Before seeing this film, someone in a film queue told me that, of course this wouldn’t be a film about concrete.

Director John Wilson is better known for his series of short films called “How to…: do something. His oeuvre seems to be to look under the covers at things that are mundane and every day and there is a wry humour to some of his titles – How to Keep Smoking, How to Clean a Cast Iron Pan, How to Walk to Manhattan.

With The History of Concrete, we take a circuitous path that intermittently crosses over with his subject matter. It is a self-referential story as he talks about the topic of the film and his difficulty in getting financing for it, and we go down some expected paths – we talk to concreters and bricklayers and construction companies.

It is a winding path though, so we will also dip into the lives of people he meets along the way. Some of these stories turn out to be small gems that take us into places we are not expecting. Wilson is gentle and self-deprecating and is deft at using visual humour with incidental footage and excellent timing to really land some funny moments.

You’ll also find out more than you ever thought was possible to know about memorialising people‘s tattoos, 3-D printed concrete, and where the real Chef Bouardi is interred.

It was just a delight at every moment. I was buoyed up by the appreciative and receptive audience that laughed at all the right times and it makes me want to look for more of Wilson’s work