Champagne, Intimacy, Alan, the upcoming short film from writer/director David Martin will be going into production in late July of this year. Shooting on Red and with a cast and crew made up of some of London’s most exciting up and coming film talent, it is an intoxicating tale of love, lust, intimacy, sexual embarrassment and revelation.

Coming from Mini Productions, the company behind recent hit sci-fi web series Chronicles of Syntax, Champagne, Intimacy, Alan (C.I.A) is set to be one of the most provocative shorts of the year.

The film follows Alan and Carol, a middle class, mid-40s, terminally married couple, who attend an upmarket swing club for the first time. At the club, a lush, low-lit penthouse in central London, they meet Sonya, a statuesque Russian, and her intense, laconic husband Dan.

Though twenty years their junior, Sonya and Dan are veterans of ‘the lifestyle’ and quickly take charge. As the couple’s get to know one another, something happens to change previously eager Alan’s view of the situation. Soon he finds himself questioning marriage, life and everything.

Speaking about his inspiration for the film Martin says ‘I have never been swinging but in many ways it seems attractive to me, and not just for sexual reasons. When I imagine myself in that situation, however, my mind immediately goes to the practical problems that might come up and that is exactly what happens to Alan in the film.’
Along with the film’s producer and co-star Nicholas Anscombe, Martin met with several swingers while researching the production and found it a real education. ‘In the scene there is definitely a distrust of the media due to previous portrayals of swinging,’ the director says. ‘The main thing that I noticed is how happy they all are. It is a sub-culture of incredibly contented people.’ To put light on their findings, Anscombe and Martin have decided to produce a sister documentary project on the British swing scene, entitled ‘Beyond the Vanilla World,’ which will be released alongside C.I.A.

For Martin, however, the film is not so much about swinging or wife swapping as it is about intimacy. ‘Swinging is the backdrop but really it is a film about relationships. Intimacy is a funny concept. You often hear people say things like “sex is the most intimate moment that two people can share” and, yeah, sometimes it is pretty intimate. But a lot of the time it really isn’t, even when it’s good. I think back on the relationships I’ve been in and the most intimate moments – many of them were conversations, silences and arguments with no sexual undercurrent at all. Why do we have this idea that sex is the ne-plus ultra of intimacy?’

The production already has cast and crew in place, with Francis Adams and Julia Munrow as the leads Alan and Carol, and Maya Lindh as Sonya. There’s already a gorgeous poster, created by Matt Heffernan and costumes designed by Heather Bradley. To make it all happen, Anscombe is running a Kickstarter campaign, to raise the £5000 budget needed to hire the right locations, rent the best equipment, pay expenses and produce the film the way it deserves to be produced. On the campaign page you can even read the screenplay, before deciding whether or not to back the project.

Keep an eye out for Champagne, Intimacy, Alan on next year’s festival circuit.

View the Kickstarter campaign and read the script here: http://bit.ly/CIAkickstarter