whispered though.
posted by leibniz at 6:44 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]

My real name is Andy Lippman
And I must speak entirely in a whisper

Snark aside, that was kinda cool. Hard to do any sort of memory sci-fi without recalling Memento or Johnny Mnemonic. But still good.
posted by Nelson at 7:45 AM on April 30

Enjoyed that. Thanks.
posted by hojoki at 8:03 AM on April 30

Hard to do any sort of memory sci-fi without recalling Memento or Johnny Mnemonic.

There's a bizarre meta-irony to how hard I have tried to forget ever seeing Johnny Mnemonic.
posted by cortex at 8:05 AM on April 30 [7 favorites]

Great little film. Hope the feature budget means he doesn't have go to Budget Hoarse Narration Casting next time.
posted by RakDaddy at 8:14 AM on April 30

That was pretty impressive. The dialog itself makes for a decent short story, and the way it was put to film only showed a couple slight mishandlings (the narration I think could've been a little better delivered).
posted by chimaera at 8:31 AM on April 30

I thought it was interesting. The whispering did, I think, get a bit old after a while, but otherwise I can't find anything to fault.
posted by sotonohito at 9:01 AM on April 30

Cool site. It'll be interesting to see how he handles the sensory connections in the feature film. Constant flashes could easily lead to tedious overkill. And I would leave out the hair smelling. No matter how sensuously done I'd be creeped out to wake up to someone smelling my hair.
posted by Hugonaut at 9:15 AM on April 30

*smells Hugonaut's hair*
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 9:53 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]

ewwwwwww...see, still creepy.
posted by Hugonaut at 10:06 AM on April 30

And I would leave out the hair smelling. No matter how sensuously done I'd be creeped out to wake up to someone smelling my hair.

What appeared to be knicker-sniffing through me out of the thing for a moment with a WTF!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:58 AM on April 30

More like La Jetee narrated by the guy from Last Year at Marienbad.

Wish I liked it more. The narration never added up to much except and the visuals were less than compelling. As for the feature, I'm not sure what it would look like, the idea in the short is too thin to sustain and I sure as heck don't want to watch the bald dude in darkened solitary for more than a couple of seconds. (Actually, I don't want to watch him in semi-darkened, semi-solitariness, semi-clothed with his lady friend either.)
posted by grounded at 11:04 AM on April 30

Unless I overlooked something, it doesn't necessarily say that his feature debut will be this story - just that this story won him the deal to make his first film, whatever it may be.
posted by jbickers at 11:13 AM on April 30

Is it my imagination, or is everything at Filmaka posted in the wrong aspect ratio? It looks like they've taken 16x9 images letterboxed in a 4x3 frame, and then "squished" that 4x3 frame into a 16x9 aspect ratio, which makes everyone look a little shorter and fatter than they should. (It does the protagonist of "And I Refuse To Forget" no favors.)

As far as the film goes, it's kind of awesome given the constraints (three minutes long, MiniDV photography) but didn't exactly rock my socks in the grand scheme. The voiceover was more compelling than the images — might have gotten more mileage if it were told entirely in still images, but I suppose then its La Jetée lineage would be to explicit.
posted by Joey Bagels at 11:54 AM on April 30

It's actually part of the text of the story, Joey Bagels: in the future, everyone is fatter and the fashion in type has drifted toward the squattish.
posted by cortex at 11:56 AM on April 30

...after sex she smells a bit of a CIA financed military coup in Latin America

Henceforth, I'm going to use this phrase to describe my wife when talking to strangers.

Cool video.
posted by quin at 1:52 PM on April 30

Interesting idea... but no short film for me can surpass The Silent City.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 2:18 PM on April 30

I'd never seen that before Uotc, thanks for the link. Definitely my new favourite.
posted by Zack_Replica at 8:52 PM on April 30

Very Cool!
posted by LostZombies at 1:00 AM on May 2

The expiration date on this thread has come and gone, but while Silent City was undoubtedly cool, Demon (found via Ruairi Robinson's website) gets my vote for its sheer short film creepiness.
posted by adamdschneider at 4:25 PM on May 4

Adamdschneider, that was SUPER disturbing... thanks.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 5:20 PM on May 6