Always on
This project successfully funded on 16th March 2026, you can still support them with a donation.
Lighterman - Short Film
London, Greater London, United Kingdom
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Aim
Help us raise enough money to bring ‘Lighterman’ to life on the screen - a short film of joyous escapism on the waterways of London.
Lighterman is about a stubborn old man with dementia who escapes his care home for one last taste of freedom on his beloved river Thames. As his memory fades, he meets a puppeteer who offers him a chance to reconcile with his past.
This is a story of precarious, inter-generational love. As family households have atomised, our elders have become ‘the elderly’ - often cut out of the fabric of community, and discarded as an economic burden and an embarrassment. We want to imagine our lives ending differently.
Mixed-race families have always been more common among Britain’s working classes - especially around our ports and rivers. In Liverpool, London, Cardiff and Glasgow, people built communities together out of love and necessity. We are proud of those lives shared on the water. Lighterman portrays them with delicacy, and without sanitising their complexity.
The canals and rivers of London are stubborn, indelible threads of life on the margins. Like the fading memory of the Lighterman, these veins of our city are perennially under threat, but thriving in spite of it all. This is where we live. Lighterman’s escape from the life-sapping sterility of the care home back to the dizzying freedom of the waterways is an essential story to us.
With our producer Miia Laine, we have put together an incredible team of musicians, movement directors, puppeteers and actors who want to tell this story with us. We’re so, so excited to make it come to life.
Our creative team so far
Writer/Directors - Austin Cooper and Thalissa Teixeira
Austin Cooper is an Arabic translator, writer and musician. Focussing on all sides of the Mediterranean Sea, his most recent projects include work with Forensic Architecture, Channel 4 News and The New Arab.
Thalissa is an actor, writer and director. Her short film We Met Before which she wrote and directed, was selected for a number of festivals including an official selection at Aesthetica film festival.
This is our debut film project together having collaborated frequently running arts events and making music with our newly birthed band Mais Isso. We write stories of absurd contradiction, freedom, joy and real magic.
Producer - Miia Laine
Miia Laine is a Helsinki-based producer, DJ, and arts worker. She has experience in film, TV and radio production, having worked at Berlin based broadcasters Deutschlandfunk Kultur, and film production companies Aamu Film Company and Kinomaton. Austin and Miia first met when Miia was at the helm of SOAS Radio. They have collaborated for many years including at Basket of Light, an independent performing arts festival which Austin co-founded.
Puppeteer - Stan Middleton
Our very loved friend and puppet master, Stan has been performing since the age of nine and has become one of the UK’s finest puppeteers. His grandparents created the Puppet Barge where our film is set. He has recently performed in the Globe’s new setting of Pinocchio which is set to re-run in 2026.
Movement Director - Holly Blakey
Holly Blakey is among the foremost choreographers of her generation and one of the few female choreographers in the UK creating large-scale work. Her practice attends to the honest entanglements of embodied vulnerability, grief, and joy, always rooted in an intersectional feminist frame. Last year her work, A Wound with Teeth and Phantom were performed at the Southbank Centre. She and Thalissa first met working intimately and with sisterly connection on the set of Harvest.
Composer and Musicians - Austin Cooper and Alkanna Graeca
It was during an Alkanna Graeca gig that the inspiration for the ending of the film arrived. The singers Irini Arabatzi, Alexandra Achillea, and Dunja Botic, all masters of polyphonic music from Serbia to Georgia, will bring to life a contemporary score composed and arranged by Austin.
We’re almost ready to go. The script has been through several rounds of development, our locations are secured (providing they don’t sink before we start filming) and we are preparing ourselves for our directorial debut.
So we just need you! Friends, collaborators and fellow artists who also know the determination it takes to get projects like this off the ground. Every contribution will help us get to the finish line - however much you can afford will be hugely cherished by all of us.
Paying makers fairly for their time is essential. Using Equity minimum rates and union standards, we need at least £15,000 to make this film possible.
Estimated Costs
Preproduction costs - £1,500
This includes final script development, rehearsal fees and insurance for location.
Production - £6,000
At the very least, we commit to paying everyone involved union standard rates for their work. This budget also includes the costs of equipment for camera, sound and props as well as transport and catering costs on the days filming.
Post-production - £5,000
This crucial stage will allow us to undertake the editing of the film - from colouring and grading to audio production, composition and paying for musicians.
Distribution - £1,000
Once Lighterman is made and ready to be seen, it will be time to get it seen by as many people as possible! It will take grit, determination and generosity to make this story on such a tight budget - and we think one of the best ways of repaying such goodwill is by making sure Lighterman gets on screens far and wide.
This budget includes entering to film festivals and competitions. We are already writing more films, and this short can be our doorway to do so, making more work, and paying more artists on the way.
Contingency - £1,500
As boaters we know that things, inevitably, can come as a surprise…
What’s in it for you?
From general screening tickets, posters, soundtrack downloads and behind the scenes footage to more significant rewards - an Associate Production credit, or an exclusive screening on the puppet barge - we have many ways to thank everyone who can get involved.
Ultimately, it will help us make this story, and that is what’s in it for all of us. We hope to tell more in the future, but for now we’re just focussed on the Lighterman, and getting him out onto the water.
With love and thanks,
Thalissa and Austin
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made