Rob Munday
As my colleagues in the US recover from their annual 4th of July celebrations, I, as one of the few European members on the S/W team, sit here in our deserted virtual HQ thinking about what Independence Day and America mean to me. Their yearly honouring of the date the Declaration of Independence was signed means very little to a Brit (except for an unwelcome reminder of our colonial past!) and, having never visited the States, I have very little personal connection to the Country beyond the people that I know who live there.
However, when I think of America there are certain images that instantly spring to mind: Elvis Presley, baseball, oversized cars, and astronauts are but a few and it was the latter that made me think that today was the perfect time to finally feature Alexa Lim Haas (Agua Viva) and Bernardo Britto’s (Yearbook, Hudson Geese) award-winning, festival favourite, Glove, on S/W.
The story of a spaceman’s glove, made in Delaware and left to float in the cosmos forever, after it escaped its owner’s clutches, is one that feels distinctly American. Inspired by a real-life incident where a NASA astronaut accidentally loses a glove (not one he’s wearing!) on a space walk – footage of which can be seen repeated at the end of the five-minute short – Britto (who wrote the film) takes the idea of this celestial gauntlet floating in the ether and crafts a tale of cosmic significance as we follow the glove on its epic journey from a small factory to the edge of the universe.
From Delaware to outer space, Glove takes its viewers on an intergalactic voyage.
For Britto, the original idea came from watching Al Reinert’s 1989 documentary For All Mankind and witnessing that somewhat insignificant moment where the glove floats away. “I immediately felt something, thinking about the mismatch of this earthly object in deep space and that feeling of losing something forever”, he shares with journalist Collin Souter in an interview for rogerebert.com. For Lim Haas, who had recently lost her father Thomas (to who the short is dedicated), this exploration of the unknown felt like the perfect channel for her grief.
As no one knows what happened to the titular glove at the core of Britto’s story he could have taken his narrative anywhere, following his glove to alien worlds and the far reaches of the galaxy. The short hints at some of these possibilities, but the actual journey is one much more grounded in humanity as we consider all who have touched the astronaut’s mitt and the traces, or memories, they left on it. Like the glove, Britto’s narrative reaches for the stars and in doing so transforms the film from a quirky, disposable anecdote to a deeply touching legend that should leave its fingerprints all over you, long after watching.