Matt Stokes’s Long after Tonight is a tribute to the British northern soul scene of the 1970s. Filmed in one of the original locations, a church in Dundee, Scotland, where weekly dance events took place, the just under seven minute long film approaches its subject cautiously from the outside. The nighttime ambience of the church is subsequently contrasted with a wild frenzy of motion on the dance floor. Flowing skirts swirl and agile legs trip about to two instrumental pieces, The World Again by Honey Townsend and Sidra’s Theme by Ronnie & Robyn. In the middle of it all, acrobatic dance figures are executed. The film conjures up the here and now of an ecstatic moment and underlines that feeling by using repeated slow-motion sequences. The ephemeral pleasure ends as abruptly as it began–nighttime calm falls upon the brief commotion of the remembered moment.
