In an interview in The Guardian in 2001, Liv Ullman described the storyline of a short film she had made in the 1990’s:
“ An old man is lying in a double bed by himself. He wakes up all alone, has a bath, goes into the kitchen, makes a picnic basket, puts his hat on, looks in the mirror and leaves. He walks through the streets and he’s old and little and nobody notices him because he’s just…old. He goes to the hospital, walks through the corridor, and no-one notices. He enters the room, and then finally he smiles because she’s there. His wife has lost her mind. He gives her the soup he has made for her, waters the flowers, kisses her, and leaves. No-one sees him leave. He walks back through the streets unnoticed. But we know that he is a carrier of love.”

‘This’, Liv Ullman said, ‘is the sort of film I want to make’. And this is the subject of the presentation I want to give.

‘Sense and Sensibility’ is a short, allusive study of the intangible aspects of touch: of touch defined as the ability to rouse tender or painful feelings within an individual human being. It may be an arousal of affectiveness within ourselves, or one caused within another person. We will be looking at instances of both, and also examining the relationship between the two – how feelings are conveyed, understood or intuited between and amongst people. In particular, we will be examining the role of materiality as a means of expressing such feelings. Not, as an alternative to verbal or written language, but as something that is integral to the process of feeling itself. Of feelings or ideas that can somehow only be expressed in some palpable form. Or perhaps not so much expressed, as validated: of love proven through the making and sharing of soup, the watering of flowers, an unreciprocated kiss and a giving of self that is unnoticed and unacknowledged. This is an examination of the exterior expression of interiority; of the desire to make tangible the intangible and express the seemingly inexpressible.