If Rachel Reupke had pitched her film Wine & Spirits to a TV production company, it might have gone something like this: "Imagine the reality hit 'Several Dates', take a series of scripted studio out-takes from the show, boil them right down and slow them almost to a stop. What is it REALLY like trying to get to know someone? Think of all the awkward pauses, think of this couple, one man, one woman, agonising to speak, think of the struggle to connect at all, and how that might sound and look. Painful! Meanwhile, the drinks they are ordering as they pursue their excruciating courtship take on a supernatural presence all of their own. Will this man and woman manage any type of consequential exchange, or will it eventually be the alcohol that starts talking first? What does alcohol do to a person anyway? Who is asking who, and what are they asking, in this strangely compelling tragedy of manners?".

It is unlikely this pitch would have been successful in a TV environment. Reupke might have been recommended by a kindly exec to try her luck on the experimental art circuit instead. Which is not to say that her art is a failed tv pitch. Not at all. In this case, the tv mood can be both something she pursues, as well as something against whose effect she simultaneously organises.

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Jarman Award 2014 interview: https://vimeo.com/129479320