Postcards: Stopping Time
2015 · 4m · UK
Directed by Adrian Sibley
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Filmed in Livorno, Italy, the documentary profiles Lindsay Kemp — the legendary choreographer who taught David Bowie and Kate Bush how to move — now at 77, largely forgotten by the outside world, still dancing for a small circle of devoted students and fans while his body slowly abandons the art.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A genuinely poignant portrait that packs more feeling into four minutes than most features manage in ninety. The Bowie-and-Kate-Bush biographical hook will draw people in, but Sibley earns that attention honestly — this is quiet, dignified filmmaking about a quiet, dignified subject. A solid score-6 that punches just above its weight.
Lindsay Kemp taught Bowie and Bush how to move; that fact alone earns the four minutes. Sibley's job here is just not to ruin it.
Four-minute portrait of Lindsay Kemp at 77 — the man who taught Bowie and Bush how to move, now mostly forgotten in Livorno, philosophically at peace with the body leaving him. That subject alone justifies the runtime; the philosophical register is the question.