Uploaded February 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
“Aisha, I get so bored like, like I’m internally beating myself up.” These are the first words we hear from Charlie Osborne, a multidisciplinary artist, musician and performer who makes work on the presumption that “the internet is a genre and protection can be found in objects, mascots, easter eggs and symbols.” What follows lands somewhere between an urgent threat and morbid fantasy, free association tripping towards destruction: “I swear to god one day I’ll grab the perfume, you know, not the liquid kind, the aerosol kind, and I’ll grab a lighter, you know, a Clippers, the shiny ones, and I’ll go up in smoke.” It’s this space in-between, a liminality conjured out of performance anxiety and contemporary malaise, that Osborne moves through in her short film Bury-Man-Lane, a portrait at once personal and phantasmic. “Although my writing style is based in magical realism, I kept weaving in real life events,” she says of the film’s stark opening. “There’s a scene where myself and close friend Aisha share dark fantasies in the back of a car. It’s based off this time when a girl at my school did go up in flames in the playground after dousing herself in Lynx and a boy flicking a lighter at her. It was only for a split moment and so she was by miracle un-harmed. I’m always drawn to these ‘close calls’ lucky escapes and this idea of mischief. It’s like a bleak form of entertainment.” Apocryphal tales, intimate myths and surreal, domestic lore proliferate the world of Bury-Man-Lane, in which the mysterious power of an enigmatic talent show, which seems to take place outside of time, in a limbo that may or may not be haunted, generates a gravitational pull through which the film’s characters orbit. “I wanted all my characters to seem like they are in search for something hopeful and that in the fog there’s something good out there for all of us,” Osborne continues. “I wanted there to be a common thread that ties all the characters together and so I chose an event. TV talent shows, music videos and performing for social media became a key reference when thinking about what this ‘event’ in the story of Bury-Man-Lane would be.”
“It was a real pleasure to work with all the cast whom for most was their first time in a film,” Osborne continues. “When directing I was always craving for it to look slightly contrived, like their emotions were wrapped in plastic. I wanted to story-tell through the choreography as much as the dialogue, so I collaborated with artist Gulliver Whitby to create a twitchy, bird like movement. This image of a flock of birds and a flyer moving across the screen wouldn’t leave my mind. It opened up the idea that somehow my characters are subconsciously dictating one another from scene to scene, through this choreography.” Though at times disconnected, it’s clear that the characters of Bury-Man-Lane are dancing to the same beat, disaffected by the material conditions of their existence yet steadfast in their faith in each other, drawn by the irresistible pull of the show, a stage on which to be seen. It’s in this way that Charlie Osborne’s performance rips back through the sequence of signs, sigils and spells of the world observed through her eyes, her band’s frazzled anthem the flicked lighter that sets the perfumed flame of Bury-Man-Lane ablaze.
Cast – Charlie Osborne, Aisha Kacie, Annastasia Mikhailova, Isabella Pinto, Tara Strange, Theadora Sutherland, Hemi Shannon, Cosmo Conway, Jude Woodhead, Amon, Sammy Neale, Travis Barton, Brandon Westly, Esme Ashley Smith, Kurtis Lincoln, Morgan Lee Johnson, Ines Sacof, Nathaniel David Trevor Bailey, Ratiba Ayadi, In Tongues (Tara Cunningham, Sam Bates & Pike Ogilvy)
‘Metal Detector’ written and performed by In Tongues & Charlie Osborne
In Tongues are Tara Cunningham, Sam Bates, Pike Ogilvy
Director – Charlie Osborne
Writer – Charlie Osborne
Producer – Charlie Osborne
Director of Photography – Jack Cullis
Editor – Dominic England
Composer – Reuben Joseph
Costume Designer – Gulia Galiberti
3D Effects Supervisor – Finn Dove
First AD – Teddy Skinner
First AC – Edward Melbourne
Second AC – Ruben Neviazsky
Movement Director – Gulliver Whitby
Sound Designer – Reuben Joseph
Sound Recordist – Zak Ferguson
Gaffer – Marcus Kartal
Spark – Charlie Ring, Marc Milay
Props Handler – Miriam Aston-Hetherington
Photographer – Bella Santucci
Make-Up Artist – Eve Lyttelton
Colourist – Chris Poole
Runner – Kitty Drury, Jack Whitby
Special Thanks to Dominic England, Reuben Robinson, Gulliver Whitby
“Aisha, I get so bored like, like I’m internally beating myself up.” These are the first words we hear from Charlie Osborne, a multidisciplinary artist, musician and performer who makes work on the presumption that “the internet is a genre and protection can be found in objects, mascots, easter eggs and symbols.” What follows lands somewhere between an urgent threat and morbid fantasy, free association tripping towards destruction: “I swear to god one day I’ll grab the perfume, you know, not the liquid kind, the aerosol kind, and I’ll grab a lighter, you know, a Clippers, the shiny ones, and I’ll go up in smoke.” It’s this space in-between, a liminality conjured out of performance anxiety and contemporary malaise, that Osborne moves through in her short film Bury-Man-Lane, a portrait at once personal and phantasmic. “Although my writing style is based in magical realism, I kept weaving in real life events,” she says of the film’s stark opening. “There’s a scene where myself and close friend Aisha share dark fantasies in the back of a car. It’s based off this time when a girl at my school did go up in flames in the playground after dousing herself in Lynx and a boy flicking a lighter at her. It was only for a split moment and so she was by miracle un-harmed. I’m always drawn to these ‘close calls’ lucky escapes and this idea of mischief. It’s like a bleak form of entertainment.” Apocryphal tales, intimate myths and surreal, domestic lore proliferate the world of Bury-Man-Lane, in which the mysterious power of an enigmatic talent show, which seems to take place outside of time, in a limbo that may or may not be haunted, generates a gravitational pull through which the film’s characters orbit. “I wanted all my characters to seem like they are in search for something hopeful and that in the fog there’s something good out there for all of us,” Osborne continues. “I wanted there to be a common thread that ties all the characters together and so I chose an event. TV talent shows, music videos and performing for social media became a key reference when thinking about what this ‘event’ in the story of Bury-Man-Lane would be.”
“It was a real pleasure to work with all the cast whom for most was their first time in a film,” Osborne continues. “When directing I was always craving for it to look slightly contrived, like their emotions were wrapped in plastic. I wanted to story-tell through the choreography as much as the dialogue, so I collaborated with artist Gulliver Whitby to create a twitchy, bird like movement. This image of a flock of birds and a flyer moving across the screen wouldn’t leave my mind. It opened up the idea that somehow my characters are subconsciously dictating one another from scene to scene, through this choreography.” Though at times disconnected, it’s clear that the characters of Bury-Man-Lane are dancing to the same beat, disaffected by the material conditions of their existence yet steadfast in their faith in each other, drawn by the irresistible pull of the show, a stage on which to be seen. It’s in this way that Charlie Osborne’s performance rips back through the sequence of signs, sigils and spells of the world observed through her eyes, her band’s frazzled anthem the flicked lighter that sets the perfumed flame of Bury-Man-Lane ablaze.
Cast – Charlie Osborne, Aisha Kacie, Annastasia Mikhailova, Isabella Pinto, Tara Strange, Theadora Sutherland, Hemi Shannon, Cosmo Conway, Jude Woodhead, Amon, Sammy Neale, Travis Barton, Brandon Westly, Esme Ashley Smith, Kurtis Lincoln, Morgan Lee Johnson, Ines Sacof, Nathaniel David Trevor Bailey, Ratiba Ayadi, In Tongues (Tara Cunningham, Sam Bates & Pike Ogilvy)
‘Metal Detector’ written and performed by In Tongues & Charlie Osborne
In Tongues are Tara Cunningham, Sam Bates, Pike Ogilvy
Director – Charlie Osborne
Writer – Charlie Osborne
Producer – Charlie Osborne
Director of Photography – Jack Cullis
Editor – Dominic England
Composer – Reuben Joseph
Costume Designer – Gulia Galiberti
3D Effects Supervisor – Finn Dove
First AD – Teddy Skinner
First AC – Edward Melbourne
Second AC – Ruben Neviazsky
Movement Director – Gulliver Whitby
Sound Designer – Reuben Joseph
Sound Recordist – Zak Ferguson
Gaffer – Marcus Kartal
Spark – Charlie Ring, Marc Milay
Props Handler – Miriam Aston-Hetherington
Photographer – Bella Santucci
Make-Up Artist – Eve Lyttelton
Colourist – Chris Poole
Runner – Kitty Drury, Jack Whitby
Special Thanks to Dominic England, Reuben Robinson, Gulliver Whitby
