New Beg Steal Borrow documentary completed

Beg Steal Borrow News, New projects, Selfie

Selfie, the new documentary/essay film from Beg Steal Borrow, has been completed.

The film, which is comprised almost uniquely of selfies, was shot predominantly in February and March 2014. It combines footage of its maker, William Brown, at home and at work during the shooting period, as well as in locations as diverse as Basel, Paris and Seattle.

The film is an investigation into selfie culture from the inside: it attempts to understand the selfie and selfie culture by taking selfies – rather than hypothesising about them from the outside. Or, as the narrator puts it in the film, the way to understand the selfie is to be like Seth Brundle in The Fly and to self-administer the treatment!

William Brown takes a selfie in his film of the same name.

William Brown takes a selfie in his film of the same name.

Selfie features brief glimpses of various Beg Steal Borrow collaborators, including Kristina Gren (En Attendant Godard, Common Ground), Hannah Croft (En Attendant Godard), Grace Ker (The New Hope) and Annette Hartwell (The New Hope).

The film also features sequences involving filmmaker Andrea Luka Zimmerman (Taskafa: Stories from the Street, Estate: A Reverie), Spanish actress Eulalia Ramón (Goya in Bordeaux) and more.

It also involves a voice over that considers the obsession with self-recording to be a virus. Perhaps the biggest epidemic of the contemporary world. Given that the word selfie enjoyed a 17,000 per cent increase in usage in 2013 alone, the film is certainly a timely meditation on a contemporary phenomenon.

The film will be submitted imminently to film festivals – as will Ur: The End of Civilization in 90 Tableaux and The New Hope, the latter of which goes into post-production imminently. Look here for imminent screenings (or contact William Brown if you are interested in showing or seeing the film elsewhere).

Here comes The New Hope

Beg Steal Borrow News, New projects, Selfie, The New Hope, Ur: The End of Civilization in 90 Tableaux

Exciting times for Beg Steal Borrow Films!

As final touches are put on to Ur: The End of Civilization in 90 Tableaux (with festival submissions to take place as soon as is ready), and as Selfie is about to go into post-production, shooting is about to begin on new zero-budget feature, The New Hope.

The New Hope is an adaptation of the first part of Miguel de Cervantes’ classic novel, Don Quixote. It tells the story of a man who claims to be Obi Wan Kenobi, and who spends his time going around London trying to right wrongs as per the old Jedi knight errant way.

Oh, and this Obi Wan also challenges Ewan McGregor to a duel – in order to prove that he really is Obi Wan Kenobi and not just some actor playing the part.

The film features Beg Steal Borrow regulars Dennis Chua, Alastair Trevill, Kristina Gren, Nick Marwick, Andrew Slater, Alastair Hird and Deanne Cunningham. And the film will of course be lensed in part by the ever-present and wonderful Tom Maine. Alexandra Brown will also have a brief role in the film – together with her gorgeous new daughter, Ariadne Bullen.

And the film will also feature new Beg Steal Borrow collaborators, including Aleksander Zerov Krawec, Grace Ker, Samuel Taylor, Millad Khonsorkh, Lucia Williams and others.

Filming takes place in and around Hyde Park between 23 and 25 August and 30 and 31 August. A whole feature in a five day shoot!

Passers by by are welcome to interact and to change the film if they spot us.

Otherwise, here’s a teaser featuring Obi Wan and a statue of Karl Marx – explaining how being, rather than acting a Jedi knight is the new source for hope in a world that’s blowing itself to pieces right now.