NIGHTWALKING
2018 – 2022
Directed by JP Marchant, Director of Photography Brad Goruk, Sound Designer Clayton Smith, Starring Darcy Logan, Script by Frater Tham
The narrative charts the journey of Mr. Noone (Mr. No one), an isolated and detached lower-middle class office worker. Attempting to deal with a personal loss, the protagonist begins long rambling night walks through the streets and parks of the downtown core where he both lives and works. Wrapped in his own thoughts, he initially tries to remain ambivalent about the social issues he sees. But night after night he is forced to confront the bleak reality of the crisis unfolding around him, and is put into a position where he has to consider what it means to make choices.
The script is extracted from a longer text that loosely chronicles the author’s experiences living and working in the urban core of Lethbridge during the first year of operations of their Supervised Drug Consumption site. The screenplay imaginatively documents the writer’s nightly downtown walks which were undertaken in an attempt to understand the hyperbolic moral panic that gripped the community as the opioid crisis intensified. The script makes no attempt to moralize, make pronouncements, or cast judgements. Instead it attempts to understand the position of an individual who becomes a passive participant by virtue of their proximity and observation. In many ways it is an extended meditation on choice and positionality. Though inspired by Lethbridge, Nightwalking is not specific to any particular city, but attempts instead to creatively explore issues that are endemic to most larger urban centres.
Nightwalking is a collaboration between 4 artists who have all successfully realized substantial projects in their respective disciplines. Brad Goruk is an accomplished director & cinematographer who has produced several short films as well as an ambitious feature. Darcy Logan is a visual artist and performer who has mounted innumerable solo and collaborative exhibitions. Clayton Smith is a musician and audio artist who has engineered numerous albums and played with several bands. Jean-Pierre Marchant has worked on a number of both narrative and experimental shorts that have seen festival circulation.