by Silva Semerciyan
presented by students of the Minack Acting Academy
Sometimes we see what we want to...
1917. In the fourth year of the Great War, 17 year-old Elsie Wright borrows her father’s camera and fakes photographs of herself and her young cousin Frances talking with fairies at the bottom of their garden. But she is quite unprepared for the excitement her pictures will unleash. Soon the girls find themselves at the centre of a celebrity media storm. Their photos are published around the world and Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, champions them as scientific evidence of psychic phenomena. But can these fragile images and their young creators withstand the cruel light of press scrutiny?
Based on the true story of the Cottingley Fairies, The Light Burns Blue is a tale of deception, public hysteria and the ethical boundaries of new technologies. Are Elsie’s photographs just a thoughtless hoax or the cynical exploitation of people’s need to believe in a world beyond the horrors of war? Or should we view them an artistic exploration of the possibilities of early photography? One thing is certain, the echoes of Elsie and Frances’s story can be felt today in our arguments and questions over AI.
This amateur production is presented by arrangement with Nick Hern Books.