1989 Directed by Timothy Neat
A collection of seemingly unrelated individuals wait in a small island airport. Their flight is delayed, and each takes a turn to tell the others a story from his or her life. All small island stories of ordinary, uninspiring lives. Until one man, The Stranger, tells his story of a summer romance in Venice.
A strange, understated film about the transportive power of oral storytelling that plays like a cross between a sitcom bottle episode and Chris Marker's La Jetee, PLAY ME SOMETHING decides not to push the medium forward but instead recede into its gaps.
By this I mean that it doesn't rely on flashy visuals or attempt anything revolutionary, but simply tells its story largely with dialogue and still images. A framing narrative sees a disparate group of travellers waiting for a plane in a Hebridean airport listen to a mysterious old raconteur tell a story about two lovers meeting and spending a day in Venice while waxing lyrical about life, listening to and playing music. [There's something of a proto-BEFORE SUNRISE…
