www.seanmcallister.com
Introduction
Sukhdev Sandhu..
Chief critic at The Daily Telegraph
I love Sean McAllister's work for its sly radicalism, and am bursting
with admiration for the way he has managed to make films - warm, angry, emotionally involving -
that run entirely counter to the dominant voice of today's documentary mainstream.
All his films show individuals who are in some ways hostages to geography.
They're strong people, a bit feisty, but who in different ways have become
estranged from their friends or their communities. They put on a good public face,
but underneath they're slowly crinkling.
McAllister left school at 16, worked in a pea factory, before giving up to go on the dole for the best part of a decade.
That time give him a real feel for the rhythm of daily life, and an understanding of how easy it is
for people to spin and drift, their lives dribbling away all the while. There's no solipsism in his
features, no cool stylisation: just a passionate commitment to the idea that a real world exists.
His success in putting those people on screen is a triumph for anti-apathy, theirs and his own. He's one of the best documentarians this country has right now.
© Sukhdev Sandhu.
