An electric short drama set in South London’s underbelly. Screening exclusively via Le Cinéma Club.
With a baby on the way and pressure mounting from all sides, it is time for Archy and Rachel to get their act together and find somewhere to live, whatever it takes. When Kenny, a local pillar of the community, returns to his beloved carpentry studio and finds his livelihood threatened, we learn just how far he’ll go to protect his home. Told from the perspective of both the squatter and the squatted, Diddly Squat is a hyper-kinetic urban short story told with electrifying style. Live action, still photos, and animation are all incorporated by young British photographer and filmmaker Frank Lebon in his narrative debut, along with a diverse range of cinematic influences.
The whole film was shot on MiniDV, even the sequences created in plasticine animation and still photos – these printed, then re-filmed on video. This process comes from Lebon’s belief in the power of unifying disparate mediums with a single aesthetic element. He chose MiniDV for the second-hand feeling it brought to the images, wanting “the film to feel like it had a life before you watched it, as though it’s an object that could be found in a car boot sale.” This quality was pursued throughout the production, including in the sound and score, avoiding excessive polish and keeping quirks and mistakes. Diddly Squat was scored by Mount Kimbie, which is the first time the electronic duo composed music for a film.
