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Martin Scorsese once said in an interview about John Cassavettes 'When you say just pick up a camera and shoot a movie, you have to understand that means you're crazy. When you pick up that camera and look through and start shooting something happens, like a drug and you've got to keep going and you start borrowing money, begging - till you have your movie.'

'Four years after first starting 'Dark Summer', a year of pre-production, one location vehicle lost in the River Mersey, eighteen months filming at weekends, an Arri 2c blimped camera, sixteen stitches, a totally dedicated Liverpool cast and crew, three hundred extras, a three year driving ban, the support of companies like : Agfa, Ranks, Sammies, Cinequip and Zonal, six months editing, suspected ulcers, the remaining rushes used as junk spacing, no budget, Clive Chins original Reggae soundtrack, and a completed 35mm feature film in the full 2.35 : 1 Cinemascope ratio later...

I'm beginning to understand what he meant'. - Charles Teton

Synopsis

Dark Summer is a simple, urban love story set in Liverpool. It is a tale of the lost innocents of the two young protagonists Jes (Joeline Garner Joel) and Abe (Steve Ako). The film follows them on the voyage that is their relationship, through one long summer full of struggle and achievement, love and death and ultimately failure and reevaluation. Which is dictated not so much by their own conscious decision but by the intervention of fate.

Instigated by Jes, They meet and fall in love when she starts work one summer at her fathers scrap metal yard, where Abe works as a mechanic. At night Abe fastidiously trains to better himself as an amateur boxer.

After warnings from her over protective father Alan (Chris Darwin) to stay away from Abe, circumstances quickly change when he catches Jess and Abe together. With Abe sacked from his job, Jess decides to rebel against her father and moves in with Abe. She immediately finds work in a local nightclub, while Abe unsuccessfully continues to search for a new job. Everything starts to look brighter when Abe is approached by a professional boxing manager and at the same time Jess becomes pregnant. It seems like nothing can stop their happiness together. Jes leaves her job and starts obsessively to prepare for the forth coming birth of their child. The symbol of this being Abe's training room which is maternally transformed into the babies nursery.

Suddenly all their dreams are shattered when Jes unexpectedly miscarriages. Knocked sideways with grief they find themselves unable to communicate. The Film continues to study the slow breakdown of their relationship and desires to it's final conclusion.

Shot entirely in Liverpool, the city is as much part of the film as the two main characters, personifying the juxtaposition of harshness and warmth with its beautiful yet raw surroundings. The ebb and flow of the River Mersey echoing the certainty that time will pass. Visually evocative and filmed in Cinemascope, with an original reggae soundtrack by Augustus Pablo, the film evokes the memories of a summer gone by, rather like a moving photograph album.

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