The Palace (2022)

• 84%
• 2022
• Documentary
• Garry Sykes

A surreptitiously filmed conversation between my Dad and my Nana in Ashington, Northumberland, about the age-old British tradition of breaking into royal residences. The conversation is overlaid with Super 8 footage shot by my Grandad in the 1960s and scanned by me after my grandparent's deaths, shots I filmed on an iPhone while retracing the steps of their family visit to London, and a 16mm reel with views of the city centre and Buckingham Palace in the '30s, found in a junk shop I don't even remember when. The contrasting eras of film, as well as relatively recent footage of my family (one of whom is no longer with us), spliced with shots of their much younger selves turn the piece into a short meditation on expectant youth, and the locked gates that most of us meet as we quickly age.