“TWST / Things We Said Today”, the hybrid film that filmmaker Andrei Ujică started working on in 2012, will be presented at the Venice International Film Festival, in the official selection – Out of Competition – Non Fiction. The festival takes place this year between August 28 and September 7. The “Official selection – Out of competition” section presents 21 of the most important feature films of the year, both fiction and documentaries, which share “spectacular stories, presented through original narrative and stylistic means”.
“TWST / Things We Said Today” is conceived as a time capsule of the weekend of August 13-15, 1965, in New York, framed by The Beatles’ arrival in the city and their first concert at Shea Stadium, and is told from the perspective of two teenagers whose voices are played by young American actors Tommy McCabe and Therese Azzara. The main male character is Geoffrey, son of Joe O’Brien, a popular DJ of the era, host of the morning show at WMCA, the first radio station to broadcast Beatles songs in New York. Once a young writer, Geoffrey O’Brien has since become a well-known poet and essayist. Judith Kristen, the person behind the film’s female lead, is a well-known Beatles fan who attended nine of the band’s American concerts, including the one at Shea Stadium in 1965.
The film is composed entirely of archival material from the era (ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.), 8mm film from personal archives, and footage of the concert, which was recorded on 14 35mm cameras, but later released home movies by ABC, in 16mm copies. The characters appear as semi-animated drawings in the film, which were created by French artist Yann Kebbi and integrated into the middle of the events with the help of visual effects. The script, written by Andrei Ujică, includes biographical information from Judith Kristen’s diary, excerpts from an autofictional account by Geoffrey O’Brien, as well as fragments from the short story “Isabela, the butterfly’s friend” by Andrei Ujică, published in 1972, translated for film project by Philip Ó Ceallaigh. The title of the film, “TWST / Things We Said Today”, comes from one of the Beatles songs that anticipates the moment when the present becomes a ghostly past, to which you can no longer return but you cannot forget it either.
“Among my high school dreams were these: to work with a big pop band and make an American film. But still, it wasn’t until 50 years later that I had the courage to build a film around the first concert given by the greatest band of all time at Shea Stadium. As I told the young New York actors whose voices I recorded last fall, it doesn’t matter how long it takes to fulfill your dream, the main thing is to succeed before you forget it,” said director Andrei Ujică.
In “TWST / Things We Said Today”, “the context in which the concert takes place takes a new shape. Realities of 1965 are juxtaposed: the New York World’s Fair, East Coast television coverage of the Watts race riot in Los Angeles, Harlem streets and suburban homes, from Jones Beach vacationers to market workers of fish, thousands have been immortalized: every space outlined separately, every face and place presented equally, every moment a center,” says writer Geoffrey O’Brien about the film.
The film “TWST / Things We Said Today” is produced by Les Films du Camélia, Modern Electric Pictures and Tangaj Production, in co-production with ARTE France Cinéma and INA: Institut national de l’audiovisuel, with the support of Eurimages, Fondation Cartier pour l ‘art contemporain, HfG / ZKM Filminstitut, Arte France, UPFAR-ARGOA, SACEM and Avanpost. Director and script: Andrei Ujică. Editing and sound: Dana Bunescu. Visual effects supervisor: Olga Avramov. Drawing artist: Yann Kebbi. Producers: Ronald Chammah, Anamaria Antoci, Andrei Ujică. Executive producers: Nouredine Essadi, Anda Ionescu.
“TWST / Things We Said Today” will be released in cinemas in Romania in early 2025, distributed by Bad Unicorn.