Low Tide at Six, Screened in Lyon

On the first Saturday of September, Leïla Ferrand showed Low Tide at Six in a community hall on the Croix-Rousse, as part of the small screening series she has run there for four years. Hana Morrow came over from Glasgow for it. The two had never met in person. When they recorded our second podcast episode in the summer, it was over a video call that dropped halfway through.

The hall has flat floors, stacking chairs and a projector that needs ten minutes to warm up, which Leïla considers part of the programme. About sixty people came. The film follows a crew of shellfish pickers on a tidal estuary over eleven months and has almost no dialogue, and for the first few minutes you could hear people settling, coats and bags and a child asking a question. Then the hall went quiet and stayed that way for the remaining twenty.

Afterwards

Leïla asked about the shot of the walk out across the flats, which runs for more than two minutes without a cut. Hana said she had tried it at half the length and it became a different film, one she liked less. Someone near the back asked whether she had ever misjudged the water herself. Twice, she said, and both times the camera was running. Neither made it into the cut.

Thank you to Leïla, to the volunteers who stacked the chairs afterwards, and to everyone who stayed for soup.