An Impossible Poison (2017)

Updated 11th October 2021

I am delighted to celebrate my first short film, An Impossible Poison, which received its premiere at Lettrétage in Berlin on 16th November 2017 as part of an event called Breaking Ground Berlin: A New British Con_Text.  An Impossible Poison received its London premier at the Royal Albert Hall on 7th March 2018 as part of the That's What She Said night (details here). It has been very well reviewed, screened widely and been selected for eight international film festivals so far. 

"all the careful crafting of an art film, from its velvety decor to its heightened gothic colour palette...it is this attention to styling that brings the element of luxury...every frame is a portrait."

Girls on Film, review and interview 

"awe-inspiring...intriguing, chilling, compelling"

Poetry London

"[a] brilliant horror short"

Emerald Street, article on women in film

An Impossible Poison is available to view for free. Turn the sound up and go to full screen. You can also watch my film series Aurora, starring Alessia Patregnani, as well as little fun vlogs and video blips. 

So far, An Impossible Poison has made the Official Selection of the Five Continents International Film Festival, the International Women’s Film Festival, the New York Lift-Off Festival, the 13Horror.com Film and Screenplay Contest 2018, the Fake Flesh Film Festival, the Night of the Short Film Festival in Antwerp, Shorts on Tap in association with Time Out in November 2019  and the Nosferatu Film Festival 2021. All the laurels for these are below. It is also a semi-finalist in the 2017 STIFF San Maurino Torinese film festival. 

The London X4 Seasonal Short Film Festival reviewed it as:

"eerie, atmospheric [and] well directed"

and Club des Femmes, the feminist film collective, have reviewed it as:

 "intriguing and very atmospheric, beautifully shot and edited."

In a perceptive and very flattering review and interview, which can be read in full here, Girls on Film describe An Impossible Poison as having "all the careful crafting of an art film, from its velvety decor to its heightened gothic colour palette...this attention to styling brings the element of luxury...crossing over into installation-worthy territory...every frame is a portrait."

In their official selection notes, 13horror.com reviewed it as:

"a very intense and intimate film …all very intriguing. The first flash of emotion when [the weird stuff happens] was superb. ...The strange, creepy [other thing] which followed gave me chills. Thought provoking stuff and enjoyable to watch. Great job."

An Impossible Poison is an intense 7 minute narrative short feature which dramatises a few lines from some poems of mine, as commissioned by Speaking Volumes, who wanted me to reinterpret the idea of a writer performing her own work. The text deals with the aftermath of deceit, with ritualistic and ceremonial traditions and the continued attraction of a witchcraft tradition in the contemporary world. I'm interested in ritual behaviours, superstition, sublimation, obsession and catharsis. The atmosphere of the film is heightened and carefully designed, the look stylised, with the camera lingering on the details of cloth, jewellery, décor and on the profile and hands of the main character and her props. In the film, a woman enacts an occult ritual over a score of eerie music. It gets steadily more extreme as the woman is absorbed and exhilarated by the ritual, which offers both release from pain and the thrill of encountering the uncanny. 

I consider myself to be an arthouse auteur and don't think in terms of genres or performance style - so it's funny to me that An Impossible Poison is being interpreted as a horror film. I did the cinematography, art direction and sound design myself (as is quite common on a short auteur project) - the soundtrack is actually made up of about seven sound clips plaited together with varying speeds and levels. The wonderful thing about film is that everything you've done in your career up to that point (in my case, art direction, then a long career in TV and radio) can go into it. 

It was also shown on 25th April 2018 at Words with....Bidisha at the Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex, followed by an in-depth conversation (details here); on 16th June 2018 at APT Gallery in London as part of the Gaze symposium; at the Victoria Gallery, University of Liverpool, on Sunday 21st October 2018; and at Samsung KX in Coal Drops Yard in London on Thursday 28th November 2019 in association with Time Out (details here).

The credits are as follows:

• Written and directed by Bidisha
• Camera operator - Amy Cameron
• Editing – Amy Cameron and Bidisha 

Just for fun, a list of some of the films I like can be found here. Links to my film essays and reviews can be found all over the Net, although I recently wrote about Angelina Jolie's work as a director, the portrayal of Syria in documentaries and features, the new generation of millennial film-makers, the documentary Even When I Fall, Wonder Woman and women in action films, The Assassin and the 'wuxia' Chinese swordfighting genre, women in dystopic science fiction films and documentaries on rape camps in the Bosnian wars and child refugees in Lebanon and Syria.

The full text of the main poem (which I don’t use all of in the film), as well as the extra script lines, are below. The first line of the script is “deceit is my friend” and the final line is “not to suffer”.

An Impossible Poison

Deceit is my friend and it hangs over me,

An angelic nurse hovering at my bedside,

Its wings flexing open, rich and exuberant,

Its long feathers dipped in cold holy water,

Casting drops around me like a bare blanket.

Deceit is my life-partner, the only one I need,

My counterpart, my foil, my voice of reason,

My stalwart retainer who never surprises me,

Accompanying me invisibly down the aisle,

A ghost groom in a wedding video on repeat.

Deceit is the ally who remains at my shoulder

As the others drift coolly away in plain disbelief,

Politely receding while I bid them a sad farewell

Like a queen standing in her castle, nobly robed

In betrayal, the heavy cloak I can never cast off.

Deceit is my meat and drink, its claggy taste

Sits in my throat like an impossible poison

I can never fully purge as I toast the company

Who have no clue that all I can taste is lies

Swilling in my mouth like a long deep kiss.

[Extra script lines as follows:]

The offer of blood is the oldest gift

I offer it up, I offer it up

In the failure of law, rightness is restored,

That is only fair.

The slow inexorable ceremony of natural justice always goes the same way.

First, the procession. Then, the sacrifice. Then the shadow walk.

The offer made, the gods collect

And in return they grand the chance to survive.

Not to succeed,

Just to continue struggling,

Brute survival in the cold hard world.

I pay the blood tax to survive,

Not to be destroyed.

Just survive,

Not to suffer.

All images and text (c) Bidisha

Spread the Word about a gorgeous new anthology called Edgeways

Carol Ann Duffy and Warsan Shire
Photo (c) Spread the Word

I've worked with and admired the London based literary organisation Spread the Word for as long as I can remember. Spread the Word support the city's most exciting writing talent, seek out new voices, organise public panel discussions about topical issues in literature and publishing, launch writing competitions, support the development of new work and generally inspire creativity and energy in anyone who encounters them. This autumn, their great achievement was to bring to public notice one of the most thrilling, searing and original writers I've ever read - the poet Warsan Shire, who is the inaugural poet laureate for London. Read the BBC's coverage of her appointment here. As The Bookseller and The Evening Standard report, her appointment was announced by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. I believe that Shire, along with Malika Booker, are the two most exciting poets and riveting performers creating in the UK today.

Totally fab image of Malika Booker taken by Naomi Woddis for Femficatio.
Visit the source site by clicking here.

After many years of hosting panel discussions with critics and authors, mapping the changes in the industry and encouraging fresh work from hundreds of writers, both emerging and established, Spread the Word are stepping up and becoming publishers in their own right. Introducing.... Flight Press:

I love that inky, indelible looking black block-printed star and punky grassroots Soviet template font. Initially producing sleekly formatted e-books, Flight Press plans to create limited edition, lovely-to-have-and-hold publications like the gorgeous volumes made by Pereine Press and & Other Stories, who published the 2012 Booker-shortlisted breakaway hit, Swimming Home by Deborah Levy, which I discuss here in an essay entitled Even The Rich Suffer.

The debut release by Flight Press is an anthology called Edgeways. Initially an e-book, the anthology brings together the winning and shortlisted writers of the 2013 Spread the Word writing competition for short fiction, which I judged alongside the writers Courttia Newland and Tania Hershman. In judging fiction I am always reminded that talent is not scarce but common. It's waiting to be discovered and is richly deserving of a platform, publication, critical attention, readerly celebration and support from the wider industry.

Courttia Newland's fiction is passionate, topical, fierce; he writes with urgency, great observation and grit. Tania Hershman's short fiction combines cerebral intensity, bullseye imagery and technical precision. And I'm super company at lunch. The winning story in the competition was Living It Edgeways by Claire Sita Fisher. We loved it for its upfront, fresh, mobile voice and impeccable creation of character. The story's narrated by a young guy whose humour and streety restlessness hide perceptiveness and vulnerability. Fisher's story was cut through with witty observations about city life, street slang and the effects of one incident on an entire family.

Edgeways the anthology has been edited by Courttia Newland, who's written an introduction about the competition's shortlisted entries, explaining what we were looking for, where we agreed and where we politely diverged. Tania Hershman has also contributed a piece of her unutterably perfect short fiction. The competition entrants whose pieces made the shortlist are Claire Sita Fisher with her winning story, Nick Black, KJ Orr, Toby Litt, Deirdre Shanahan and Saradha Soobrayen.

I have contributed an essay called The Story Ritual, about the art and craft of the short story. I've also written a new story entitled The Comforting of Children. It's my first work of original fiction since Dust, in November 2011. The success of that story, which can be read here, reprinted by the University of Chichester, gave me the faith to write The Comforting of Children. I can't think of a better way to explore the craft of short fiction than by being a small part of  new anthologies whose originality make such a strong case for the power of literature and the excellence, diversity and prevalence of new voices.

Further reading:

• All Bone and Muscle: an essay on short fiction written for the University of Chichester short story syllabus. 

Edgeways is available now as an ebook, published by Flight Press and edited by Courttia Newland.