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Stanley A Man Of Variety
Stanley A Man Of Variety
Starring: Timothy Spall
Director: Stephen Cookson
Writers: Timothy Spall, Stephen Cookson
Co-Producer: Peter Keegan
Log-Line: A middle aged man who has been stuck in prison for far too long starts to see hallucinations
**** WINNER TIMOTHY SPALL - Outstanding Achievement - UK Film Festival, UK 2017
**** WINNER DIAMOND AWARD - Best Narrative Feature - California Film Awards, USA 2017
**** SPECIAL JURY AWARD - Manchester Film Festival, UK 2017
**** WINNER BEST ACTOR - Oxford International Film Festival, UK 2017
**** WINNER BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY - Kew Gardens Festival Of Cinema - New York 2017
**** WINNER BEST MAKE-UP - Kew Gardens Festival Of Cinema - New York 2017
**** WINNER BEST ACTOR - Marbella International Film Festival, Spain 2017
**** WINNER BEST ACTOR - Southampton International Film Festival, UK 2017
**** WINNER BEST FEATURE FILM - Blowup Arthouse International Film Festival - Chicago, USA 2017
**** WINNER BEST ACTOR - MARCELLO MASTROIANNI AWARD - Blowup Arthouse International Film Festival - Chicago, USA 2017
**** WINNER BEST COMEDY FEATURE - Cutting Edge Film Festival USA 2017
**** WINNER BEST SOUND - Eindhovens Film Festival, Netherlands 2017
**** WINNER BEST IN GENRE - Erie International Film Festival, USA 2017
**** WINNER BEST DIRECTOR - Virgin Spring Cinefest, India 2018
**** WINNER BEST DIRECTOR - Cult Critic Movie Awards, India 2018
Screened within actor retrospective - Ecrans Britanniques - Nimes Film Festival, France 2017
In Competition - Shanghai International Film Festival, China 2017
In Competition - Dingle International Film Festival, Ireland 2017
In Competition - Santiago International Film Festival, Chile 2017
In Competition - Crystal Palace International Film Festival 2017
In Competition - Wirral International Film Festival, UK 2017
In Competition - Anglicon's Anglophile Film Festival, Seattle USA 2017
Nominated Best Comedy - Red Rock International Film Festival - Cedar City - USA 2017
In Competition - i Filmmaker International Film Festival, Spain - 2018
Finalist - FIC Festival International De Cine De Autor - Mexico - 2018
Finalist - The Grand Budapest Film Festival - 2018
SYNOPSIS
Passionately convinced of his innocence, Stanley a forgotten and irrelevant nobody approaches his fifteenth year incarcerated in a Victorian psychiatric prison. Once a high risk facility, now in its last days before closure, Stanley seemingly the lone inmate of this now ‘security relaxed' facility, cleans and polishes the grim gothic interior as he has done as a trustee for many years. The routine and metronomic drudgery of this task has always been underpinned with the ever increasing and painful desire to honour a solemn promise he made to himself to visit the grave of his dear departed only daughter on the 15th anniversary of her death. As this deadline approaches he finds his situation more and more unbearable. The one thing that assuages his grim situation is the ‘trustee inmates’ privilege of being allowed to watch and re-watch the video film section of his prized collection of show business memorabilia on an old television set in his cell. He accesses this via a token system granted to him each day by unseen guards which he feeds into a meter. This eclectic gallery of heart warming and eccentric performers has always acted as cherished friends even surrogate family to this lonely damaged Ignored Man. When this privilege is inexplicably withdrawn, he is so distressed it induces a physical and mental seizure and sets him off on a bizarre unsettling nightmarish journey through his life forcing him to face up to his unusual and damaging upbringing and denied culpability in his own guilt. His mental fragility and grasp on reality is thrown into kaleidoscopic chaos as the adored televisual companions begin to appear as a metamorphosed mixture of both them and him, Displaying there sinister and unsettling side, as well as the benign comical one, they take him on a journey to the unbearable truth and beyond.
THE FILMMAKERS AIM
A homage to a gallery of British comedy greats.
A subversion of that homage, in tandem with an exploration of how fantastically bizarre and colourful the interior life of an overlooked non entity can be.
An inquiry beyond the surface of benign comedy into its sinister connotations. Ultimately...
A journey through the mental anguish of damaged mind.
A investigation into whether hallucinated tormenting spirits can be both manifestations and facets of one mans multiple personality disorder and can that appalling mental state be preferable to one of calm tranquillised normality. Can the companionship a severely damaged mind finds with its tormenting guides be a better alternative than the reality of abject loneliness and isolation?
A story that captures the atmosphere and texture of two films from completely different genres Kind Hearts And Coronets and Eraserhead and cross fertilise them into one unsettlingly funny and disturbing filmic tale to see all this through the eyes of the sort of nondescript human being that passes by our peripheral vision unnoticed a thousand times a day.
A Man of utter inconsequence our hero:
Stanley A Man Of Variety.
