I Am Nothing I Am Just A Man

Joshua Loftin is a third year film and television student at Edinburgh College of Art, and one of 10 students at the college to have earned a BAFTA nomination. His short film, I Am Nothing, I Am Just A Man, was recently nominated for the New Talent Award, which celebrates achievement within the moving image media in Scotland.

I Am Nothing, I Am Just A Man is a visually diverse portrayal of what appears to be a day in the life (or the mind) of Loftin, recalling influences from Harmony Korine to Werner Herzog. This artistic lineage subconsciously leads Loftin to the playful adaptation of filmmaking that confronts the viewer in I Am Nothing... The film separates itself from the cinematic fiction expected from the established awards with its altering pace and enthralling visuals.

Loftin describes his aesthetic and motives as "more conceptual in the way it's attempting to convey an emotive experience, place or time and is in a sense quite abstract." Nominated in the 'Experimental' category, he struggles to pin down the exact indicator for this classification. "I think experimental is a hard thing to define; a successful experimental film is one that tries to convey an abstract theme or concept that you couldn't otherwise express in a linear film in the same way. Not being confined to this linear concept of narrative cinema means that visually and through audio you can be taken to somewhere that a straightforward narrative wouldn't."

To recognise 'experimental' filmmaking in the Scottish BAFTAs is important, says Loftin, in celebrating "what filmmakers do when they play rather than, this is what filmmakers do when they're safe." In Loftin's mind, this freedom is integral in strengthening other film work, as "you really need to experiment within film to understand where your boundaries are in cinema. I think it's more and more important to work within your form but to absolutely push the boundaries of that."

I Am Nothing, I Am Just A Man has the refreshing space that some films lack; escapist cinematic enjoyment without the claustrophobia of heavy-handed direction. When viewing a film that is not prescriptive in its attempt to plot out a sequential story, the allowed room for self-reflection parallels video art installations. In referencing Sam Taylor-Wood's movement between gallery and cinema, Loftin acknowledges the common ground, particularly when looking at expanded cinema. "Now that we're in the digital age and technology is becoming easier to use with the possibilities even broader, the differences between an installation piece and a movie are becoming less." What remains the defining feature for Loftin is that his work is "rooted in cinema rather than art."

The camera becomes an oblique tool to Loftin's film, with the void between audience and filmmaker becoming lessened, we are emotively engulfed. It's the instinctual creativity of "making use of all the recordable devices around me to try and convey the emotional experience" which perhaps gives the film its poignancy, while avoiding derivative cinematic comparisons.

The nostalgic beauty of the Super8 camera used in the final sequence is seductively melancholic; the spoken poetry becomes potent as both an autobiographical musing and a universally-affecting voice. Losing control of a piece of work, as it is handed over to an audience's own perspectives, is a process Loftin describes as elementary to a filmmaking career, even in a piece "so close to my heart."

"After time and when the project has finished, you stop editing it and looking at it with a constructive eye; it becomes just a collection of images." The cinematics linger even beyond curtain-close, as the audience ultimately forms their own emotional attachment to the work of art Loftin has created.