Creeling: a study in desire

Creeling is a 15-minute film of dramatic fiction made over a twelve-month period between 2015 and 2016 and was first screened that year. The film investigates teenage female sexual desire and its representation in cinema using creative practice. Taking an auto-ethnographic approach as a starting point the film uses the dramatic form to open up discussion with those collaborating in the film as well as those watching it. The film also responds to research in the social sciences and is made in the context of longer-form work by filmmakers Agnes Varda, Catherine Brellait and new work by Marielle Heller. The project specifically contrasts the “innocent” and timeless setting of the West Coast Highlands with sexual desire that could be deemed as more urban “bad girl” behaviour [DL Tolman 1996]. In doing so it asks whether experiencing desire as a girl is dangerous in itself. It posits that girls often seek out men they perceive to be ‘safe’ as the first object of desire, even if they are older, and touches on how problematic this is for both parties and society as a whole. It looks at whether girls have a richer more compelling fantasy life than boys when it comes to romantic attraction and explores the “policing” of girls sexual desire and behaviour exerted by fathers [Devlin 2005]. The final film received some critical acclaim and was screened at a number of internationally recognised festivals including Chicago International Children’s Film Festival (the only Oscar qualifying festival for children’s films) and Mo & Friese the children’s section of the Hamburg Short Film Festival as well as the Edinburgh International Film Festival. In Hamburg the festival organised a number of screenings specifically for school children where discussion and debate was encourage afterwards. The film was one of six films commissioned for the Scottish Film Shorts programme SFTN funded by the British Film Institute and Creative Scotland.