Dogwoof have this afternoon sent us the UK trailer for Carol Morley's moving intriguing drama documentary DREAMS OF A LIFE the story of young woman Joyce Vincent who died alone in her London bedsit in 2003. You may ask why make a film about her? When Joyce was discovered she was tragically been dead for three years and all that remained was her skeleton. Director Carol Morley’s (Edge, The Alcohol Years) third feature is a poignant and yet uplifting account of a vivacious, beautiful woman who, despite outward appearances, lived and died enveloped in secrecy and mystery.
Five years in the making, Carol Morley turned detective in her quest to piece together the life of this enigmatic woman, proving more successful than police and council authorities, Carol traced Joyce’s friends, colleagues and ex-boyfriends through ads in the local press, on black cabs and via online social networks. In candid conversations with them, and using dramatised reconstructions with actress Zawe Ashton (Fresh Meat) portraying Joyce, Carol Morley deftly pieces together the life of a woman who was lively and social and yet remained detached and distant from all who knew and loved her.
Dreams of a Life is an imaginative, powerful, multi-layered quest, and is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait of London - the City, music, and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love.
Dreams Of A Life is due to get a limited release around UK&Ireland from December 16th. For listings of the films screenings can be found at the official site
Nobody noticed when Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. Her body wasn’t discovered for three years, surrounded by Christmas presents she had been wrapping, and with the TV still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of her life - not even a photograph.
Who was she? And how could this happen to someone in our day and age- the so-called age of communication? For her film Dreams of a Life, filmmaker Carol Morley set out to find out. Joyce may have died in tragic isolation, but Morley was not going to let her be forgotten. She placed adverts in newspapers, on the Internet, and on the side of a London taxi. What she finds out is extraordinary.
A range of people that once knew Joyce help to piece together a portrait of the woman that became so forgotten. “She was very sweet, beautiful looking, a bit of a mystery. We weren’t too sure where she came from. It’s almost like she was a ghost, even then.” Dreams of a Life becomes as much about the people who remember her as it is about Joyce herself
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