User Reviews

This is a little film with some big ideas and aims that are achieved beautifully. Mr Redman is obviously a person who has some life experience and is not afraid to share your innermost longings and thoughts with the world - something we don't see enough of in films made by men.

The film is a clever classic "hero's journey" with stunning photography and a refreshing visual style. The narration by Simon Westaway is delivered with comedy and empathy. The actors do a great job inspite of not having a huge amount of scripted dialogue to deliver. We feel their pain and their joy, we comfortably travel with them.

I saw Seed at the St Kilda Film festival last year and more recently at "jaffas down the aisle" and was touched by it's honesty and its' tribute to fathers and fatherhood in a time when most people are happy to swallow the post-feminist propaganda about this very important part of life.

SEED is a well crafted, slice-of-life short film comedy that tells the story of Andrew's obsession with fertility from childhood to adulthood.

It is classic story telling of the "hero's journey". Beginning with the adult Andrew undergoing "the snip" (vasectomy) in surgery, we flash back to the young Andrew first hearing about fertility in church in the guise of the ill-fated Onan and the "slaying and spilling". We progressively trace defining moments in Andrew's adolescence and the factors that threaten his fertility - fear of tight underpants, fear of cricket and hurdle games, fear of radiation in certain professions, fear of smoking and even fear of eating hormone encrusted chicken! It's told very cleverly with a smart visual style.

We progress into his teenage years and share the excitement of meeting the love of his life, only to be rejected when he catches the mumps and is diagnosed as infertile. The shot of Andrew's reflection in the Volkswagen mirror as his girlfriend hands back the engagement ring tells it all.

As in all good journeys of the hero it all works out in the end with a lovely sense of irony coupled with very moving and uplifting close which is a tribute to fathers who take their responsibility seriously.

The film is constructed like a "mini-feature", at times pacey, other times slow and emotional, at all times intriguing the audience as to what will happen next. The direction and cinematography are superb and the vignette style is both complemented and neatly bound by a sustained and insightful narration by the mellifluous Simon Westaway.

In this day and age of the gag short film, SEED displays a maturity rarely seen. The experience of the film makers is obvious here as it a good story well told with visual appeal portraying a sensitive issue with a balance of humour and candour. Most importantly SEED is entertaining and this obviously why it has won so many awards.

Seed is one of those rare short films that are able to get to the heart of the matter and hold a mirror up to the world. I had the pleasure of seeing the film at our festival in Breckenridge with the Director in attendance. Just like everyone in the audience I was transfixed by the humor and angst of the young fellow's journey and loved the resolution.

The Writer has some rather important matters to put before us but does so in a clever and honest way. As a result some major universal themes are successfully portrayed.