Two Seas is a short film made as part of Film London’s “London Calling 2014”. Shot on Location in London, Essex and Underwater in Basildon. Photography was completed in June 2014.
I was inspired to make the film after a love affair with an Iranian Woman living in the UK. In an effort to understand the collision of two cultures I wrote Two Seas.
Realising it on a budget would prove difficult so I looked to director Nick Murphy's manifesto for his TV series Prey. Following some of his ideas we shot all but the underwater shots on a single zoom lens and without lighting. It was a risk but it meant we could move fast and the film was shot in three days.
It's festival debut was the at BFI London Film Festival 2014.
The title is taken from the Koran
“He has let loose the two seas (the salt water and the sweet) meeting together. Between them is a barrier which none of them can transgress”
And thematically the sea has always been a place of escape:
“The sea does not belong to despots. Upon its surface men can still exercise unjust laws, fight, tear one another to pieces, and be carried away with terrestrial horrors. But at thirty feet below its level, their reign ceases, their influence is quenched, and their power disappears. Ah! sir, live—live in the bosom of the waters! There only is independence! There I recognize no masters! There I am free!”
- Captain Nemo - Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
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