‘The Ellington Kid’ (2012) - Dan Sully

Today in class we watched the short film, ‘The Ellington Kid’, directed by Dan Sully. The narrative follows a conversation of two boys in a kebab shop, in which one tells the story of a stabbing, and a flashback sequence interweaves with the boy’s conversation. The genre of the film is that of social realism, but personally I’d say it’s more lighthearted as there are comical moments between the two young boy’s. I think the narrative fits in perfectly to a short film as it leaves the audience clues to interpret the rest of the story and the missing gaps, without having to explicitly show these parts (adding to the duration). For example, this is shown at the end of the film in which the man in the kebab shop seen in the present day is shown to be scraping the exact replica of the knife shown in the flashback. This was placed intentially after the joke about the burger meat was made by one of the boys, aswell as the exaggerated sound effects of the knife, to create a moment of dark humour as there is a created feeling that ‘there is no joke’.