Jetsam: Screening followed by Q & A with director Simon Welsford

Saturday 10 May
8pm
Carlton Cinema, St Midred’s Road, Westgate-on-Sea, Kent, CT8 8RE
£5.00
Buy tickets on the door

Simon Welsford’s groundbreaking debut feature film, Jetsam was last seen at the 2007 BFI London Film Festival. The film was shot here in Margate and is a nail-bitingly intense thriller.

A woman finds herself washed up on a desolate beach, unsure how she ended up there. Almost immediately, she’s attacked then chased by a man who has been washed up next to her. As she runs, fearing for her life and desperate to piece her memory back together, we learn more about how she ended up there through fractured flashbacks, and a story involving a genius discovery, corporate espionage, obsessive love and pitiless betrayal emerges.

Filmed in London and on the Thanet coast, Simon Welsford’s striking contemporary thriller uses these locations to evocative effect (the coastal scenes are savage) and the themes of duality and invisibility come across as much in the stylish way it’s filmed as they do in the sparse script.

The cast are committed and impressive throughout, with Alex Reid and Jamie Draven particularly eye-catching. Intriguingly structured and composed, Jetsam is inventive and ambitious, and shows huge promise for a first-time feature director.

A low-budget, independently-minded British film that’s very worthy of celebration.


_{Image: Jetsam, 2007 (still) © Simon Welsford}