The
Day Before I Went to Longdome.
Scene 1
A man is running
with a television in his arms, he stops as the television shows the following
image:
A chair appears on the screen with a shadow in the top left-hand
corner, which moves slowly, slow classical music is played, as text is
shown on the screen:
..They say that there is only one female parent,
nevertheless, I have always had two:
The Circle, who has always taken care of me, bringing
me to the place where I was born, to keep me away from the outside existence
and its danger….
Scene 2
The image dissolves
into clouds and the clouds (b/w) dissolve to a new location; two people
are sitting down in front of each other. One is a boy (Luigi) and the
person who speaks is his mother (acted by a man), she says:
- Remember my boy, your town is the gap where you
have been trapped all this time. Today you are leaving us, you will think
that nothing will ever change here and then one day you will come back
and realise that the space took the gap, the time took your people, the
city won’t be your city anymore. Everything will change; you won’t find
what you are looking for because what was yours is gone. The thread will
be broken.
Pause
- Then
and only then will you find out a new gap, the gap created between your
past and your present, a gap where you will be sifting all your existence.
You have to surf in that gap but not sink in it, and for that I want you
to take this with you….
A television appears
and zooms in, the image dissolves into clouds.
Scene 3
Credits (white on a
black background): Today, my son,
the telegraph was invented.
Luigi is running with
a television in his arms, he stops, as the television gets brighter, and
his mother’s voice says:
-Listen Luigi, today a man sent a signal
to another man, the first man was high in the mountains the second was
down on the beach, and the gap between the two men was broken by a signal
sent over distance along a cable..
Scene 4
Credits (white on a
black background): And the man
on the mountain replied: Is that you? And the signal became sound.
Luigi is running again as a text message is sent.
Scene 5
Credits (white on a black background): Is that you?
Luigi is running
again with a television in his arms, he stops as a text message is sent
and screened on the television which he carries. The message says:
What I am supposed to do here, play the fanny banjo or
what?
Once again, he
starts running again.
Scene 6
Clouds (in colour
this time) appear on the screen. They move very slowly and some text is
shown again:
. And the Advice, my second mother. Last
time I saw her, the day before I went to Longdome, she gave me the last
of her first names:
The clouds dissolve
into an abstract image. A figure is sitting down inside an old factory.
Silence, Music. The tempo is broken by the sound of machinery. The camera
moves round 360 degrees. The mother talks as subtitles appear:
- Listen Luigi, today a man sent a signal to another
man. The first man was high in the mountains, the second was down on the
beach, and the gap between the two men was broken by a signal sent over
a distance along a cable. Today, my son, the telegraph was invented.
- The man down on the beach said:
- Oh my God!
- The man on the mountain replied:
- Is that you?
- And the signal became a sound. Today my son, the telephone
was invented.
-Don’t you recognise me? Said the man on the beach and
the signal became a moving image.
A boy (Luigi)
enters the factory and sits downs in front of his mother, the image dissolves
into clouds and the sun appears. The factory appears but from outside.
Starring credits.
Scene 7
Two empty chairs.
A boy enters the factory, we now see the mother sitting down. She says
something but we can’t hear it. Clouds. The boy talks in a strange language,
translated by text:
- What my mother did not tell me is that
on the same day later… mobile phone was invented.
Scene 8
Luigi with the television
is running again. Another message is screened on the television again,
it says;
..come with me as we have never come before..
Scene 9
Credits (white on a
black background): don’t you recognise
me?
Luigi with the television
is walking inside a tunnel (London underground). He looks tired. Change
of location. Now, he is in the street and he stops as his mother’s voice
says:
- And the signal became a moving image.
Luigi’s television shows
the following image:
A still of a close up
of a happy couple drinking wine. Cross zoom.
The picture is now the background of the whole screen. The image is
no longer a still. Pedestrians walk in slow motion. They talk on mobile
phones as they walk. The sound of the arrival of a text message is played
with echo. After 20 seconds the image dissolves into:
Luigi is sitting down
on one of London Underground’s escalator. The escalator goes down. Slow
music. He is hugging his television, half-dreaming. He remembers his mother
the day before he went to Longdome, as the speaker in the underground
says:
- Mind the Gap.
The end