The makers of DREAM A40 had done a short about West Indians in London called TEN BOB IN WINTER a couple of years earlier. Writer-Director Lloyd Reckord (later to head the Jamaican National Theatre) was the first black man to direct a British dramatic film. TEN BOB IN WINTER had been received with enthusiasm at the London Film Festival. A round of industry personalities said "Do show us your next one!" This was not the stepping stone hoped for. Solution - make something more conspicuous?
Reckord came up with this account of the fantasy one of a pair of gay lovers has while driving on a British highway. Put together on the returns of TEN BOB IN WINTER, which the BFI had no idea what to do with as their films never had returns (exageration)along with some money from crew and well wishers, DREAM A40 achieved a professional finish not expected in the "experimental films" made there. It was the first film to attempt a so called feature dub using sixteen millimeter materials and the first film to utilise the new fast Ilford stock comparable to the Kodak materials ALPHAVILLE had just been shot on.
Filming in moving vehicles and in the then to be demolished Blackfriars Station achieves some admired passages.
After months of unpaid slog, the Reckord's new product surfaced at the next London Film Festival, where it was received with nervous silence and then all but vanished from view. It got some circulation among the "Underground" Film events of the day, without opening career paths as hoped for by the participants. Star Michael Billington did manage a long career as featured player and editor Barrie Pattison later wrote and directed the feature ZOMBIE BRIGADE FROM LIZARD GULLY.
DREAM A40 is, in a way, a freeze frame of the unfulfilled aspirations of the next generation of film makers in Britain who faced the disintegration of the country's feature product.
