A Red Hat

Inspired by Jenny Joseph’s popular poem ‘Warning’ – ‘When I am old I shall wear purple, with a Red Hat ‘ etc., I wrote a short film called ‘A Red Hat’ as part of my MA in Script Writing at Leeds Film School in 1991. It was produced on a low budget, but with plenty of talent, by students on the production course. I set it in York, a very special city. The idea was to draw parallels between the life of a child and that of an old woman, thinking about how our lives are often controlled by others, and how we rebel against that.

The film was selected to be shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival, and I was delighted that Jenny Joseph wrote to me to say she loved it and it was just what she would have liked to do if she’d filmed her poem!