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Brace yourself
for the most powerful
cinema experience ever
Apollo Cinema Piccadilly Circus
Now with
in all screens and
Happy to host Raindance 2010
The perfect location at which to host your Corporate Events,
Product Launches, Press Shows, Conferences, Private Parties,
Preview Screenings, Film Premieres and Presentations.
For event information and booking contact [email protected]
0871 220 6000 or www.apollocinemas.com
For film info or to book tickets for Raindance or any other film
OUR THANKS TO
PRINCIPAL SPONSOR
Our jurors: Charles Saatchi, Mark Herbert,
Ernie Marsh, Dave McKean, Alison Owen,
Derek Malcolm, Julian Barratt, Lemmy
and Joe Bateman
Our sponsors: Amy Gustin, Ian Powell
& all at the Apollo, Sumi Ghose and Asia
House, Virginie Guichard & all at Electric
Sheep, Neil McCartney, Marcia Degia
& all at the IFT, Helen Cowley, Jo
Underhill, Paul Greenwood & all at
Lovefilm, Brad Day & NDP, Ian McNaught
& Pearl & Dean, Maurice Hugget, Tom
Walczak at The Phoenix, Oli Harbottle,
Terry Stevens & all at Dogwoof, Zara
Ballantyne-Grove, Keith Greenhalgh
and all at Raindance.tv, James Mullighan
& Helen Jack at Shooting People,
everyone at Revolver, Wing Wang and
Angela Liu at UK China Association,
Candi Perez, Olvido Salazar Alonso and
all at the Instituto de Cervantes, Danny
Miller, Andy Woodward and all at Little
White Lies, Tom Hunter, Charmaine
Freeman and all at London Calling,
Michael Sheppard and all at Grange
Hotels, All at The May Fair Hotel, Rita
Rowe, Connie Farr & Pete Lawton
at Thinksync
Cat Crawford and Diesel, Ruth Elliott and
all at Vitamin Water, Rinaldo Quacquarini
and all at Moviescope. Georgina Marling,
Libby Durdy, Andy Capper, Gee Vaucher,
Julian Beavers, Tony Cooke, Ute Kromrey,
Matt Adam, David Kapur & Ian Cartwright
at 1155, Tessa Collinson & Johanna von
Fischer, Fred Hogge, Pete Galli & The
Airborne Toxic Event, Martin Myers,
Julie Taylor-Butt & Sam Clark at Kodak,
Will Stevenson, Dean Goldberg, all our
volunteers and interns and everyone
we’ve unforgivably, momentarily forgotten
SUPPORTING PARTNERS
CULTURAL PARTNERS
Raindance Patrons
Nick Broomfield, Jonathan Caouette,
Henrik Danstrup, Mike Figgis, Terry
Gilliam, Ken Loach, Dave McKean,
0Martin Myers, Alan Parker, Jonathan
Pryce, Marky Ramone, Vanessa Redgrave
Benefactors
Fuad Omar, Darren Priest, Chris
Cameron, Mariana Pimentel, Bilal
Mannaa, Samantha Lay, Luc Toutoughi,
Nigel Spence, Susan Douglas,
Ardor Pictures & ABS Properties/Media
– Los Angeles
MEDIA PARTNERS
Raindance Film Festival
81 Berwick Street
London W1F 8TW
Tel +44(0)20 7287 3833
www.raindance.org
LOVEFiLM COMPLETE LOGO – CMYK. RIO. 3-11-08
18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
3
VENUES & MAP
APOLLO CINEMA
19 Lower Regent Steet
London SW1Y 4LR
PHOENIX ARTIST CLUB
104–110 Charing Cross Road
London WC2H 0JN
Ticket Prices
Full price £12 / Concs £8
Box Office
0871 220 6000
Screenings take place at the Apollo, unless otherwise specified
The Phoenix Artist Club is a private members bar underneath the Phoenix Theatre on Charing
Cross Road. Festival-goers will have access to this marvelous late-night drinking establishment
for the duration of the festival simply by quoting ‘Raindance’ on the door
18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
5
APOLLO CINEMA A
WEDS 29 SEPT
19:00 Jackboots on Whitehall
THURS 30 SEPT
17:30 The Sound of Mumbai: A Musical
19:15 All I Ever Wanted
21:45 Geidai Shorts
16:00 Plymouth College of Arts Shorts
18:30 On Holiday
20:30Ollie Keppler’s Expanding Purple World
FRI 1 OCT
15:15 On Holiday
17:15 Shorts: Nova Express
19:30 Legacy
21:45 L.A. Zombie
14:30 All I Ever Wanted
16:45 Superstonic Sound: The Rebel Dread
18:15 This Way of Life
20:15 Swansea Love Story
22:00Cannibal
SAT 2 OCT
13:15 Lummox
14:30 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
16:45 Robert Mitchum Is Dead
18:45 Huge
21:00 Symbol
12:00 Legacy
14:00 Shorts: Risky Liaisons
16:00 Days of Harvest
17:45 Pure Asia
20:00Treasure of the Black Jaguar
22:15 Too Much Pussy: Feminist Sluts in the Queer…
SUN 3 OCT
13:30 Shorts: Relative States
15:30 American Grindhouse
18:00 Bo
20:00Vacation!
14:00 Look at What the Light Did Now
15:45 Rouge Ciel
17:45 There Once Was an Island
20:15 Lost Girl
MON 4 OCT
18:30 Live!Ammunition!
20:30The Woman with a Broken Nose
16:00 G-Star screening
18:30 Armless
20:30Lovers of Hate
TUES 5 OCT
13:45 Lovers of Hate
15:45 When the World Breaks
18:00 Mackendrick Interview + Into the West
21:00 The Lake Effect
14:45 The Woman with a Broken Nose
17:00 99 Minute Film Funding School
19:30 Robin Hood Tax Screening
21:30 Freight
WEDS 6 OCT
13:45 The Lake Effect
17:15 Lost and Found
19:00 Five Daughters
21:30 We Are the Mods
15:45 The Story of My Space
18:00 The Cutting Tradition: Insights into Female…
19:15 Sounds Like a Revolution
21:15 Helena from the Wedding
THURS 7 OCT
16:30 Shorts: Absent Sense
18:45 Slackistan
20:45The Vice Guide to Liberia
22:30Iron Doors
17:45 Lunar Child
20:00Macho
21:45 Vampires
FRI 8 OCT
15:45 Iron Doors
19:30 Rebels without a Clue
21:30 Autumn Adagio
15:30 Vampires
19:15 USB
SAT 9 OCT
11:00 Rebels without a Clue
12:45 Yellow Kid
15:00 Lights Out
16:45 Stolen
18:30 Do Elephants Pray?
20:45Donoma
11:45 The Toll
14:00 99 Minute Animation School
17:00 Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry: The Life and Times…
18:45 Incredibly Small
20:45Yuriko’s Aroma
22:15 Dirty Diaries
SUN 10 OCT
12:15 Camp Victory, Afghanistan
13:15 Do Elephants Pray?
17:00 Raindance Awards
19:00 Son of Babylon
10:00 99 Minute Editing School
12:00 99 Minute VFX School
13:45 Hi! Otsuka Drugstore
6
18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
APOLLO CINEMA B
APOLLO CINEMA C
SCREENING
SCHEDULE
16:00 Night Runner
18:15 Question in Details
14:30 Ollie Kepler’s Expanding Purple World
16:30 Alive
18:30 Boys on the Run
10:00 99 Minute Sound School
12:00 99 Minute Film Scoring School
14:00 99 Minute Directing School
16:00 Kodak New Talent Screening
18:15 Shorts: Best UK
10:00 99 Min DSLR Schl 12:00 99 Min Indie Survival School
14:30 Kino Caravan
16:30 I Believe in Angels
18:30 32nd December
14:45 Symbol
16:45 Shorts: Thriller Zone
18:45 Straight 8 screening
15:15 Armless
17:00 Shorts: Abstract Notions
18:45 Flooding with Love for the Kid
16:45 Shorts: Raging Liberties
18:45 My Flesh My Blood
17:00 Marieke, Marieke
19:15 9:06
22:45Bedways
CINÉ LUMIERE
14:45 Shorts: Changing Lanes
16:45 Shorts: Learning Curves
22:45A Serbian Film
18:30 Lights Out
10:00 99 Minute Casting School
12:00 99 Minute Special FX School
14:15 Shorts: Gone Astray
16:30 Shorts: Best International
19:00 Trash
19:00 Treasure of the Black Jaguar
10:30 Incredibly Small
11:30 Shorts: Documentary Tones
13:30 Shorts: Animation City
15:45 My Neighbour Totoro
CINÉ LUMIÈRE
17 Queensberry Place
London SW7 2D2
MAY FAIR HOTEL
18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
7
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READ film reviews, in
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CHECK OUT our mon
Electric Sheep is the online magazine for
lovers of offbeat, left-field and cult cinema.
It celebrates the celluloid dreams of the
most outlandish, provocative and visionary
directors, the marginal and the transgressive,
the poetic and the subversive.
Look out for The End, an Electric Sheep
anthology of specially commissioned essays
on transgressive film from David Lynch to
Nollywood, including contributions by the
Brothers Quay, Peter Whitehead, Jason
Wood and Jack Sargeant, published by
Strange Attractor Press in November 2010.
A must-read for all film lovers and those who
like to wander off the beaten cultural track.
www.electricsheepmagazine.com
FESTIVAL JURY PRIZES
To recognise the outstanding achievements of the filmmakers showcased at the 18th Raindance
Film Festival in 2010, a number of jury prizes will be awarded. The winners will be announced at
the Apollo Cinema on Sunday 10 October at 5pm. The nominees are:
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE
Donoma [France]
Son of Babylon [Iraq]
Symbol [Japan]
The Woman with a Broken Nose [Serbia]
BEST UK FEATURE
Five Daughters
Huge
Jackboots on Whitehall
Legacy
Rebels without a Clue
BEST DEBUT FEATURE
Armless [USA]
Cannibal [Belgium]
Donoma [France]
Huge [UK]
Robert Mitchum Is Dead [France]
The Story of My Space [Russia]
BEST MICRO BUDGET FEATURE
Armless [USA]
Flooding with Love for the Kid [USA]
Incredibly Small [USA]
Lovers of Hate [USA]
Macho [Mexico]
BEST DOCUMENTARY
Camp Victory, Afghanistan [USA]
Stolen [Australia]
Rouge Ciel [France]
Sounds Like a Revolution [Canada]
There Once Was an Island [USA/New Zealand]
This Way of Life [New Zealand]
BEST UK SHORT
Dust
The Golden Boy
Natural Selection
Stanley Pickle
Storage
Watching
BEST INTERNATIONAL SHORT
Still [Cyprus]
Happiness Is Hate Therapy [Canada]
I Am a Fat Cat [USA]
LIN [UK]
Fly [Germany/Poland]
Moustachette [USA]
FILM OF THE FESTIVAL [SHORT]
The winner is offered the chance to make next
year’s trailer with the support of the IFT.
18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
9
THE FESTIVAL JURY
Julian Barratt is an English comedian, musician, music producer and actor. He is best known
for his role as Howard Moon in the highly acclaimed comedy series, The Mighty Boosh for which
he also composes the music.
Photograph of Lemmy by Robert John, photograph of Charles Saatchi by James King
Joe Bateman is the director of the Rushes Soho Shorts festival and has over ten years experience
in programming and film festivals. He has previously worked for City Screen and later as head
of special programming at Curzon Cinemas.
Lemmy is the founding member, singer and bass player of Motorhead. Known for his rock ’n’
roll lifestyle, he has had an illustrious career and is the subject of a recent documentary which
premiered at SXSW earlier this year.
Mark Herbert is the joint managing director for Warp Films, and is best known for his work as
Shane Meadows’ producing partner since 2004. Other recent films that Mark has produced include
Four Lions, Donkey Punch and Bunny and the Bull.
Derek Malcolm was a longstanding film critic at The Guardian until his retirement in 2000. His
career there culminated in a two-year series of articles, The Century of Films. He is currently the
president of the British Federation of Film Societies and the International Film Critics’ Circle.
Ernie Marsh is an optical sound mixer for feature films and trailers. Since starting his career whilst
a schoolboy he has worked with Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Martin
Scorsese. He continues to work at Warwick Studios, where he has been based for over 30 years.
Dave McKean is an artist, musician, graphic designer and filmmaker. He has worked for DC
Comics, produced cover art for the acclaimed Sandman series, and gone on to create album artwork
for the likes of Alice Cooper, Tori Amos and Michael Nyman. He made his directorial debut with
2005’s MirrorMask, from a script by Neil Gaiman.
Alison Owen is a British producer whose credits include Shaun of the Dead, The Men Who Stare
at Goats and the recent Tamara Drewe. Alison won a BAFTA for Best British Film with the Oscar
nominated Elizabeth.
Charles Saatchi is also on the jury.
18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
11
M
IKE NEWELL’S CAREER has been nothing if not varied: ‘I hate doing the
same thing twice.’ Nor has he, with a body of work which stretches from
the cobbles of Coronation Street to the sands of Persia, with weddings
and mobsters, not to mention wizards, along the way.
Varied it may be, but to Newell there’s a core theme through it all.
Speaking of his 2007 film version of Love in the Time of Cholera, he
said: ‘The character is the way into the story… Whether it’s Harry Potter or Donnie Brasco or Four
Weddings, you can always say that a way of describing the story is that it’s a story of a good man in
a bad jam. This is a very, very complicated form of a good man in a bad jam story. So [my choices]
seem to me to be consistent. They don’t to other people, but they do to me.’
If they don’t seem consistent to other people, it’s because they’re not looking hard enough. At the
core of Newell’s work, beyond a commitment to narrative and character essential to the making of
Opposite Alexander Mackendrick, © BFI/Artisan
WE ARE DELIGHTED TO WELCOME MIKE NEWELL TO RAINDANCE FOR THIS
YEAR’S ALEXANDER MACKENDRICK MEMORIAL INTERVIEW WITH FRED HOGGE
good drama, lies a compassion for humanity and human frailty. Think of Al Pacino’s not-so-bright
mobster in Donnie Brasco. Or Miranda Richardson’s Ruth Ellis in Dance with a Stranger, always
refusing to wear her glasses as she heads blindly into the affair which will inevitably lead her to
murder. It’s this care for the people, the characters of his films that makes Newell, as producer David
Heyman says, one of the great directors of actors.
Like those other so-called eclectic directors, Sidney Lumet, Howard Hawks, Mackendrick himself,
Newell works across genres. If that creates the impression that he’s not a specialist of some kind,
it’s only because we’re not paying attention. Because Newell is a specialist in storytelling.
‘I naturally gravitate towards character drama and I naturally gravitate towards characters who
get into the sort of trouble that everyday people will find. You don’t necessarily have to have kings
and queens and angels and devils at the center of everything. It’s what makes Arthur Miller, Clifford
Odets and Eugene O’Neil tick. It’s the drama of real people.’
It’s the sort of a statement that would have sat well with Mackendrick, a man whose films were
also driven by characters, every day women and men stuck in increasingly bad jams.
18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
15
NEW TITLES FROM THE DOGWOOF KENNEL
www.dogwoof.com
Selected Filmography
2010
2007
2005
2003
1999
1997
1995
1994
1992
1992
1988
1987
1985
1985
1981
1980
1976
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Love in the Time of Cholera
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Mona Lisa Smile
Pushing Tin
Donnie Brasco
An Awfully Big Adventure
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Into the West
Enchanted April
Soursweet
Amazing Grace and Chuck
The Good Father
Dance with a Stranger
Bad Blood
The Awakening
The Man in the Iron Mask (TV)
Raindance has hosted The Alexander
Mackendrick Memorial Interview
since 2000.
Named after the famed British director,
the event invites leading figures in
international cinema to discuss their
career and craft, and to screen one
of their films.
Alexander Mackendrick’s directing
career spanned more than 20 years in
both Ealing and Hollywood, during which
time he made such classics as Whisky
Galore, The Ladykillers, The Man in the
White Suit and Sweet Smell of Success.
But his lasting legacy was as the Dean
of the Film School at the California
Institute of the Arts, where his teaching
has influenced an entire generation of
filmmakers, making him a true Raindance
hero. He is also the author of On
Filmmaking: An Introduction to the Craft
of the Director, edited by Paul Cronin.
Previous Mackendrick interviewees
include Stephen Frears, Nic Roeg,
Vanessa Redgrave, Kristian Levering,
Shekar Kapur, Tony Kaye, Terry Jones
and Terence Davies.
Both Newell and Mackendrick are directors who, as outsiders,
showed us facets of New York – that most photographed of
cities – that we hadn’t seen before. Both of them handle drama
and comedy with equal aplomb. And both realise instinctively that,
in a feature length narrative, a comedy relies on proper dramatic
underpinnings, on real story.
Speaking recently of Four Weddings and a Funeral, arguably
the most famous film of Newell’s career, screenwriter Richard
Curtis said: ‘I think I had a very lucky break when we asked
Mike Newell to do it. Mike is a very serious, beautiful person,
a wonderful director. What he succeeded in doing was to hide
the fact that the original script read much more like a series of
sketches.’
This is Newell’s gift, to look into a story and to see, absolutely,
what it is — to see the drama in Four Weddings, the thriller in
Harry Potter, the wildlife film in Donnie Brasco — and to deliver
again and again, compelling, exciting, compassionate movies. And
how does he do it? As he said in interview two years ago: ‘The
greatest directors confuse style with content. But if you have to
choose, choose content every time.’
Mike Newell will be in conversation with Fred Hogge on 5 October at 6pm followed
by a screening of Into the West (dir Mike Newell, 1992) at 7pm. Please see p47
18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
17
J
OE ASKED IF I would write a piece about Gee Vaucher, who has created our poster
image this year. But one thing is I’m not really sposed to be a writer and another is
where would I find the time with all the procrastination I have yet to complete? The
solution came in three parts: I could write a bit about the first time I had seen Gee’s
work, then Gee could interview herself and the best bit would be if her life-long
creative partner, Penny Rimbaud, could fill in some of the blanks. So here it is:
COLCHESTER, SO MUCH TO ANSWER FOR // DOMO ARIGÂTEAU
MY NANA WAS staying with us in the tiny Brookside-style semi-detached house where we lived,
in a cul-de-sac (French: ‘arse-of-the-bag’), on a new-build shit-hole estate on the far edge of eastside Colchester. This would have been a Saturday morning, a grey summer’s day in 1981, I think.
Everything was grey in those days, the weather, the grass, the news, our clothes, even super-8 was
going through an extended grey period, the whole country was basically de-saturated. Anyway, for
whatever reason, my mum had been shouting at me for hours – she had spent much of the 1970s
honing her skills in this and the 1980s were an opportunity for her to show Olympian excellence
in the field – so, after chewing a bit more of it than even the saints could have withstood, we took
the bus into town, Na and me, and I persuaded her that we had to go to Parrot Records.
TEXT BY DOMO ARIGÂTEAU AND PENNY RIMBAUD
There were two branches of Parrot in Colchester in the early 1980s. There was a large branch
down in the main shopping precinct at the bottom of the high street, and there was a smaller,
grungier, more recherché one hidden round the back of Headgate, where the stock was a little
bit dustier and the staff were a little bit less friendly (but we’re talking increments here because,
to be fair, they were sort of unfriendly in both). This was the branch au choix for local nogoodniks,
beatniks, bohemians, students, subversives, gypsies, tramps, junkies, pimps and thieves.
I knew which record I wanted. It was Bloody Revolutions by Crass, a 7-inch single, pay no more
than 70 pence, nice price, it had a sort of a military marching band punque roque-ish interpretation
of the Marseillaise as grand opera via Benjamin Britten kind of a sound. But, more than that, it came
with a wraparound fold-in poster. One side was covered with information about the Angry Brigade
and anarchist stuff; it explained, too, what the state meant by the term ‘Persons Unknown’. The other
was a large photo-realistic illustration by Gee of the Queen in a leather jacket and ripped jeans,
the Pope in a Destroy T-shirt, Justice in an old pair of baseball boots, barely holding on to her scales
and Thatcher in leather trousers clutching a glass of booze, all leaning against a wall as though they
were the Sex Pistols. The record was great but the poster was funny, brilliant and absurdist.
18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
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Previous Self-portrait, 1963 Above Inner poster for Bloody Revolutions (Crass, 1980) Opposite Gee’s ‘Children’ in NYC
I must have known what the song was like from an older kid at school but I asked the guy behind
the counter to play it, as if I weren’t sure whether or not I really wanted to buy it. He was happy
enough to do so, and my nana didn’t complain – it was, after all, really quite listenable. I paid for it
and, on the bus home, opened up the sleeve to inspect the detail. Na was simultaneously confused
and amused by it – she’d never seen anything like it and thought the illustration was a hoot. We
came through the front door and, and by way of explanation, she told my mum: ‘He’s only gone and
bought Bloody Revolutions!’ And, with those few well-chosen words, the foul atmosphere that had
been lingering in the house since morning was diffused.
And that’s the true story of the first time I held a piece of artwork by Gee Vaucher in my hands.
IN WHICH GEE SELF-INTERVIEWS WHILE DOM GOES TO TAI-CHI
Dom First off, thanks so much for agreeing to self-interview, Joe in the office will be pleased.
Gee You’re such a flake that I have to interview myself! Where do they dig these journos up from?
Dom Why don’t you sell your originals?
Gee I couldn’t see them and neither could anyone else then.
Dom What are you working on at the moment?
Gee A portrait of one of the hundreds of young women being raped and slaughtered in the city
of Juarez, Mexico. It will be part of a group show opening in the cellars of Shoreditch Town
Hall in November.
20
18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
A MANGER FOR A BED // PENNY RIMBAUD
‘My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity’
Wilfred Owen
OUTSIDE THE OLD farm cottage that I share with Gee Vaucher and sundry others, there’s a
cowshed where sad-eyed cattle chew the cud and attempt to ignore the cohabiting vermin. Like
it or not, mice and rats are not a problem on farms, they’re a simple fact. Tucked up in the corner
of the cowshed is a huge wooden box. It’s been there for a couple of years, long enough for it to
look like a piece of agricultural architecture, and long enough for it to have become a home to the
mice and rats. Every-so-often the cows use it as a back-rub, leaving an oily sheen across the slowly
weathering wood: the polish of time.
Inside the box there are four of Gee’s paintings: exquisitely tender portraits of war-torn children
(be that global war or that of the more personal nature of abuse). Gee has in the past referred to
these paintings as her ‘children’.
The four paintings last saw the light of day in New York, at Gavin Brown’s magical, maverick,
cutting-edge gallery. Gavin had shown the portraits as part of Gee’s solo show, very appropriately
titled ‘Introspective’. Gavin had shown Gee’s work because he ‘believes’ in her.
Following the private view of ‘Introspective’, Gavin invited Gee and myself to dinner at a tastefully
chic Italian restaurant whose sheer classiness allowed for our bohemian appearance and attitude
18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
21
Left to right Gee’s ‘Liberty’, Raindance Film Magazine, 2002; Gee’s poster for the 15th Raindance Film Festival, 2007; Gee’s poster
for the 18th Raindance Film Festival, 2010. All images in this article by Gee Vaucher and reprinted here with kind permission
to go by unnoticed. Stepping outside into a drizzly New York evening for a much needed between
course smoke, I was joined by Gavin who expressed bemusement at Gee’s attitudes. ‘What does
she want?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know,’ I responded. ‘But you’ve known her for years,’ he interjected.
‘Yes, but she’s a very private person and, to be frank, I’m really surprised that’s she’s allowed this
[the show] to happen at all.’ ‘But how can I help?’ asked Gavin despondently. ‘You can’t,’ I muttered,
stubbing out my cigarette and heading back towards the awaiting crème caramels.
Having travelled across America to San Francisco and then on to Los Angeles, the show returned
to New York where the four portraits were packed into a wooden box and shipped back to the UK.
That was two years ago, and the box has stood in the cowshed ever since, untouched by human
hands, unseen by human eyes. Gee says that she thinks her ‘children’ are safe out there. I worry
about the mice and rats: I’ve seen what they can do to discarded wooden cooking spoons, seen
what they did to Gee’s oil pastels (they ate the lot, and that was inside the house, not outside).
If Gee had any interest at all in self-promotion or in the business-led interests of the art world,
those four paintings would now be hanging in London’s Tate Modern or New York’s MOMA. That’s
where I’d like them to be. These are important works, works of our time which should be seen
because, rather than confirming the shabby, inconsequential interests of Saatchi and his likes, they
challenge post-millennium complacency to its very core: ‘the Poetry is in the pity’. This might not be
the sort of work that we want to see, but most certainly it is the type of work that we need to see
and, indeed, ought to see. As it stands, these poignant expressions of love and its cultural betrayal
(both of the paintings and of their artist) could well be hidden away in their wooden box long after
Gee and myself have been assigned to wooden boxes of our own. The irony is almost unbearable.
Nonetheless, there’s something very touching about all this, in fact it seems to me to have an
almost religious association. Indeed, I somehow feel that it’s as if Gee sees her four children as
being safe out there in the cowshed, tucked-up comfortably in the dark interior of the huge wooden
box, surrounded by the sweet smell of hay and bovine breath, hidden away from the horrific ravages
of war that had in the first place made their portrayal possible and, sadly, so very necessary.
I have the greatest respect for Gee’s privacy as an artist, and feel that I understand the
protectiveness she shows towards her work, but, all the same, I continue to be worried about the
mice and rats. It’s autumn, and they’re coming in from the fields.
22
18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
O
N CHRISTMAS EVE this year, Ian Fraser Killmister will turn sixty-five years old.
This not only means that he’s eligible for a bus pass, it also makes him the first
heavy metal OAP. Like his wrinkled yet defiantly decadent contemporaries Iggy
Pop and Keith Richards, Lemmy will forever remain a symbol of the rock and
roll spirit, even as he reaches for his pipe and slippers. For a man whose track
record of substance abuse trumps even the likes of Motley Crue, Ozzy and
Clapton, approaching the end of the road is never going to be a quiet affair.
Emailing from his Los Angeles home, you get the impression that one aspect of rock fame that
possibly has outstayed its welcome is his commitment to press; his answers are mercilessly short,
and it’s easy to admire his no-bullshit approach to direct questions. When asked, ‘What films were
you interested in as a child?’ he answers, ‘Mickey Mouse smuggles drugs in Columbia’. To ‘Have
any of your tracks been licensed to a film you ended up hating?’ he responds ‘I’m not in the habit of
watching bad movies so I wouldn’t know.’
One answer that does offer an insight into a duality surrounding Lemmy is a question regarding
his involvement in the Troma films and how his encounters with Lloyd Kaufmann led to appearances
in Tromeo and Juliet, Terror Firmer and Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV, to which he explains
Opposite Photograph of Lemmy by Robert John
TEXT BY JAMES MERCHANT
‘He offered me money. That was basically it.’ Despite his status as a counterculture figure, his
appearances for cash in both movies and adverts has been widely documented, with the famous
mutton chops cropping up in everything from ads for Kit Kat and Walkers crisps to WWE wrestling
events and the Guitar Hero video game. That said, his brief appearances in Richard Stanley’s
Hardware and Michael Lehmann’s Airheads were nothing short of brilliant.
These day’s he’s starring in a film of his own, the boldly titled Lemmy: The Movie; a documentary
following his life over a number of years by directors Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski. ‘Pretty hard
to talk about a movie where “you” is the main person and when you are not involved in filmmaking,’
though he does offer the comforting knowledge that ‘it’s not too embarrassing, so go and see it.’
Having worked as a roadie for the Jimi Hendrix Experience while sharing a flat with bassist Noel
Redding back in the late sixties, Lemmy is well aware that everyone starts somewhere. A man of his
age and stature clearly made at least a few solid decisions in spite of his raucous persona, so when
pushed for some hard advice for anyone starting out as an artist in the creative industries, he offers
‘read the small print and get an accountant before you get a manager.’
Lemmy: The Movie is set for release at the end of the year
18TH RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
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