BFI FUTURE FILM FESTIVAL 2025
Honey Birch
If This Were Purgatory
FESTIVAL SCREENING
Thursday Shorts 20th Feb, 2025
FEB, 9, 2025
From gossip to identity, politics and romance; follow a group of friends to the club and eavesdrop on the multiplicitous voices of a queer club queue.
Hi Honey, how does it feel to be at the BFI Future Film Festival this month with If This Were Purgatory?
I attended the BFI Future Film Festival for the first time last year, I had no idea what to expect and had just gotten the go-ahead for ‘If This Were Purgatory’. It felt like I was thrown headfirst into this whole new world. I feel incredibly lucky to be screening this year as a Film-maker myself, it feels very apt to be coming back to see the other side of it all.
If This Were Purgatory is the recipient of the Roundhouse Film Fund. What did it mean to you to get this type of recognition for your film?
Being a part of the Roundhouse Film Fund was a really incredible opportunity for me. Having studied design, transitioning into moving image was a daunting prospect. Their support as an institution, throughout my teenage years to now, has been monumental in moving my practice forwards. It’s a bonus that they’re so known and well connected… it makes networking a little easier for me!
How important are festivals like BFI Future Film Festival, in creating a platform for short films and filmmakers?
Having a space dedicated to young film-makers is so incredible. Short films are our entry-way in, so being able to have a goal that feels within reach is very motivating.
Short films are a vital medium in the film industry, yet there are few opportunities for the public, outside of festivals, to see them. What more can be done to make short films more visible and accessible to the wider cinema audiences?
I’m ashamed to say that I’m really bad at going to the cinema. Though I am actively going to more films this year, and have started a secret cinema ranking system (seat comfort is a big draw), I’m a big fan of moving image outside of traditional environments. Once we have completed the festival circuit, we’d like to take ‘If This Were Purgatory’ into the clubs themselves, to community events, and gallery spaces. Places that you may not expect to see a film. It would be great to see opportunities and funding for short films to be screened in alternative spaces.
Can you tell me a little bit about how If This Were Purgatory came about?
In 2023, a drink was thrown over me and my friends outside a queer nightclub. ‘If This Were Purgatory’ was born as a form of self-defence, self-expression, and queer self-preservation in response to this. The queer clubbing experience is far more than just a party, the queue providing a multitude of conversations; ones you could expect in an academic environment, a gossip, or even a therapy session. I had never considered it as its own space before, but the queue holds this very strange place between a utopia of queer community, and a sometimes-sinister outside eye. Despite that, I’ve always had a good time in the queue, maybe sometimes a more memorable one. I wanted to capture this little moment, memorialise it.
You shot If This Were Purgatory across five queer clubs, how challenging was that?
It was incredibly challenging! We shot Fold, Dalston Superstore, Pxssy Palace (Colour Factory), Riposte (Electrowerkz), and The Glory. Grac Talbot and I, our brilliant producer, knitted together a tight schedule for two nights of shooting. Each club had different specifications on what we could and could not shoot, so we had a huge document drawn up for the crew and each club to make sure it was all clear. We were rushing around trying to catch each queue at maximum capacity, which unfortunately seems to happen at around the same time across London. The other challenge was safeguarding the queuers themselves. It’s why we have so many anonymous shots. We had a welfare officer onsite whose sole focus was on the clubbers.
If you could describe the Queer London Club scene in a sentence what would it be?
Incomprehensible to the straights.
What is the message you wanted to convey with this film?
The club has been a sanctuary for a lot of queer people. You enter this alternative space where you can be anything, surrounded by everything. I wanted to spotlight all these different voices, speaking on identity and to the club scene. But I also wanted to highlight this moment that feels really really specific, maybe a moment that not everyone will be able to resonate with, but this sense of joy and danger and belonging all at once.
Have you always had a passion about film?
I’ve always loved filming things. But I haven’t always made films! I think I’ve spent a lot of time with little clips, documenting moments, but it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve strung them all together to make a bigger picture. It’s really fun, and I think I’ll be doing it for a lot longer.
Looking back are there any queer films you’ve seen that have really had an impact on you?
Not a queer film, but a queer artist-film-maker. I went and saw Isaac Julien’s ‘What Freedom Is To Me’ at the Tate in 2023. I’d not seen any of his work before, but the combination of installation, multi-screens, narrative, and non-fictional storytelling blew my mind! It made me sit up and think- I want to make a film- I want to make work like this one day. Hopefully one day I do! I really like seeing films by queer people, even if the topics aren’t queer.
"The making of this film felt very queer, full of improvisation, growth, and collective joy, mixed up with fear, confusion, and a slight sense of unease."
What has been the most valuable lesson you discovered about yourself as a filmmaker during the making of this short?
That I was capable of making a film. I know it may seem quite small scale, but working with a budget, and a crew, and a commission was very new to me. The making of this film felt very queer, full of improvisation, growth, and collective joy, mixed up with fear, confusion, and a slight sense of unease.
Is there any advice you wish you had been given when you started your filmmaking journey?
I’m not sure, I’m so close to the beginning of it all. Maybe it’s that the reality of making and creating right now, is that almost everyone I know does it for free. Which is a massive shame, and speaks to the inaccessibility of the arts and how its all funded. It’s a passion on the side of having to survive. I thought I had to have it together before starting. But then nothing happens, because you’ll never have everything you need. So just cobbling together anything is enough to begin.
And finally, what message would you want your audiences to take away from If This Were Purgatory?
That being queer is a little bit complicated, but a lot a bit fun.