This October, The Standard, London and Babes with Blades will present SPLIT, a film starring at Sweeties, the hotel’s 10th-floor cocktail bar. Founded by director Jade Ang Jackman and stunt performer Ayesha Hussain, Babes with Blades uses stage combat to elevate the voices of underrepresented communities and outdated representations of women in action cinema.
This film is executively produced by Kola Bello of SAL Studios, production company. Jade, an award-winning director with work featured at Sundance and the British Film Institute, and Ayesha, whose action credits include Deadpool & Wolverine, Gladiator II, and Star Wars have an incredible archive of work.
Spanning over 5 minutes, SPLIT features Ayesha alongside Alice Hewkin (The Brothers Sun),to depict a dispute while splitting the bill, an exhilarating fight sequence ensues which blends cocktail elegance with high-energy stunts.
Sweeties, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and panoramic views of the London skyline, provides the perfect backdrop for the film’s dramatic action. Jade says, “When people ask what my work is about, I joke that my praxis is why women fight. In a previous short film, with Sir Steve McQueen’s Lammas Park, that took a more serious turn looking at the Suffragettes.
Being able to use the Standard’s Sweeties as a backdrop, I drew off cultural customs around paying the bill and the relationship between cocktails and the action genre. In Split, two female friends slide down bars and smash up bars as each is determined to pay for the other!”
To celebrate SPLIT, Sweeties will unveil its new Autumn/Winter cocktail menu crafted by Zoe Burgess that nods to the action-film theme. The film premiered on Wednesday, 2nd October at Sweeties and is available to view on The Standard, London’s website now.