Shot on Super 8 film while its makers were still university students, Tarantella is a five-minute horror short from 1990, credited to Christopher Nolan and Roko Belic.
What is Tarantella about?
Tarantella belongs to a category of filmmaking rarely preserved this well: a short, low-budget student production made on physical film rather than video, at a point when its makers had no crew, no studio, and no distribution beyond whatever local broadcast slot they could find. It was produced while Christopher Nolan was studying at University College London, working with childhood friend Roko Belic rather than a professional crew. Its home format was Super 8, a compact and inexpensive gauge that made it possible for students to shoot on real film without a commercial budget behind them, and its eventual home on screen was a public broadcast slot rather than a theatrical release. The film found its way onto Image Union, a PBS programme based in Chicago that gave airtime to independent and experimental short work that would otherwise have had nowhere to go. For a five-minute horror piece with this kind of pedigree, the interest is less in plot mechanics and more in the fact that it survives at all, offering a rare look at the earliest, smallest-scale work of two names who went on to very different careers in film.
About the cast
Christopher Nolan and Roko Belic, the two friends behind the short, are also its credited actors, working in front of and behind the camera on a production small enough that both roles fell to the same small group of people.
Context & significance
Short horror films built around a single unsettling idea, rather than an extended plot, were a natural fit for the Super 8 format, which suited quick shoots and small crews far better than anything feature-length. The genre gave student filmmakers a way to practise mood, timing, and visual effect within a five-minute runtime, without needing the resources a longer story would demand. Broadcast outlets like Image Union existed precisely to give this kind of work an audience, airing short, independently made films from outside the commercial system to a Chicago public-television viewership. Placed in that context, Tarantella is less a horror film competing on the same terms as a theatrical release and more a document of how young filmmakers taught themselves the craft before any larger opportunity arrived.
Watching Tarantella on Ktime
Tarantella is available to watch on K-Time with a free account login. K-Time brings a wide catalogue, including short and independent work like this one, to the Iranian diaspora through a Farsi-first viewing experience.