R&D materials, 16mm camera and film tests, November 11 2023

R&D materials, 16mm camera and film tests, January 27 2024

 

Original film shoot, Simon, in Available Light, March 2020, b/w reversal, silent, 3mins

 

       

 

A 16mm sound and image portrait of d/Deaf DJ Simon Eilbeck and the Queer, Trans, alternative and non-binary communities who gather at his monthly Glasgow disco Hot Mess.

 

Synopsis

The Disco is a nonfiction experimental documentary portrait of Queer d/Deaf DJ Simon Eilbeck formed from a collection of 16mm film and location sound recordings encountering members of the queer, trans, alternative and non-binary communities who gather at his monthly disco Hot Mess at The Poetry Club, in Glasgow, Scotland. Encounters include artist and academic Conal McStravick, who responds to the film’s footage alongside their ongoing research on the filmmaker and AIDS activist Stuart Marshall, Trans femme artist Nat Walpole in her studio and interview with Leyre Mann Vadillo, who has attended the disco since its inception. The Disco considers the contingencies, intimacies and tensions of encounter, between filmmaker and subject, recorded at a time of precarity, austerity and crisis but contain illuminations on radical forms of assembly, queer dreaming, hapticality, care and consent; and the infectiousness of joy.  The film references Hours for Jerome by Nathaniel Dorsky, Wittgenstein by Derek Jarman and the biography and works of Belgian experimental composer Henri Pousseur. 

 

 

 

 

 

THE DISCO

A portrait of Simon Eilbeck
A film by Alex Hetherington

16mm colour and black & white, sound, 2025

© Alexander Films MMXXV

 

Thank you:

Simon Eilbeck, Colin O’Hara, Luke Fowler, Catherine Street, James Ginzburg, Conal McStravick, Nat Walpole, Leyre Mann Vadillo, Mark Vernon, Benjamin Owen, Neil Simpson, David Toop, Harry Ritchie, Lyndsay Mann, Lydia Beilby, Jim Lambie, Wendy Kirkup, Sasha Staicu, David Upton at LUX Scotland, Karen Cunningham, Hannan Jones, Ishan Clemenco, Calum Sutherland, Daniel Hughes, James Ley, Ross Whyte, GF Ramsay and Karen Kelly, on portrait Luke Fowler, Sarah Neely/Urth Productions/Screen Scotland, Ute Aurand and Scott Baxter, all at The Poetry Club/SWG3, all at CCA, and Offline, Glasgow, all at Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, Saeed Taji Farouky and the cohort of Bridging the Gap 21/Scottish Documentary Institute. And those who wish to remain anonymous on verbal histories of queer discos like Daisy’s, Aberdeen, Fire Island, Edinburgh, Nightingale, Birmingham, QueerUpNorth, Jason Okundaye and Larry Blagg Archives among others

Thank you to Kodak, Digital Orchard, Gauge Film and James Holcombe

Funded by Open Project Creative Scotland and supported by CCA, Glasgow. The Disco premiered at opening gala Glasgow Short Film Festival, GFT1, 19 March 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE DISCO
Music by David Toop, Luke Fowler
Sound edit mix and mastering, James Ginzburg with Luke Fowler

Sound recording, (Studio) Mark Vernon
Sound recording, (Tarot, Queens Park) Benjamin Owen
Sound recording, (Nov) Luke Fowler
Sound assistant, (Tarot, QP, Sept, Oct, Nov) Harry Ritchie

Second camera, Arri (September) Luke Fowler

Voice over: Text written and performed by Catherine Street; Extract from Simon Eilbeck’s essay LET’S GO SWIMMING: One man’s reflections on being gay and bisexual read by Simon Eilbeck

Main cameras, Bolex and Scoopic Alex Hetherington

Edited by Alex Hetherington

Color grade by Daniel Hughes

Colour stock processed by Kodak London, scan by Digital Orchard
Black and white stock processed and scanned by Gauge Film and James Holcombe

 

Filmed on location Glasgow, 2023–2024, Edinburgh 2020 (black and white HD reversal)