The Rocket Post

2004 (Limited release in Scotland only) / 2006 (Limited UK release) - Dir: Stephan Whittaker

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 26th March, 2011

This films holds the dubious record for the longest time taken from shooting to showing in the cinema. In 2002, it won a major prize at the Stony Brook Film Festival in New York State, and there were other special screenings, including one at the An Lanntair arts centre in Stornoway in 2005. The film even came out on DVD in Scandinavia, but still took years to find a UK distributor. Sadly the director died before his work hit the big screen and the producer took up an new career promoting wind farm technology. The rather lame explanation given by the distributors who eventually gave it a very limited release was that the film would not have appealed to the young people who inhabit multiplex cinemas - and these are the same people who regard the film society movement as a "minority market". Haven’t they heard? We’re all living longer!

The cast of this £5m production, shot largely on the Hebridean island of Taransay in 2001, includes Trainspotting star Kevin McKidd, Gary Lewis from Billy Elliot and newcomer Shauna Macdonald. Not in any way edgy or challenging, The Rocket Post does what British films do best – light, quirky comedy with lots of familiar faces, picture postcard scenery, a splash of romance and a dash of drama.

The real Gerhard Zucker appears to have been a bit of a charlatan. In the early 1930s he organised a number of rocket demonstrations in German villages. The impressive rocket was really a large canister with some large fireworks stuffed up the rear end. It took off with an impressive roar, rose about 15 metres and then inevitably crashed to the ground. Zucker made money by selling postal covers which (fraudulently) claimed to have been transported by one of his rockets. After the war he became a furniture salesman but was unable to resist further experimentation with rockets. In 1964 one of his contraptions went out of control and killed a bystander. This led to all non-military rocketry being banned in Germany. Undeterred Zucker resumed launching fraudulent 'rocket postal covers'. Having done a great deal to set back scientific rocketry in Germany, Zucker died at home in his bed in 1985.