Title: Lost Face
Runtime: 14 min
Country: USA
Director: Sean Meehan
Placement: Best Short Film
Competition: September 30, 2016

Synopsis: Lost Face is a classic story by legendary writer Jack London about a man out of place and out of time. Subienkow is a Polack, who in mid-1800’s Russian America  finds himself the second-to-last survivor of a group of Russian fur-thieves who have just been defeated by liberators from the local tribe they have enslaved as forced labour. Now Subienkow faces a long, protracted and painful death unless he can come up with a plan for escape.

Subienkow calls over the tribe’s chief, Makamuk and he begins to barter. What follows is a power play between the two men, and Yakuga, a recently freed slave, who doubts the legitimacy of Subienkow’s offer even as he begins to question the wisdom of his tribe’s chief.

DIRECTOR Q&A

OR: What was the inspiration for your film?

SM: I  first read Jack London’s short story, Lost Face, as a teenager and even back then it made quite an impression on me.  Then, many years later, when I was looking for an idea I could adapt into a short  film, a friend of mine reminded me of London’s wonderful short story. I re-read it and was immediately drawn in again by the powerful layering of the storytelling, the vivid characters and the inherent drama of the situation. I love  films that take me to times and places I wouldn’t ordinarily have the chance to experience and Lost Face took me right into the middle of a tense and frightening moment a long time ago at the edge of the known (Western) world.

OR: When did you conceive the idea for your film and how long did it take before it was realized?

SM: I’d re-read the short story around the middle of last year.  We were in pre-production by October and we shot last December.  Post was finalized at the end of March this year.

OR: What was the most challenging aspect of working in a short film format?

SM: The lack of funds and having to beg, borrow and rely on the goodwill and enthusiasm of people I hadn’t met or barely knew.  Luckily, everyone was incredibly generous and capable…

OR: What was the most challenging aspect of your production?

SM: It was fairly cold, we had only seven hours of light each day and only three days to shoot.  Two days before the shoot we were “Chinooked” (A Chinook is a warm wind that blows over the Canadian Rockies).  Where the day before we were working with two feet of snow, come the shoot we had mud, then frozen mud.  We spent many hours dressing in snow by hand and refreshing it over and over.  Everyone was slipping over, but no one complained.

OR: Do you have any advice for first-time filmmakers?

SM: Be as prepared as possible before the cameras start rolling, do your homework, try and anticipate what might go wrong – because when you’re in the thick of it you have a limited capacity to solve problems that might have been easily solved in the weeks leading up to the shoot.  When it came down to it on the shoot we were grateful for the level of prep we’d put in.

Congratulations to Sean Meehan, recipient of our Global Shorts statuette for his short film Lost Face!