Aunt Cindy and The Alchemist

Star rating: 5/5

Writer: Dervin Scott

Director: Dervin Scott

Aunt Cindy and The Alchemist is a spectacularly imaginative, collage-like work of film.

Set between Arizona and all across Italy, this film written by Dervin Scott, was inspired by home video footage from the 1950s and the 1960s, and starts with the premise that ‘love is a funny thing’. Moreover, ‘we just can’t choose who we love. Sometimes love makes that decision for us’.

The story begins when we meet a 1950’s ‘all-American’ family. To all intents and purposes, they are a successful, upper-class family, led by the grandfather who worked in a top job in the marketing department at Ford. His daughter, the narrator’s mother, has a deep love of all things Italian despite having no connection to the country, other than postcards received from her father’s work travels, and when her father is put in charge of Ford’s mass expansion into Europe, in particular to establish the Ford Mustang in European streets, the perfect opportunity arises, and the family travels to Italy. The opportunity is taken to collect footage of the family using the car, which might serve as marketing material. In Italy, the family flourishes in a particular, deeply moving way- a deep change occurs which lets them all find peace and true contentment, as well as love. As the narrator puts it, ‘a weight lifted’.

This film has various technical highlights. Firstly, the archive footage used of the highest quality, and incredibly valuable from a social history point of view- illuminating not just aesthetics but also experiences and a social structure belonging to decades gone by. We have here a collection of sumptuous images that really let the imagination time-travel. Secondly, the narration. Delivered by Casey Campbell, it is heartfelt, dynamic, candid and sprinkled with colourful detail. And then there is the structure. Impeccably structured, this film showcases wonderfully shapely and rhythmical story-telling, with a swerving kind of plot twist presented in a way that offers us exceptionally good narrative.

Aunt Cindy and the Alchemist is a deeply original story about love and the many ways it can manifest itself. As the narrator concludes, ‘love is destined to find a way’.