The 'Stute

 

An elderly lady’s vivid memories of terrifying a cinema audience decades ago provide humour for a prize-winning animation film from Cardiff’s Cinetig company.

The‘Stute was made with pupils from two South Wales schools and celebrates the crucial role Oakdale Workmen's Institute, Gwent, had in the mining community. The film won a top 2008 award at a prestigious London ceremony where Kevin Spacey presented the prize given by First Light. First Light support 5 to19 year filmmakers thanks to National Lottery funding through the UK Film Council.

Contributing to The ‘Stute’s success (recently a 2008 BAFTA Cymru award nominee) were the poignant recollections of Margaret (Peggy) Page, former usherette and cleaner at the Institute, which opened in 1917.

Her memories inspired youngsters to create striking images in The ‘Stute’. Pupils of Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Plasmawr, and Cymmer Afan Secondary School, Afan Valley worked with Cinetig’s three past BAFTA Cymru winners Gerald Conn, Jane Hubbard and Jeremy Roberts on the film.

Oakdale Institute was closed down in the 1980’s and, apart from its cinema (opened in 1927), was rebuilt in St Fagans: National History Museum in 1995. The film marries animation with oral recordings, using four minutes of interviews with Mrs Page and Revd. Tom Davies, (which was cut down from four hours of oral archive).

Mrs Page, now 84, recalls seeing as a child (and committeeman’s daughter) the classic silent The Phantom of the Opera (1925) starring horror legend Lon Chaney. When flaming torches filled the screen, the movie’s colour tinting was so lifelike that the young girl hollered ‘fire’! Within five minutes the cinema was emptied as alarmed miners and their wives scurried to the exit. “Our dad said’ Trust you’.” It was perhaps one of the few times anyone stole a scene from Chaney.

Cinetig’s film blends live action, photographs and animation to evoke Oakdale’s heyday, focusing on the library, billiard room, and cinema. Ghosts of old Institute regulars are conjured up through Mrs Page’s mind’s eye. In later life she cried “like the rain” when she could visualise “all the men sitting in their places … as if they’d come back to haunt this place.”

Plasmawr’s James Barnden, 15, composed and played the The ‘Stute’s music on keyboards, the first time a pupil has scored a Cinetig short in its 50-film history. James and 14 year old fellow Plasmawr pupil Jordanne Richards collected the First Light award in London.

“It was a challenging, film with a few firsts for us,” says Gerald Conn. “We encouraged pupils to do CG work, using a professional system, After Effects. We would like, increasingly, to provide genuine training for teenagers”.