Love in Protest
- Ollie Ley
- Jul 9
- 2 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Over the past few months, I’ve been making a short documentary called Love in Protest in collaboration with Bristol Pride and The Bristol Cable.
The film follows Achintya and Jenni as they reflect on love, immigration, protest and what it means when your voice is shaped by forces beyond your control. For Achintya, the fear of jeopardising a visa means public protest is not a simple or safe choice. The film asks what happens when someone cannot fully show up, and what it means for others to carry that voice with care.
We first shared the film as part of Capturing Movement: Truth, Voice and Visibility, an event in the Bristol Pride programme with Mark Simmons exploring protest, representation and who gets to shape public memory. The conversation afterwards was generous, thoughtful and useful. It helped me understand the film not just as a piece of content, but as part of a wider question about how stories are made, shared and held.
During the edit, I kept noticing how instinctively I was trying to make the film work for social media. I would move the most fear provoking line closer to the start, cut away from silence, search for a stronger hook, or reduce a thought into something quicker and sharper. None of that felt malicious. It felt normal. That was the uncomfortable part.
I started to realise how easily a story can be flattened when the main aim is to keep someone watching. This film needed to come from a place of love. It needed balance, space and care. It could not only be fear, even though fear is part of the story. It needed to hold the reality of what Achintya and Jenni are speaking about without turning that reality into a piece of content designed to provoke a reaction.
That process has made me question how much of my own storytelling instinct has been shaped by platforms. Are we making stories in their natural form, or are we constantly bending them towards what performs? I do not think there is a simple answer, but I know this film did not want to be reduced into the most shareable version of itself.
So I am trying a different form of distribution. The film will still be on Instagram and YouTube, but it is also available to download directly from the Spatula Studio website under a Creative Commons licence. You are welcome to screen it, send it to people, share it with community groups, classrooms, organisations or anyone you think should see it. The only request is that it remains in its original form.
Social media can help stories travel, but it should not be the only way they move. At a time when reach feels increasingly shaped by commercial incentives, I want to see what happens when a film is carried by people instead.
If the film resonates with you, please pass it on. Not for the algorithm, but because someone else might need to hear it.