amazon films: yam review

Theatre, stand-up and now writing and directing her own feature film, whatever else Angel Garden is lacking (like any decent funding) it's not determination.

At 42, with a three-year-old child and a walking impairment, she's not the stereotypical young film-maker around town - but then neither is her film, Yam, a stereotypical young film-maker's project. Instead, it focuses on a woman with her son in prison, who hits the menopause and doesn't want to take HRT, and finds solace and fame in the natural power of yams; much to the panic of her partner.

"Her doctor's telling her she should take HRT but she doesn't want to, so she explores the alternatives which leads her into trouble and brings her up against the law about drugs in general," Angel says.

"It's about our ideas of what a drug is - she starts to grow this yam which is only a vegetable, but the contraceptive pill and HRT contain similar natural hormonal substances to wild yam (which has only just become widely available due to licencing), only they're also full of chemicals. There's a question about the control of these substances and what the agenda is. And she just takes the lid off it, through cannabis."

But don't worry if that sounds a bit heavy-going; the film itself is a comedy, although not, as Angel is quick to point out, a comedy written by men at the expense of women. There are enough of those around already without adding another to the pile. But that's fairly unsurprising; try getting funding for a film project and within weeks you'll find there really isn't much money available.
Yam should have had a budget of £80,000, but thanks to a generous cast and crew who were prepared to work on a profit-share basis, she managed to make the film for less than a quarter of that - which is still a substantial amount of money when you're finding it yourself.

Just from chatting for half-an-hour, you know Angel is not going to let anything stop her when she's got her mind set on it. For instance, the original plan was to make the film with puppets, to save cash; but then "I thought no, it will annoy me to sit in a room with puppets when I want to be a film director. It's what I've wanted to do since I was a kid."

It might have been her childhood dream, but Angel took a while to get there.

"It's the first feature film I've done, my background's really in theatre. I came to Bristol when I was doing a one-woman show, but I moved away from doing that because I couldn't physically do it; it was about nursing and it was an hour-and-a-half of me on stage and it was hard work," she says.

"Then I did the stand-up as a compere at the Mauretania, and while other comics were saying 'go up to London' I thought I'd go mad doing that, and I realised that although I could do it and I was good at doing it, it wasn't really me and I would much prefer to work in a way that's not so stressful. I think I was completely addicted to adrenalin and I had to get off it."

To ease herself away from theatre and stand-up, Angel did a post-grad in film along the way. But what to do next?

"I'm the sort of person who's always on the verge of making it but then something has happened to make me go a different way. But I feel this is the right way to go," Angel says.

"I did the whole film course on crutches. One thing you have to do in the film industry, you have to be a runner, which isn't really ideal when you have a walking impairment. In the end I decided to stick my neck out and make the film.

"I wanted to do this because I am an actor and there are so few parts for women and for women of character - and also as an actor I've always had very good feedback, but I've always been aware that there's a million nearly as good. Acting is something we all do all the time. This way I'm in control of the whole process, even if other people don't like it, which of course I hope they do, I'll still be glad that I made it.

"I definitely want to feature women in my work and definitely want to create working environments where you don't have to be able-bodied to deal with them. There are six parts for women and my ambition is to write more good parts."

And what stronger role model could you possibly want than Angel herself?