How Now Brown Cow Films presents
THE HIVE
Flora is used to being wanted. Needed actually. But once her inattentive husband Andrew gets busy with the bees after their kids leave home, she finds herself rather needy and wanting. When her flirtatious attention seeking gains a larger audience than intended, Andrew finally notices and looks to connect …
Screenplay: Julie-Anne McDowell
Director: Greg Karvellas
Starring: Julie-Anne McDowell and Andrew Buckland
Director of Photography and Editing: Daniel Rutland Manners
Music: Charl-Johan Lingenfelder
Production Design: Niall Griffin
Executive Producer: Daniel Galloway
Associate Producer: Casey Diepeveen
Sound Recordist : Lyndon Brandt
Sound Design and Final Mix: Morne Marais (Sound Surgeon)
Colour Grader: Kyle Stroebel (Refinery)
Hair and Make-Up: Kayleigh Stopforth
Crew: Brad Jackson and Nirvan Goreeba
“The Hive is a heartfelt short film about a midlife crisis exacerbated by an increasingly stale marriage and empty nest. On screen midlife crises are often portrayed from the male perspective but The Hive is narrated through the eyes of our middle-aged female dramatic protagonist. This inner personal drama has a linear framework and takes place over the course of a few days. Thematically it is Flora’s “dark night of the soul” to shed previous conceptual frameworks of identity in her desire for validation. Her dramatic conflict of needing to let go of her kids yet wanting to hold on, whilst letting go of her marriage but needing to hold on, being attached yet feeling detached, wanting to be seen but being blind to what’s actually important drives her actions and at times rash decisions.
The Hive uses subtle visual imagery of bees to underscore the film’s emotional narrative. The beehive represents a functioning colony of order compared to their marital mess. The shrill discordant buzzing is amplified in moments of tension slowing to a rhythmic musical hum as Flora finds harmony with Andrew
The idea was borne out of my own personal experience of “empty nest” syndrome but on a universal level, it extends beyond that to a global existentialism”. Julie-Anne McDowell
