What were you doing on your sixteenth birthday? Hopefully something better than Liam. Sweet Sixteen came out three years before MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen and shows a semi-orphaned teenager waiting for his mum to get released from prison. It’s another brilliantly bleak depiction of working class youth in the U.K. from Ken Loach and a perfect reality check to the super rich spoiled kids which took over MTV screens a few years later.
Dadli features a boy’s narrative over a montage of shots of Antiguan life. It’s a brief but incredibly immersive 15 minutes in Antigua & Barbuda that any fans of Jonas Mekas and Khalil Joseph should love.
Dadli is short, but it doesn’t need time to build its beautifully immersive aesthetic. The quick editing and dulled diegetic sound (the music and narrative are the focus in this film) don’t allow you to think of anything else apart from the images and atmospheric sounds you are hearing, whilst the natural home video style texture of the film – which is taken to the next level with the cinematography – and the mid to close range shots draw you in further. This combination of techniques makes it feel both immersive and intimate – as if you are experiencing a Fast-Forwarded snippet of life on the island. The texture of the film even sweats the close-mugginess of the night, the warm melancholy of the sunsets, and laid back vibrancy of daytime. It feels like you’re there. Whilst other movies capture island life over the course of a feature film, Dadli manages to do it in a compact 15 minutes.
The young boy’s narrative is what separates the immersive style of Dadli from Khalil Joseph’s art-films and music videos. He’s a kid playing an adult – with no role models or parents. He talks of murder, drugs, and poverty, giving us an ‘underground tour’ of the island. However, his narrative never feels completely believable, which makes the film feel like it could be a twisted fantasy or exaggerated memory (of the brief adult narration) instead of a harsh reality. The fleeting shots of the montage helps to blur the distinction between fantasy and reality, turning it into an even more trance-like, immersive experience.
If you’re a fan of movies that use sound and editing to immerse viewers into an environment, you should watch Dadli. It creates a feeling of life on Antigua that you probably wouldn’t experience as a tourist or visitor.
What to Watch Next
For more immersive films that rely on sound, check out Khalil Joseph’s catalogue of music films such as Process(featuring Sampha) and Good Kid m.A.A.d City (featuring Kendrick Lamar). Both, like Dadli create a strong sense of place through the editing and sound of their movies.
You could also try the films of Jonas Mekas, such as Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania and Lost, Lost, Lost. These films use home-video style footage and quick editing to immerse viewers into the narrators stories.
Or for more immersive editing from the Caribbean, try Jamaica’s Right Near the Beach.
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