The Films

Michael Higgins / 516 Films in association with Experimental Film Society presents

Roadside Picnic (Iceland, 2010, BW HD, 62mins)
Two old friends drift through the Icelandic plains. They spend most of their time consumed in the forgotten moments of the everyday that underpin touristic adventure. It is in these moments that we see reflected the flat and banal nature of real life.
Watch the full film here at EFS VOD

You Have Been Killed (Poland, 2011, BW HD, 60mins)
In Poland to finish a job, two cinematographers find themselves witnessing a head-on collision between the virtual and the real.
Watch the full film here at EFS VOD

Birds on a Wire (Ireland, 2011, BW HD, 62mins)
The ‘sister-piece’ to Roadside Picnic. Two childhood friends from Poland visit Ireland’s West Coast. In doing so they experience both Ireland’s mythical history and contemporary weather patterns.
Watch the full film here at EFS VOD

In creating this trilogy Higgins worked with no pre-production material but instead relied upon distinctive elements of cinema; the image and the cut. Through the shooting and editing the ‘writing’ of the film would occur revealing specific themes and ideas invisible to Higgins throughout prior stages of production.

“This lack of traditional narrative or character identification is tantamount to staking the whole film on Higgins’ instincts as a filmmaker: his visual sense, pacing, attention to atmosphere, general apprehension of the world.”
– Maximilian Le Cain, Experimental Conversations – Winter 2014

“Birds on a Wire taps so acutely into the damp grey grimness of a rain-swept west coast holiday that you can almost feel the wet on your skin.”
– Donal Foreman, New Voices in Experimental Cinema – Spring 2015