Two Balliol English finalists have made a short film, Dusklands. It was directed by Bruno Atkinson and written by Toye Oladinni (both Balliol 2018).
In a commentary about the film, Bruno Atkinson explains: ‘Dusklands is a post-colonial, post-virus Don Quixote, which just happened to be filmed. Originally a short story by Toye Oladinni (“In a Quiet Country House in Caterham”) written at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, it too was plagued by a host of problems — camera failures, hours of footage lost, our horse almost kicking a pedestrian into the Thames … The shoot was so hectic, in fact, that I barely had time to direct — rather, my approach was to point a camera in the direction of a suited and mounted colonial officer and shout at him to shout at others. And to ask his ‘Major’ to look back with distrust. Bringing a polo horse into the Radcam square without permission, frantically purchasing a real WWI dental corps dress suit three nights before the shoot on eBay, the result fizzles with a strange energy. As Kippers explores the worlds of Cowley and Blackbird Leys, uttering deeply problematic and racially charged speeches that, I hope, do not go unchallenged, my aim was ultimately to represent Toye’s character — a brilliant mix of Alonso Quijana, Coetzee’s white man, and that Oxford student we all seem, somehow, to know.’
The cast includes Balliol students Jake Dealtry (2018), Rory D’Angelo (2018) and Konrad Sitkowski (2018), and the film was supported by the Oxford University Filmmaking Foundation.
Dusklands is available to watch on YouTube here.