Aesthetik
information
mat sheldon, producer, writer, director
Early films include THIS IS REAL, a spoken word piece by young men from Bow in East London with music from Burial’s iconic album Untrue which screened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and FROM POPLAR WITH LOVE’s celebration of local community securing distribution with CNN’s Great Big Story.
More recently, I’ve focused on developing short and long form drama projects including the personal revenge drama SOLID STATE, examining the fucked up heart of the American dream in Silicon’s Valley Palo Alto and MAD GIRL’S LOVE SONG, a visceral, passionate imagining of Sylvia Plath’s young life.
My last short film, THE ELECTRICITY IN ME starred Ellora Torchia, featured in over 20 festivals including screening in competition at Leeds International Film Festival and London Film Week where it won Best Short Film at Covent Garden’s Garden Cinema before being picked up for distribution by Amazon Prime.
Currently completing DEAD WEIGHT, a shadowed short mystery about a relationship that should have ended years ago.
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details
MAD GIRL’S LOVE SONG [short + feature] [as producer]
Extract from Sylvia Plath’s journal when she met Ted Hughes for the first time at a party in Cambridge—
And then it came to the fact that I was all there, wasn’t I, and I stamped and screamed yes, and he had obligations in the next room, and he was working in London, earning ten pounds a week so he could later earn twelve pounds a week, and I was stamping and he was stamping on the floor, and then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth and ripped my hairband off, my lovely red hairband scarf which has weathered the sun and much love, and whose like I shall never again find, and my favorite silver earrings: hah, I shall keep, he barked. And when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face.
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SOLID STATE [feature]
A personal revenge story, set in Palo Alto, the epicentre of Silicon Valley and the last frontier of the American dream (which is more fucked up than its pristine white picketed fenced somewhat homogeneous neighbourhoods would suggest).
Research includes interviewing, in Palo Alto/Mountain View/Menlo Park big tech/ FAANG engineers and managers (Google/ex Apple, Meta), a startup guy, a Meta marketeer, electrical and motherboard/semiconductor engineers and a UX designer; background research includes Malcolm Harris’s comprehensive Palo Alto: A History of California Capitalism, and the World.
The LA Times said this about Palo Alto and Malcolm Harris’s writing—
Malcolm Harris had the good luck to grow up in Palo Alto, a blessed piece of real estate in the American economy, lit by both the sun of Silicon Valley and the rosy sandstone glow of the Stanford University campus. He also had the good luck to make it out alive. In the years Harris attended Palo Alto High, students killed themselves at a rate between four and five times the national average, walking to their deaths on the train tracks that Leland Stanford built to escape the labor unrest of San Francisco more than 100 years earlier.
Starring Ellora Torchia who portrayed the broken heart of my birth mother, Joan, who I never knew (but was given her personal journals by her partner who held her hand when she died at the age of 37) in a single take 6 minute monologue that won three awards, screened in over 20 festivals including premiering at the iconic Chinese Theater at Hollyshorts Festival in LA, at the Leeds International Film Festival in competition and also in London Film Week where we won ‘Best Short Film’ playing on the same night with the Lukas Dhont Cannes Grand Jury Prize winner CLOSE at The Garden Cinema.
official selections
HollyShorts (Premiere) (Los Angeles, US)*, New Hampshire Film Festival*, Leeds International Film Festival*+**, Norwich Film Festival**, North East Film Festival***; Cinefest (Sudbury, Canada)****, New York Shorts (NYC, US) ****, Burbank (Los Angeles, US), Cornwall, Crystal Palace, DUMBO (NYC), Ealing, Earl’s Court, London Film Week, London Super Shorts, Lonely Seal, Northampton, Oxford, Shorts Not Pants (Toronto, Canada), World Of Film (Glasgow, UK) //Awards Best Film – London Film Week, Best UK Film – London Super Shorts, Best Actor – Cornwall Film Festival //Accreditations *Academy/Oscar qualifying / **BAFTA & BIFA qualifying / ***BIFA qualifying / ****Canada Screen Award qualifying //Online Director’s Library, Director’s Notes
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other
THE ELECTRICITY IN ME [feature]
A woman believes she’ll be healed from terminal cancer if she reconciles with the son she gave up for adoption.
THE COLOR OF OUR MEMORY [short]
A near future drama about editing memory to restart a failing friendship.