the BIFF 2014 brochure

Transcription

20TH BRADFORD INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 27 MARCH - 6 APRIL 2014
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CONTENTS
TITLE SPONSOR
SPONSORS
MAIN FUNDERS
STRAND SUPPORTERS
PARTNERS
FUNDERS
WELCOME
p.2
INTRODUCTION
p.3
TICKETS & PASSES
p.6
BIFF OFFICIAL SELECTION
p.8
BIFF PEOPLE
p.52
BIFF CLOSE-UPS
p.82
BIFF SPECIAL EVENTS
p.120
BIFF INFO
p.136
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WELCOME
INTRODUCTION
JO QUINTON-TULLOCH
DIRECTOR, NATIONAL MEDIA MUSEUM
TOM VINCENT
& NEIL YOUNG
BIFF CO-DIRECTORS
An inspiring film can delight and entertain
us but it can also challenge us by offering
different perspectives to our experience
of the world; it might make us think
differently or ask new questions. And an
inspiring film might leave us changed in
some way, maybe motivated with new
ambitions or resolutions. It might even
make us want to know more: about how it
was made and the people who made it.
For our 20th edition of BIFF we are presenting a
programme packed full of inspiring films. There is no
other film festival in the UK quite like ours, housed
within a museum devoted to the still and moving
image. This gives us a unique opportunity to share
more about the technology, science and art of film,
from its very origins to the present day. And I’m
delighted that we have two specially curated elements
in the BIFF programme – Charles Urban, one of
the most significant figures in the history of British
cinema, and It’s Nice up North – directly inspired by
our collections and by our upcoming exhibition Only
in England.
I’m also delighted to be working with Virgin Media
for the third year in succession as title sponsor of the
Festival. As part of our 20th celebrations we are asking
you to choose the best British BIFF film over the last
20 years from a selection of 20 fantastic films that have
been showcased at BIFF since 1995. Cast your vote on
the BIFF website by March 30 to be in with a chance
of claiming tickets for our ‘mystery’ screening of the
winning film.
I’m greatly looking forward to the festival. I know I’ll
be inspired by what I see and I can’t wait to see which
film you vote for.
On 10 March 1995 the first Bradford Film
Festival got underway. It was, just like
this 20th edition, full of surprises and full
of stories. The programme welcomed
distinctive British and international guests,
previews of the best forthcoming releases,
exclusive surveys of the best new cinema
from around the world, and a retrospective
dedicated to a great figure from cinema’s
past.
Like all good parties there were stories to tell
afterwards. And since then there have been countless
more tales – of actors and directors, writers and
technicians, who have visited Bradford on their way to
greater fame; of films that have been produced thanks
to meetings here; of encounters with established stars
who always seem so generous with their time; and of
the many unpredictable surprises in our encounters
with the wide world of film.
As a BIFF visitor noted last year, Bradford is
consistently “a surprising place”. It’s also generous,
creative, diverse, forward-thinking and friendly – in
short, a great location for a film festival. And though
the blueprint established in 1995 has been tweaked
here and there, it remains true to that vision of spring
1995.
In 2014 we welcome Sally Potter, James Benning and
Brian Cox, previews of The Lunchbox, Blue Ruin, A Story
of Children and Film, exclusive new films from all over
the world, and unique strands dedicated to Japanese
noir master Yoshitarô Nomura and British pioneer
Charles Urban.
Enjoy the festival. May there be many more stories still
to tell.
BIFF
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A word from
Richard Larcombe
Advertising and Sponsorship
Director, Virgin Media
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With the festival celebrating its 20th anniversary, the
line-up and calibre of speakers again this year is truly
outstanding. This makes it really difficult for me to
select just three recommendations, but here are my
BIFF 2014 highlights:
The Dodge Brothers and Neil Brand
accompany Hell’s Hinges – The brilliant Dodge
Brothers and Neil Brand have become true BIFF
favourites based on their previous two sold out shows.
This year they are presenting the world premiere of
a new score for the superb 1916 silent Western Hell’s
Hinges.
Only in England – The fascinating Only in England
photography exhibition which showcases the work of
Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr, forms the inspiration
behind this strand of the festival. A screening of It’s
Nice up North will be followed by an interview with
Graham Fellows, the film’s director.
20 editions of BIFF – This section of the festival
recognises some of the highlights from the last 20
years of BIFF. A special screening of The Madness of
King George will be held, celebrating the first film ever
to be shown at BIFF in 1995.
ARTWORK
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At Virgin Media we’re extremely passionate
about supporting British filmmaking talent
and we are devoted to bringing you the
best new entertainment around. So we
are delighted to sponsor BIFF, one of the
biggest film festivals in the UK, for a third
year.
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TICKETS
&PASSES
EE Wednesdays
2 for 1 cinema tickets available to EE and Orange
customers. Applies to standard priced film screenings
only on purchase of a full price adult ticket.
Tickets for all festival screenings and events
can be purchased from the National Media
Museum Box Office (open 10am – 9pm
during the festival)
0844 856 3797
www.bradfordfilmfestival.org.uk
Tickets for screenings and events at Impressions
Gallery and Hyde Park Picture House will be available
from the National Media Museum Box Office up to
24 hours prior to the event, and may also be
purchased from the venue on the day of the event.
If tickets are purchased through the National Media
Museum box office or website, they will be available
for collection from the venue on the day of purchase.
Standard Price Tickets
Pictureville, Cubby Broccoli, IMAX cinemas* £6/£5**
Family Programme
£3/£10 for 4
Under 3s
Free
SPECIAL EVENT TICKETS
Brian Cox Screentalk
£10/£8
The Dodge Brothers and Neil Brand accompany
Hell’s Hinges
£18.50
It’s Nice up North + John Shuttleworth
and Graham Fellows in person
£8/£6
Sally Potter in conversation
£10/£8
Secrets of Nature with live music by
Metamono
£8.50
Widescreen Weekend Standard films
£7.50/£5.50
Widescreen Weekend Premium films
£10/£8
Widescreen Weekend Presentations and talks £4/£3
Other prices may apply, please see website
for details.
Ticket prices for Impressions Gallery and Hyde Park
Picture House may differ; please check the website for
details.
*Non IMAX format films only
**Concessions available to those under 15, over 60, anyone receiving
disability benefits, income support or Job Seekers’ Allowance, students
in possession of an NUS card, and Passport to Leisure card holders.
Please note that for some screenings and events there will be no tickets
available at concession price.
PASSES
Film Lover’s Pass
£80/£70
Allows entry to all standard priced films; excludes
Special Events, Widescreen Weekend screenings and
events, Filmmakers’ Weekend.
Weekend Film Lover’s Pass £30/£25
Weekend 1 Film Lover’s Pass covers period
Friday 27 – Sunday 29 March
Weekend 2 Film Lover’s Pass covers period
Friday 04 – Sunday 06 April
Valid Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Allows entry to
all standard priced films excludes special events,
Widescreen Weekend screenings and events,
Filmmakers’ weekend.
Widescreen Weekend
Weekend Pass
£99/£79
Filmmakers' Weekend Pass
Weekend Pass £60/£50
Allows entry to all Filmmakers’ weekend events
and all standard priced films. Excludes special events,
Widescreen Weekend screenings and events.
All programme information is correct at
the time of going to print.
Please check www.bradfordfilmfestival.org.uk
for updates, including guest appearances.
SPECIAL
OFFER
Buy five standard price tickets,
get one free
Pick up a loyalty card
from the Box Office
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BIFF
OFFICIAL
SELECTION
CONTENTS
As soon as the curtain fell on the 2013 festival we packed our bags
and started scouring the globe for the next crop of BIFF films. Our
Official Selection is the result of that journey. It contains a handpicked
assortment of the most interesting, thought-provoking and
unexpected features from around the world. Our opening and closing
night films are a great example of the sheer range and quality of the
Official Selection – from a sweet Mumbai romance in The Lunchbox, to
the extraordinary intensity of Tom Hardy’s performance in Locke.
Also included in this section are the films in our two competitions: the
Bradford UNESCO City of Film European Competition and the Shine
Short Film Competition.
So that’s the long and the short(s) of it. Taken together, the films in
our Official Selection represent the finest in filmmaking, providing
a showcase for what we think are some of the most distinctive and
exciting voices at work in cinema today.
The Lunchbox
Locke
American Promise
Barre’$ Silence
Before the Winter Chill
Beyond the Edge 3D
Blue Ruin
A Bouquet of Cactus
Brother
Class Enemy
The Coal Miner’s Day
Costa da Morte
Diego Star
Double Play: James Benning
and Richard Linklater
El Futuro
Everybody Street
Exhibition
A Fallible Girl
Here I Am, Here I’m Not
The Joycean Society
Karaoke Girl
Lilting
Mother, I Love You
Mouton
Moving
Never Die
Phantom
Powerless
Ricardo Bär
Route of the Moon
A Story of Children and Film
The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears
Tracks
The Triplet
Velorama
2014 Bradford UNESCO City of Film
European Competition
2014 Shine Short Film Competition
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OPENING
NIGHT
The Lunchbox
(DABBA)
(PG)
.................................
Thursday 27 March, 19.30, Pictureville
Monday 31 March, 20.30, IMAX
.................................
.................................
+ TOUCH
(ADV. U)
Dir. Nimer Rashed UK 2013 2 mins Digital
The life of a couple told through the touching of hands.
Film Source:Virgin Media Shorts
Dir. Ritesh Batra India/France/Germany/USA 2013
104mins subtitles Digital
Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nawazuddin Siddiqui,
Denzil Smith
Film source: Curzon Film World
An utterly charming will-they-won’tthey romance, featuring a career best
performance by the great Irrfan Khan.
Each day in the heart of Mumbai, thousands of carefully
prepared lunchboxes are distributed to workplaces
across the city using ‘Dabbawalla’, a 130-year-old
system so efficient that Harvard University analysts
concluded that only one in a million lunches ever goes
astray. In The Lunchbox, devoted but unhappy housewife
Ila lovingly prepares and dispatches a delicious lunch
every day for her hopelessly distracted husband. One
day, her meal is the single mix-up, the one that went
astray, and the steel containers delivered by mistake
to Saajan (Irrfan Khan), a calm, quietly noble yet
somewhat lonely figure approaching retirement from
his accountancy job. Ila’s food is outstanding, and when
Saajan tastes it he is moved to write a note to Ila to
complement her. So begins a correspondence between
the two, and a moving relationship develops through
their letters. Sure to become one of the best-loved
films of the year. TV
13
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Dir. Steven Knight UK 2013 84mins Digital
Tom Hardy, Olivia Colman, Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott
Film source: Lionsgate UK
CLOSING
NIGHT
LOCKE
(adv. 15)
.................................
Sunday 6 April, 20.30, Pictureville
.................................
Fasten your seatbelts and buckle up with
Tom Hardy’s stunning cruise-control
journey into one man’s moral maze.
Tom Hardy’s status as an international movie star was
cemented by his two collaborations with Christopher
Nolan – in Inception and in The Dark Knight Rises. But
as anyone who caught Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson
(2008) already knows, Hardy is much more than a
pretty face. A genuine one-man tour de force, Locke
strongly suggests he deserves to be ranked among the
finest screen actors of his generation. The eponymous
Ivan Locke is a Welsh structural engineer in his mid30s, who one evening finds himself painfully enmeshed
in crises both personal and professional. That the film
should dramatise this extreme situation in such a
claustrophobic and simple manner is a masterstroke
from writer-director Steven Knight: for almost the entire
running-time we’re with Locke in his car, driving south
down a motorway, as he conducts a series of increasingly
fraught hands-free phone calls. Hardy’s bearded visage
is pretty much the only face we see. A Sorry,Wrong
Number for the Bluetooth generation, Locke lives up to
the high promise of Knight’s 2013 debut Hummingbird.
The Oscar-nominated writer of Eastern Promises has
made a seamless transition to the director’s chair. NY
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15
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AMERICAN PROMISE
Barre’$ Silence
(adv. 12A)
UK PREMIERE
Dirs. Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson USA 2013
140 mins Digital Documentary
Idris Brewster, Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson
Film source: Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson
.................................
Friday 28 March, 18.10, Cubby Broccoli
Saturday 29 March, 14.45, Pictureville
.................................
Directors Joe Brewster and Michèle
Stephenson will introduce both screenings.
Brooklyn best friends Idris and Seun, and
their divergent paths at school and college,
are the subjects of this moving and often
fascinating documentary.
In Brooklyn in 1999, the parents of five-year-old
Idris Brewster decided to document his and best
friend Seun’s entire education from the moment they
entered elementary school to college graduation.
Thirteen years later they emerged with the many
many hours of filmed document that would become
American Promise, one of the finest U.S. documentaries
to emerge in 2013. We follow the boys, both of them
smart, funny and eager to learn, as they are enrolled
at Brooklyn’s exclusive, and almost completely white
Dalton School, an institution which, as Idris’s father
puts it, should open up doors for his son. To the delight
of teachers and parents, Idris and Seun thrive at first.
Yet as emotional setbacks occur (Idris is disappointed
to be left off the basketball team, Seun is diagnosed
as having dyslexia) and family life adjusts around
them, serious concerns begin to test both families. In
Obama’s America, where 50% of black males will not
graduate from high school, and in a city where, as Idris
learns, taxis still ignore black customers, what does it
take for black kids to succeed? American Promise asks
important questions about race, education, parenting,
and documentary practice. TV
(adv. 18)
UK PREMIERE
Dirs. Mehrdad Ahmadpour, Morvarid Peyda Iran 2013
68mins subtitles Digital Documentary
Film source: Mehrdad Ahmadpour, Morvarid Peyda
.................................
Thursday 3 April, 15.45, IMAX
.................................
.................................
+ TERRA
(ADV. 15)
Dir. Pedro Lino UK/Portugal 2013 14mins Digital
Documentary
An up-close portrait of Chegas de Bois, the ancient
Portuguese ritual of ox fighting, captured in all its
brutality against harsh but beautiful rural terrains.
Film source: Sparkle Animation
The Iranian form of bull-fighting is vividly
depicted in Barre’$ Silence, a stunning
immersion into a hidden subculture.
One of the most popular recent BIFF discoveries
has been Nicolas Steiner’s beautiful documentary on
Swiss cow-combat folk-traditions Battle of the Queens
(2011) – and now we proudly present the full-blooded
middle-eastern equivalent. This remarkable featurette
is the work of Iranian newcomers Ahmadpour and
Peyda, who are responsible for all technical duties
(apart from sound-design). Working with the most
limited of means, the duo has assembled a rough-edged
but electrifying dispatch from the northern province of
Gilan, near the Caspian Sea. In these parts the major
sporting activity involves (illicitly) pitting bulls against
each other in ferocious – often mortal – combat, the
hapless beasts’ horns sharpened to cruel points before
battle. The results aren’t for the squeamish, but as a
vision of 21st century Iran Barre’$ Silence is always an
eye-opener and often a jaw-dropper. Despite Iran being
a theocratic Muslim state, religious considerations
never seem to figure at all here, the two-legged
protagonists instead spending much of their time
boozing and gambling – there’s even a sinister sub-plot
involving crystal meth and the area’s most celebrated
bovine athlete, Barre (pronounced ‘Barr-eh’). Food for
thought, premium-beef style. NY
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Before The
Winter Chill
Two of cinema’s finest current actors unite
for a mysterious puzzle of a thriller that
delivers a jaw-dropping revelation.
Beyond the Edge
3D (adv. 15)
Kristin Scott Thomas plays Lucie, the downtrodden
wife of terminally grumpy surgeon Paul (played by
Daniel Auteuil), who maintains a sleekly modern forest
home. Paul seems bored and distracted, but we come
to learn that he has been receiving red flowers from
a woman who wants to thank him for some surgery
he claims not to have performed. Before the Winter
Chill is the second collaboration between director and
writer Philippe Claudel and England’s greatest gift to
French cinema, Kristin Scott Thomas. Their first film
together was I’ve Loved You So Long, which became one
of the most talked about films of 2008. This is another
sublime, elegant slow-burner, and looks all set to repeat
that success. TV
Dir. Leanne Pooley New Zealand 2013 90mins 3D
Digital
Chad Moffitt, Sonam Sherpa, John Wraight,
Joshua Rutter
Film source: Metrodome
(Avant l’hiver)
(adv. 15)
Dir. Philippe Claudel France/Luxembourg 2013
Daniel Auteuil, Kristin Scott Thomas, Leïla Bekhti,
Richard Berry
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Friday 28 March, 13.30, Pictureville
Monday 31 March, 18.15, Pictureville
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+ THE KISS
(ADV. PG)
WORLD PREMIERE
Dir. Charlie Swinbourne UK 2013 8mins Digital
A blind date hinges on a comically awkward
conversation with a deaf couple sitting two tables
down. How far can the latter couple take the prank
they decide to play?
Film Source: Charlie Swinbourne
.................................
Sunday 30 March, 17.45, Pictureville
Wednesday 2 April, 12.50, Pictureville
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+ CHEESE MITES
(ADV. U)
2mins
See page 109
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+ LINEAUS LORETTE
(ADV. 12A)
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
Dir. David Fenster USA 2013 18mins Digital
Documentary
The director of Pincus and The Livelong Day (BIFF 2013)
provides a witty and informative portrait of a true
West Texas maverick. A must for fans of the Coen
brothers and Wes Anderson.
Film source: David Fenster / Field Office
Director Leanne Pooley weaves rarely seen
footage, archive interviews and stunning
3D to recreate the epic tale of Sir Edmund
Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s conquest of
Everest in 1953.
“Mount Everest. It’s synonymous with the impossible.
Director Leanne Pooley transports the viewer back
in time sixty years to the foot of that seemingly
unconquerable mountain, and recreates an incredible
journey to the top. While many know that Sir Edmund
Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first men to stand
on the summit, few know how it happened. Using rarely
seen footage, and no narration other than the words of
the expedition members themselves, Pooley recreates
the conditions (including what seems now to be only
the most basic equipment), the relationships, and the
socio-historical context of the undertaking that had
much of the world holding its breath. The film takes us,
step by exhilarating step, as Hillary and Tenzing battle
upwards, illustrating their setbacks, their small victories,
and the remarkable strength of their bond. The film
probes the psyches of the two men and invites the
viewer to ponder what made them triumphant over
that most formidable antagonist, Everest. Even though
we know the ending of the story, we are amazed and
thrilled and inspired by how it unfolds.”
Toronto International Film Festival
18
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BLUE RUIN
(adv. 18)
A Bouquet of
Cactus
Dir. Jeremy Saulnier USA 2013 92mins Digital
Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Amy Hargreaves,
Kevin Kolack
Film source: Picturehouses
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Tuesday 1 April, 13.30, Cubby Broccoli
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+ TO DEMONSTRATE HOW SPIDERS
FLY (ADV. U)
4mins
See page 109
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+ SMALL LITTLE THINGS
(ADV. U)
IN COMPETITION UK PREMIERE
Dir. Jared Hogan USA 2013 19mins Digital
Set in the stark backdrop of an American suburban
winter, Small Little Things follows the story of two
teenagers as they meet and fall in love. A dreamy
and mesmerising portrait of young love which shifts
between fantasy and memory.
Film Source: Jared Hogan
An atmospheric, eccentric and darkly comic
thriller, Blue Ruin channels the early, bloody
Coen brothers with edge-of-the-seat
results.
When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last
year, Blue Ruin was described by Variety’s reviewer
Justin Chang as “a lean and suspenseful genre piece
that follows a bloody trail of vengeance to its cruel,
absurd and logical conclusion.” Jeremy Saulnier’s second
feature begins, however, as an expertly woven and
eerily quiet drama, whose drift into memorably taut
thriller territory is driven by an impressive ensemble
cast and some ferocious splatters of no-nonsense
violence. Driving the film along its throbbingly menacing
path is Macon Blair, a relatively unknown actor whose
facial expressions range from the impressively minimal
to the remarkably anguished. He plays Dwight, an
unassuming loner who despairs upon hearing that the
man who killed his parents is being released from jail
– and who cuts some unexpected corners in seeking
justice. Saulnier (whose own cinematography beautifully
and evocatively captures the local landscape) directs
proceedings with a deftness that recalls the Coen
brothers at their most stylishly macabre. MP
(Un ramo de cactus)
19
A quietly comical, deeply touching drama,
A Bouquet of Cactus shows a Spanish farmer
trying to protect his grandson from his
money-driven family.
(adv. 15) IN COMPETITION
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
Dir. Pablo Llorca Spain 2013 94mins subtitles Digital
Pedro Casablanc, Amanda Recacha, Alfonso Torregrosa,
Juan Codina
Film source: Pablo Llorca
.................................
Saturday 5 April, 20.20, IMAX
.................................
.................................
+ FAIRYTALE OF THE THREE BEARS
(ADV. 12A)
11mins
See page 118
Overlooked outside his native Spain, veteran auteur
Pablo Llorca continues to make films his own way – his
is an unfussy, low-budget aesthetic with a sharp political
focus and a spiky sense of humour that only augments
the more serious commentaries within. Llorca’s ninth
feature is an emotionally sincere account of Alfonso
(Casablanc), a middle-aged agricultural worker whose
world-view seems to be increasingly at odds with
that of his wealthy bourgeois family. Alfonso takes it
upon himself to protect his grandson from prevailing
social pressures – not least the cult of money. Braving
a world that seems to be spiralling evermore into
financial ruin, Alfonso finds solace in the boy’s weekly
visits – even as his attempts to impart more ethical
values are increasingly thwarted by the more seductive
materialism of rival family members. Don’t let the
apparently gentle thrust of this subtly comical film
fool you: A Bouquet of Cactus is fiercely engaged in the
topics of its time, effortlessly shifting tones in a way
that recalls the great Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu.
At the film’s centre is Casablanc, a veteran performer
who gives one of the finest minimalist performances
in recent years, registering – like the film itself – both
weariness and warmth with barely a smile. MP
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Brother
Class Enemy
(Brat)
(adv. 18)
Dir. Alexei Balabanov Russia 1997 99mins subtitles
35mm
Sergey Bodrov Jr,Viktor Sukhorukov, Svetlana
Pismichenko, Mariya Zhukova
Film source: Intercinema
.................................
Wednesday 2 April, 15.50, Cubby Broccoli
.................................
.................................
+ THE GREEN SERPENT: OF VODKA,
MEN AND DISTILLED DREAMS
(ADV. 15)
(Sunday 30 March only)
21mins
See page 118
One of the biggest hits in Russian box-office
history, Brother is a modern gangster classic
from a truly great filmmaker.
Last year’s BIFF featured a triple-pronged homage to
the Russian writer-director Alexei Balabanov: Me Too,
A Stoker and Cargo 200 wowed festival audiences with
their assaultive combination of wild soundtrack music,
jet-black humour and extreme violence. Less than
two month later, the shocking news came out of St
Petersburg that Balabanov had died at the age of just
54, leaving behind a unique filmography that’s already
been the subject of critical re-evaluation. To mark
his passing, we delve into the archives to showcase
the thriller for which he remains best-known in his
homeland. Starring the pin-up of post-Soviet cinema,
Sergey Bodrov Jr – who himself was to tragically die in
an avalanche aged 31 in 2002 – it’s the story of a babyfaced ex-soldier who arrives in the former Leningrad
to stay with his older brother. Complications ensue. As
Gerald Peary noted in the Boston Phoenix, Bodrov is “a
primal throwback to Cagney in The Public Enemy and
Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, a charismatic killer
with a wan smile, a goofy, junior-high-bully’s voice, a
dim intelligence, and a disquieting sweetness, which can
appear on display just moments after he’s saturated a
seedy enemy with hot bullets.” NY
(Razredni sovraznik )
Class Enemy is an acutely-observed study of
schoolroom tensions that skilfully upends
expectations.
Dir. Rok Bicek Slovenia 2013 112 mins subtitles Digital
Igor Samobor, Nataša Barbara Grañner, Tjaša Železnik,
Maša Derganc
Film source: Triglav Film
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Monday 31 March, 20.25, Cubby Broccoli
Tuesday 1 April, 18.00, Hyde Park Picture
House
.................................
.................................
+ CADET (ADV. 12A) IN COMPETITION
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Kevin Meul Belgium 2013 15mins subtitles Digital
A sporting drama about a father-son relationship;
tactful, and with a welcome idiosyncratic touch that
imbues both mystery and nuance.
Film Source: Kevin Meul
BIFF’s commitment to Slovenian cinema dates back
to 2006, when we devoted an entire sidebar to the
latest productions from a small ex-Yugoslavian state
which in cinematic terms consistently punches above
its weight. This gripping debut from director/co-writer
Rok Bicek premiered in Critics’ Week at Venice last
year, eliciting strong audience reactions and glowing
reviews. Loosely based on events from Bicek’s own
schooldays, it’s the story of the impact made on one set
of teenage pupils by their new German teacher, Robert
(Samobor). Robert’s strict ways come as a jolting
shock to students previously used to the more easygoing methods of his predecessor, and the resulting
upheavals yield tragic consequences. As The Hollywood
Reporter’s Boyd Van Hoeij noted in his Venice review, the
“insightful screenplay paints the core group of a small
dozen of students in a couple of quick but convincing
brushstrokes, finding the right balance between
individuality and what’s really the subject of the film:
the uncontrollable force of group dynamics.” NY
22
23
.....................................................................
.....................................................................
The Coal Miner’s
Day (Le jour du
The Coal Miner’s Day is a lively and timely
glimpse into old-school working practices in
a Ukraine colliery.
Costa da morte
Arriving on British screens during the 30th anniversary
of the 1984/5 NUM strike, French documentary The
Coal Miner’s Day is handily topical as a report on
present-day life in Ukraine – a country whose turbulent
political/social scene keeps it prominent in international
headlines. But as French documentarian Mocaër briskly
illustrates, at the Bouzhanska facility in vast nation’s
north-west the clock has in some ways barely moved
since the time Ukraine was one of the USSR’s industrial
heartlands. Enduring hazardous conditions for wages of
around £250 a month, the men extract the mineral in a
manner that their fathers and even grandfathers would
recognise, using machinery that clearly hasn’t been
updated since Brezhnev’s reign. Given the cramped
confinement down below, Mocaër can’t help but get in
the way to some extent – and the workers’ bantering,
often foul-mouthed reactions to his presence provide
rich seams of humour. In addition, such exchanges
also accumulate into a complex, droll interrogation of
the documentary process itself and how filmmakers
interact with their subjects. “Don’t say rude words, he’s
filming everything!” laughs one comrade. His mate’s
reply: “They don’t have any dictionary that can translate
our rude words.” NY
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Lois Patiño Spain 2013 84 mins subtitles Digital
Documentary
Film source: Zeitun Films
mineur)
(adv. 15)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Gaël Mocaër France 2013 78mins subtitles Digital
Documentary
Film source: Gaël Mocaër
.................................
Sunday 30 March, 18.00, IMAX
Friday 4 April, 15.50, Cubby Broccoli
.................................
.................................
+ LOVE LOVE LOVE
11mins
See page 119
(ADV. 12A)
(adv. 12A) IN COMPETITION
.................................
Friday 4 April, 15.55, IMAX
.................................
.................................
+ MOUNTAIN IN SHADOW
(ADV. U)
UK THEATRICAL PREMIERE
Dir. Lois Patiño Spain 2012 14mins b/w Digital
Documentary
Patiño’s visually stunning award-winner views skiers
ascending and descending slopes in Iceland, contrasting
the human and the elemental, the miniature and the
monumental, darkness and light.
Film source: Lois Patiño
Striking on the eye and seductive on the
ear, Costa da Morte chronicles daily life in a
remote corner of Spain.
A 30-year-old from the semi-autonomous region of
Galicia in Spain’s north-west corner, Lois Patiño has
quickly emerged as one of his country’s most exciting
new cinematic talents. Having studied in New York and
Barcelona, he returned home to make this essayistic
documentary named after a long-notorious, shipwreckhaunted stretch of the Galician coastline. But Patiño
eschews any kind of spectacular drama – save a brace
of quarry-blasts! – in favour of a compellingly low-key
investigation into how a region’s present landscape
is informed by its complex history. We’re drawn in
by one masterful composition and arresting image
after another: a forest is felled in deep fog; a group of
men exhilaratedly cling to rocks as waves crash down
upon them; a bonfire roars upward into a black sky.
Observing the landscape from afar while eavesdropping
in on amusing conversations between locals, Patiño
zooms in so that the frame’s textures all seem to
flatten and become at one with each another. Costa da
Morte is bringing international attention to this expert
image-maker – Patiño won Best Emerging Director at
Locarno last year. MP
24
25
.....................................................................
.....................................................................
Diego Star
A fresh take on the socially-committed
traditions of Ken Loach and Robert
Guédiguian, Diego Star tells a tale of labour
unrest and domestic upheaval on Canada’s
St Lawrence River.
DOUBLE PLAY:
James Benning and
Richard Linklater
With this debut, writer-director Pelletier joins fellow
Québécois like Xavier Dolan, Denis Côté, Kim Nguyen
and Denis Villeneuve in what’s currently an impressively
strong and versatile time for French-Canadian cinema.
At its core, Diego Star boasts a mightily impressive
central performance from Burkina Faso-born Sawadogo,
whose towering physical presence is offset by an inner
sensitivity. Sawadogo’s Traoré, a veteran ship-hand
from the Ivory Coast, is billeted with waitress Fanny
(Bourgeois) when his rust-bucket of a cargo-ship – the
Diego Star – conks out on the Saint Lawrence River.
While Traoré is ostracised in the workplace after
resisting and opposing the inhumane representatives
of his corrupt employers, cash-strapped singlemother Fanny struggles with the stressful realities
of parenthood. Rather than develop a conventional
love-interest between the mismatched duo, Pelletier is
more concerned with illustrating the forces by which
they’re socially marginalised. With intelligent storytelling,
a carefully poised narrative and a keen attention to
environmental details, Diego Star paints a powerful
image of a long-dead economy by way of two vulnerable
people doggedly enduring wintry, bleak conditions. MP
UK Premiere
Dir. Gabe Klinger France/USA/Portugal 2013 70mins
Digital Documentary
Film source: Gladys Glover Films
(adv. 15)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Frédérick Pelletier Canada/Belgium 2013
Issaka Sawadogo, Chloé Bourgeois,Yassine Fadel,
Abdelghafour Elaaziz
Film source: Metafilms
.................................
.................................
.................................
+ LASTING WINTER
(ADV. 12A)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Frédérick Pelletier Canada 2005 18mins Digital
Documentary
Contemplative domestic portrait of a retired seaman
and his wife, chronicling their daily routines and the
cosy claustrophobia of their house in Levis, Québec –
the town we also see in Pelletier’s feature-debut Diego
Star.
Print source: Film du 3 mars
(adv. 12A)
.................................
Saturday 29 March, 15.55, Cubby Broccoli
Tuesday 1 April, 20.15, IMAX
.................................
An award-winning profile of two
outstanding film-makers, Double Play is
an inspired and inspiring tribute to the
independent spirit.
Brazil-born, Illinois-based cinephile/critic/programmer/
teacher extraordinaire, Gabe Klinger has been a helpful
behind-the-scenes friend to BIFF for several years. So
we’re particularly proud to present the UK premiere
of his directorial debut, a delightful and informative
dual portrait of our 2014 honoree James Benning
and his great pal, the versatile Texan writer-director
Richard Linklater. Having made his name with Slacker
and Dazed and Confused in the 1990s, Linklater then
embarked upon what became one of the best-loved
trilogies in cinema history: Before Sunrise (1995),
Before Sunset (2004) and last year’s Before Midnight.
Double Play, commissioned by the prestigious French
TV programme Cinéma, de notre temps, premiered at
Venice last autumn and was singled out for praise
by Sight & Sound editor Nick James in his festival
dispatches: “Two directors of very different kinds
meet and kibbitz about their longtime friendship and
respective attitudes to cinema, memory and time
while clips from their films are cunningly interpolated
into the discourse. As dry as that sounds, it isn’t at all.
It’s as enjoyable as only a good carefully chewed over
conversation between creative equals can be.” The jury
of the ‘Venice Classics’ sidebar agreed, awarding Double
Play the prize for the section’s best documentary.
In addition to its own considerable intrinsic merits,
Klinger’s beautifully edited film provides an ideal
access-point into the unique career and methods of
James Benning. NY
26
27
.....................................................................
.....................................................................
El futuro
Everybody Street
(adv. 15)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Luis López Carrasco Spain 2013 67mins subtitles
Digital
Sergio Jiménez, Marta Loza, Queta Herrero, Alberto
López, Andrea Noceda
Film source: Ecam
.................................
Saturday 29 March, 20.15, IMAX
Friday 4 April, 15.55, Pictureville
.................................
.................................
+ STAY THE SAME
(ADV. U)
IN COMPETITION
Dir. Sam Firth UK 2013 18mins Digital
This diaristic self-portrait presents a shot for every
day of the year, showing shifts both elemental and
emotional. Firth returns our gaze with her own
curiosities, concerns and confessions – all without
saying a word.
Film Source: Sam Firth
Bold and vibrant, El Futuro plunges us into
the midst of Spanish political euphoria in the
first half of the 1980s.
Set in the immediate aftermath of Spain’s 1982 General
Election – the Socialist Workers’ Party’s triumph ended
over four decades of right-wing rule including the
Franco dictatorship – López Carrasco’s intriguingly
experimental mid-lengther is unapologetically
drenched in nostalgia for a more politically optimistic
age. Confined mostly to a house-party attended by
increasingly inebriated twenty/thirty-somethings
desperate to celebrate the new era, the film unfolds
in a series of half-heard and incomplete conversations
between revellers. On the soundtrack we hear an
infectious selection of the Euro-synth and punk of the
period – pulsating, strangely moving musical choices
that lend the narrative real verve. There’s something
simultaneously futuristic and dated about the electronic
music of the 1980s, of course, and the euphoria of the
Socialists’ triumph must now seem a distant memory
for a financially impoverished Spain. While it fizzes with
excitement and energy, López Carrasco’s ironicallynamed film is anything but optimistic, the grainy texture
of his 16mm-shot footage adding a retro feel that
reminds us we’re watching an imagined – but authentic
– reconstruction of a bygone era. MP
(adv. 15)
Dir. Cheryl Dunn USA/Serbia and Montenegro 2013
83mins Digital Documentary
Boogie, Martha Cooper, Bruce Davidson, Elliott Erwitt,
Bruce Gilden, Mary Ellen Mark, Jeff Mermelstein
Film source: Cheryl Dunn
.................................
Sunday 30 March, 20.00, Cubby Broccoli
Thursday 3 April, 18.00, Impressions Gallery
.................................
.................................
+ FLO
(ADV. 18)
Dir. Riley Hooper USA 2013 10mins Digital
Documentary
Flo Fox was a New York photographer working in
the 70s and 80s. Now wheelchair bound with lung
cancer and quickly losing her vision, she still continues
to document the everyday, with a little help from the
people around her.
Film Source: Riley Hooper
A kaleidoscopic set of thirteen portraits
of New York’s most upfront street
photographers.
Everybody Street is a vibrant tribute to New York City’s
street photographers, creators of one of the most
potent artforms to have emerged from that city. We
follow 13 photographers whose work has documented
a changed and changing city, each hustling to capture
great images: Serbian immigrant Boogie credits his ‘nonthreatening’ foreign accent for helping win the trust of
his tough street gang subjects; Jill Freedman, a specialist
in documenting the work of the city’s cops and firemen,
takes no prisoners with her outspoken take on her city;
while loquacious hip-hopper Ricky Powell talks of how
he only got into this game to impress a girl that dissed
him. All of these characters are fascinating talkers,
whether they’re reminiscing on the various long-gone
‘golden ages’ of images available on New York’s streets,
or making a living as the current gallery stars. TV
28
29
.....................................................................
.....................................................................
Exhibition
A Fallible Girl
(ADV. 15)
Dir. Joanna Hogg UK 2013 104mins Digital
Viv Albertine, Liam Gillick, Tom Hiddleston,
Harry Kershaw
Film source: Artificial Eye
.................................
.................................
.................................
+ BRITISH BIRDS OF PREY
(ADV. U)
6mins
See page 109
.................................
+ BLACKSMITH
(ADV. U)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Emilie Blichfeldt Norway 2013 14mins Digital
Documentary
A subtle and intimate glimpse of fiery indoor labours in
the dark, frozen north, from the director of Theory of
Color (BIFF 2012 Shine Shorts Competition.)
Film source: Emilie Blichfeldt
The third film by one of Britain’s most
acclaimed directors, Exhibition explores
love and architecture with a keen eye and a
penetrating intelligence.
“As close to horror as a movie can get without blood
being spilt” – so wrote Ryan Gilbey in The Guardian after
catching Joanna Hogg’s Exhibition at Locarno, where it
debuted in the prestigious Golden Leopard competition.
After Tuscany (for Unrelated) and the Scilly Isles (for
Archipelago) writer-director Hogg now brings us into the
heart of the capital, to the comfortable west London
neighbourhood where long-time couple D (Albetine)
and H (Gillick) reside in an angular, glassy, multi-level
pad. Childless, creative, and just a little neurotic, the
pair – having lived in this tastefully spectacular house
for eighteen years – are now pondering a move. But
even contemplating such upheavals brings various
semi-buried tensions and traumas to the surface. Tom
Hiddleston – male lead in both of Hogg’s first two
features, and known to multiplex-goers as Loki from
Thor and The Avengers – pops up occasionally as an
estate-agent, but the real eye-opener here is Albertine,
near-unrecognisable from her punk heyday as lead
singer of The Slits. NY
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Conrad Clark UK 2013 104mins subtitles Digital
Sang Juan, Luang Hu, Arthur Molinier
Film source: PAD International
.................................
Saturday 5 April, 20.15, Pictureville
.................................
.................................
+ ZIMA
(ADV. PG)
12mins
See page 119
+ THE STRENGTH AND AGILITY OF
INSECTS (ADV. U)
4mins
See page 109
Both atmospherically sensual and
ambitiously cerebral, A Fallible Girl is a
boundary-crossing drama that’s like no
other British film of the decade.
A Fallible Girl is possibly the most international film
at this year’s BIFF: a British production, filmed in
Dubai, starring two Chinese actresses and with
dialogue principally in English, Arabic and Mandarin.
This is entirely in keeping with a film which so subtly
and effectively examines globalisation, and how
the dissolution of national boundaries can be both
liberating and disorienting. Thanks to his intense focus
on his protagonist Lifei (Sang Juan), however, writerdirector Clark – following-up 2007’s prize-winning Soul
Carriage – ensures that his enticingly enigmatic film is
about living breathing people rather than conceptual
abstractions. Lifei lives with her countrywoman Yaya
(Luang Hu) in a crowded Dubai suburb, escaping for
brief interludes at the opulent waterfront pad of her
boyfriend (Arthur Molinier). Lifei and Yaya run a small
mushroom farm in the desert between Abu Dhabi
and Dubai, staffed by Bangladeshis. Frictions abound;
problems multiply;Yaya quits; Lifei goes on. Business,
after all, is business. NY
30
31
.....................................................................
.....................................................................
Here I Am,
Here I’m Not
The Joycean
Society (adv. PG)
(Aquí Estoy, Aquí No)
(adv. 15)
European Premiere
Dir. Elisa Eliash Chile 2012 90mins subtitles Digital
Juan Pablo Correa, María José Siebald, Constanza
Alemparte, Elvis Fuentes
Film source: Surdocs
.................................
Friday 28 March, 20.05, IMAX
.................................
.................................
+ THE VISITOR
(ADV. U)
Dir. George Dechev Bulgaria/Netherlands 2013 8mins
b/w Digital
A sharp and stylish stop-motion short about a
mysterious man who can walk through walls. Based on
a short story written by Yuri Vladimirov.
Film Source: Erik Thijssen
A riotously imaginative Chilean descendant
of Hitchcock’s Vertigo that showcases
yet another exciting new voice in South
American cinema.
29-year-old writer/director Elisa Eliash's raucous
second feature Here I Am, Here I’m Not ranks among
the wildest and most unclassifiable productions
from Latin America in the current decade. Schlubby,
moustachioed journalist Ramiro Hidalgo (Correa) falls
into a depression after surviving a car accident in which
his best friend was killed. A dead ringer for legendary
gonzo scribe Lester Bangs, Ramiro is rescued from
unemployment when he’s hired to write a biography of
reclusive, volatile national rock-idol Ana Patricia Jones
Ahumada (Siebald). This assignment quickly develops
into a torrid love-affair before tragedy strikes once
again - but is everything quite as it seems? The fact
that Eliash cites Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) among her
inspirations provides one rather hefty clue, but her
homage to the film recently voted the greatest of all
time twists the original’s themes of obsession and
identity into very new, exotic and surprising shapes. A
dazzling phantasmagoria of sex and drugs and rock-androll – with archery thrown in for good measure – Here
I Am, Here I’m Not may not plot anything like an arrowstraight course but nevertheless connects squarely with
both heart and humerus. NY
Dir. Dora Garcia Belgium 2013 52mins Digital
Documentary
Film source: Auguste Orts
.................................
Tuesday 1 April, 18.30, IMAX
.................................
.................................
+ GREENLAND UNREALISED
(ADV. U)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Dania Reymond France/Taiwan 2012 10mins
subtitles Digital
A hauntingly beautiful example of computer-generated
animation that spans the globe.
Film source: Dania Reymond
.................................
+ ANINGAAQ
(ADV. PG)
Dir. Jonás Cuarón USA 2013 7mins Digital
Inuit fisherman Aningaaq picks up an SOS call on his
two-way radio. But does he grasp the full Gravity of the
situation?
Film source: Warner Bros UK
Erudite and consistently amusing, The
Joycean Society intimately observes
a Finnegans Wake reading-group in
Switzerland.
There are book groups, there are reading circles, and
then there’s the Zürich James Joyce Foundation which,
as its website says, “has been conducting weekly reading
groups of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake for years. The
aim is a thorough but leisurely and relaxed ramble
through the works, step by step, with comments and
discussion. It should bring out the vitality and humor
of what so many potential readers shy away from but
others become addicted to.” Held in a small room
at 9 Augustinergasse, in the Swiss city where the
groundbreaking and enduringly influential Irish writer
breathed his last, these Anglophone congregations of
ardent literature-nuts are the subject of this splendid
mid-length documentary by Spanish artist Garcia.
While part of a wider project involving installations,
The Joycean Society works quite on its own terms as
an accessible and unexpectedly funny stand-alone
film. As Isobel Stevens noted in Sight and Sound, “Her
surprising, charming film is as much a homage to the
group’s dedication (11 years on, they are in the midst
of their third lap of the tome) as it is a salute to Joyce’s
destruction of language.” NY
32
33
.....................................................................
.....................................................................
Karaoke Girl
Lilting
(Sao karaoke)
The hidden lives of sex-workers in Thailand
are exposed in Karaoke Girl, a sensual
portrait of a precarious existence.
(adv. 15)
Dir.Visra Vichit-Vadakan Thailand/USA 2013
Sa Sittijun, Supavitch Mepremwattana, Nang Sittijun
Film source: Hidden Rooster Films
.................................
.................................
.................................
+ WHALE VALLEY
(ADV. 12A)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson Iceland 2013
15 mins subtitles Digital
Earning awards and special mentions across the
festival circuit, including a special distinction at Cannes,
Gudmundsson’s short film displays a strong brotherly
bond against a backdrop of the harsh Icelandic
landscape.
Film Source: Frae Films
A compelling feature-length debut from US-born,
Bangkok-raised Vichit-Vadakan. An unusual but
confidently executed combination of fiction and
documentary elements, it stars 23-year-old Sittijun as
a lightly fictionalised version of herself. At 15, she was
sent from her rural province to work in a Bangkok
factory, sending most of her meagre wages back
home to support her family. Three years later, she was
recruited to be an escort under the claustrophobic
neon of Bangkok’s so-called karaoke bars – where
customers expect more than just a song.Vichit-Vadakan
skilfully evokes the big-city allure which dupes so
many girls like Sittijun. Karaoke Girl is independent and
uncompromised through and through, however, and
among its chief strengths is a refreshing rejection of
miserablism, especially in those more straightforward
and amusing documentary segments in which Sittijun
returns to the village where her family lives. It contains
ample evidence of a confident and natural artist able to
draw upon a wealth of experience to sensitively probe
the subjects of itinerant labour, gendered exploitation
and the divides between urban and rural wealth. MP
(adv. 15)
Dir. Hong Khaou UK 2014 91mins some subtitles
Digital
Ben Whishaw, Morven Christie, Shane Salter,
Leila Wong
.................................
.................................
.................................
+ NICHE IN THE MARKET
(ADV. U)
Dir. Rod Main UK 2013 2mins Digital
A short film about small shops
.................................
+ CHARLIE SAYS
(ADV. 12A)
Dir. Lewis Arnold UK 2013 24mins Digital
Gaining attention by playing aggressive schoolboy
Arbor in The Selfish Giant, Connor Chapman returns in
this short film as a young boy whose lies cut through
the calm of a family holiday.
Film Source: The National Film and Television School
A graceful, moving film about two
bereaved people attempting to connect
across barriers, this is a jewel of British
filmmaking.
Ben Whishaw has been an actor to seek out for over
a decade now. In everything he has appeared in so
far – whether playing Q in Skyfall, John Keats in Bright
Star, Keith Richards in Stoned, one of many Bob Dylans
in I’m Not There – Ben has demonstrated unerring
versatility, depth and charm. In Lilting Ben plays Richard
whose boyfriend Kai dies in an accident. Kai’s ChineseCambodian mother June has been left alone in an old
people’s home, her isolation made worse by the fact
that she has never learned English. One day Richard
decides to visit June and to try to connect with her. A
graceful, moving film that adds director Hong Khaou to
the list of those to seek out. TV
34
35
.....................................................................
.....................................................................
Mother, I Love You
Mouton
(Mammu, es Tevi milu)
Family values and adolescent traumas are
sensitively explored in Latvian prize-winner
Mother, I Love You.
UK Premiere
Dir. Janis Nords Latvia 2013 82mins subtitles Digital
Kristofers Konovalovs,Vita Varpina, Matiss Livcans,
Indra Brike
Film source: New Europe Film Sales
.................................
.................................
.................................
+ IN MY CORNER
(ADV. 15)
IN COMPETITION
Dir.Vincent Ma USA 2014 15mins Digital
A young girl is getting ready for the fight of her life,
and at the same time trying to reconnect with her
estranged father through their mutual love of boxing.
A simple and original film which looks at the fatherdaughter relationship.
Film Source:Vincent Ma
Produced on a relatively skinny budget of £125,000,
this likeably tough tale of wayward urban youth - which
wears the influence of François Truffaut’s 400 Blows
proudly but lightly – has enjoyed bountiful international
success on the film-festival circuit: it’s already picked
up major prizes at prestigious events such as the
Berlinale (where it won the international jury’s Grand
Prix in the youth oriented Generation section) and
the Los Angeles Film Festival (Best Dramatic Feature).
As the 12-year-old Raimonds, who lives with his
mother (Varpina) in a Riga high-rise, Konovalovs
features in almost every scene as a bright, sensitive,
artistically-minded youngster whose predilection for
petty criminality edges him towards dangerous terrain.
Both intimately sympathetic character-study and deft
psychological portrait of a close but unharmonious
family bond, Mother I Love You – Latvia’s submission
for this year’s Foreign Language Oscar – also manages
to immerse us in the seductively shadowy nocturnal
atmosphere of the nation’s architecturally diverse
capital. NY
(adv. PG)
IN COMPETITION
UK Premiere
Dirs. Gilles Deroo & Marianne Pistone France 2013
100mins subtitles 35mm
David Merabet, Audrey Clement, Michael Mormentyn,
Cindy Dumont
Film source: Boule de Suif
.................................
Tuesday 1 April, 15.40, Pictureville
Sunday 6 April, 11.00, Cubby Broccoli
.................................
.................................
+ BANYA
13mins
See page 118
(ADV. 15)
Prize-winning French drama Mouton
combines experimental and narrative
techniques with persuasive aplomb.
With so many directors, especially newcomers,
making their “film” digitally rather than on celluloid
nowadays, it’s nice to note that some film-makers, even
newcomers, can still fly the flag for old-school ways. But
the fact that socially-minded, Normandy-set characterstudy Mouton was shot on 16mm before being
transferred to 35mm isn’t what makes it memorable.
Debutant writer/director/editors Deroo and Pistone
take an original, occasionally discombobulating
approach to narrative development as they follow
the travails of self-effacing, happy-go-lucky teenager
Aurelien (Merabet) – nicknamed ‘Mouton’ (i.e. sheep) –
after he obtains legal independence from his alcoholic
mother. He finds a kitchen job in a restaurant on
the Normandy coast, makes friends, gets a girlfriend.
But there’s trouble in store. Winner of the Special
Jury Prize in the ‘Filmmakers of the Present’ section
at Locarno last summer, Mouton was ranked among
2013’s best films by no fewer than six contributors to
the prestigious Australian periodical Senses of Cinema’s
‘World Poll.’ “Films that truly surprise are the rarest of
the rare,” wrote Variety magazine’s Jay Weissberg, “but
Mouton delves beyond quirkiness to touch on the very
capriciousness of existence.” NY
36
37
.....................................................................
.....................................................................
MoVING
One of the most perceptive and moving
films about late childhood ever made, as
featured in A Story of Children and Film.
Never Die
Moving was one of the great discoveries of the 2012
edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival,
where it was featured as part of a retrospective
dedicated to its director, the late Shinji Somai. The
people gathered in Edinburgh to discover Somai’s
terrific films over the festival’s ten days included
Mark Cousins (see page 42), and it’s a delight to see
this wonderful film now re-emerge, thanks to its
enthusiastic championing by our friends in Edinburgh.
Moving was made at around the mid point in Somai’s
career, and is one of his most celebrated films. It’s the
story of Renko, a twelve-year-old girl who is adjusting
to her parents’ divorce. She tries out various schemes
to bring her family back together, but eventually accepts
the only thing that can ever happen to her: growing up.
Renko, played by Tomoko Tabata, is caught between the
last few gasps at being a girl and wanting to become
an adult, and Somai’s ever-sympathetic, sometimes
stylised yet resolutely lifelike film, captures a vanishing
childhood in ways that very very few films have ever
managed. One day this will be called a classic. TV
UK Premiere
Dir. Enrique Rivero Mexico 2012 78mins subtitles
Digital
Margarita Saldaña, Amalia Salas, Juan Chirinos
Film source: Una comunion
(OHIKKOSHI)
(adv. 12A)
Dir. Shinji Sômai Japan 1993 124mins subtitles Digital
Tomoko Tabata, Shinobu Chihara, Kiichi Nakai,
Junko Sakurada
Film source: Filmhouse
.................................
.................................
(Mai morire)
(adv. 15)
.................................
.................................
.................................
+ HELLO SUNSHINE
(ADV. 15)
Dir. Andrew Clark UK 2013 18mins Digital
Kate is the perfect wife, but after twenty five years, her
husband leaves her for a younger woman. Cue Kate’s
friend Vanessa, a force of nature with a drink problem
who has the perfect solution to Kate’s despair – vodka,
grass and a road trip.
Film Source: Andrew Clark
Never Die takes us to a magical,
underexplored corner of Mexico City
to examine how death impacts on one
remarkable family.
A truly spellbinding meditation on geography, family
and faith, Never Die is a film about deeply spiritual
people that even staunch atheists can appreciate
and embrace. Arnau Valls Colomer’s consistently
breathtaking cinematography plunges us into the
unique milieu that is Xochimilco – an ancient
settlement, now a suburb of Mexico City only a few
miles from the mega-metropolis’s centre. Crisscrossed
by canals and artificial islands, this “timeless” zone
– officially designated a Barrio Mágico (“Magical
Neighbourhood”) – is the ideal backdrop for a delicate
tale structured around the death of a 99-year-old
woman (Salas). She’s cared for by Chayo (Saldaña),
who may be her daughter – or perhaps her granddaughter. Never Die – the eagerly-awaited follow-up to
writer-director Rivero’s debut Parque Via (2008), which
took the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 2008 – is
concerned less with precise biographical specifics and
more concerned with illustrating Chayo’s teemingly
rich inner life. NY
38
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.....................................................................
Phantom
Powerless
(adv. 15)
IN COMPETITION
UK Premiere
Dir. Jonathan Soler France 2013 76mins subtitles
Digital
Yuki Fujita, Masato Tsujioka
Film source: Ganko Films
.................................
Wednesday 2 April, 18.15, IMAX
.................................
.................................
+ TOKYO DREAMS
(ADV. U)
Dir. Nicholas Barker Japan 2013 10mins Digital
A journey behind closed eyelids, Tokyo Dreams is a
short film about sleeping commuters on the Tokyo
subway.
Film source: Nicholas Barker
An experimental take on modern-day
relationships, Phantom shows us Tokyo in a
whole new light
BIFF is always on the lookout for accomplished new
voices operating on the lower-budget margins of
cinema, and we think we’ve found another with this
shimmeringly delicate miniature. Over the course
of one night in Tokyo, a young couple share their
anxieties: their precarious living situation, the difficulties
of earning a living, career choices, various social
pressures to conform, and so on. Unfolding in voiceover, conversation drifts from subject to subject over
images of contemporary Tokyo in all its dazzling beauty.
French writer-director Jonathan Soler’s début is a
finely judged blend of poetic essay and compassionate
love-story, nodding as much to Malick as to Linklater’s
Midnight trilogy, both elements strongly anchored by
a refreshing engagement with the real world and the
ongoing economic crisis. Its two likeable and relatably
vulnerable protagonists coast along from one scenario
to the next, trying to find their place in a world that
may not necessarily have one for them. Amusing and
touching, the film is remarkably coherent considering
that it was shot before any dialogue was written. Soler
cites previously BIFF-showcased filmmakers such as
Chris Marker and Stan Brakhage among his influences,
and his passion for rich and unconventional cinematic
storytelling is evident throughout. MP
(Katiyabaaz)
(adv. 12A)
Dirs. Deepti Kakkar, Fahad Mustafa India/USA 2013
84mins some subtitles Digital Documentary
Film source: Globalistan Films
.................................
Sunday 6 April, 18.25, IMAX
.................................
.................................
+ LADA
(ADV. PG)
19mins
See page 119
Lively, energetic and full of larger than life
characters, Powerless investigates the hairraising practice and politics of electricity
theft in India.
Kanpur is a sprawling home to 2.5 million people in
northern central India. It is often nicknamed “The
Manchester of the East” for its former industrial
might, and it is also renowned for corruption, political
inertia and some seriously ineffectual public services.
Plagued by electricity shortages that can last up to 15
hours, the ‘Katiyabaaz’ (electricity thieves), and lauded
for their skills at hot-wiring the overloaded power
lines and substations that crisscross the streets with a
jungle of cables. Those with an interest in Health and
Safety may wish to look away as skilled Katiyabaaz
jerry rig megavolt substations with wire coat hangers,
or chuck wet mud at electric fires. But this is more
than mere shockumentary, with deeper stories to tell
about people and politics. Master Katiyabaaz Loha is a
Robin Hood-like figure who takes pride in re-routing
the supplies of the better-off, Meanwhile Ritu, the first
female head of the power company, is avowed to tackle
the issue against impossible odds. She’s up against a
self-serving young politician, who’s determined to make
the most of Kanpur citizens’ rising fury at the daily
blackouts. TV
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41
.....................................................................
.....................................................................
Ricardo Bär
Route of the Moon
(Ruta de la luna)
(adv. 12A)
UK Premiere
Dirs. Gerardo Neumann, Nele Wohlatz Argentina
2013 96mins subtitles Digital Documentary
Film source: Nele Wohlatz
.................................
.................................
.................................
+ TREE TRAP
(ADV. U)
EUROPEAN PREMIERE
Dir. Helio Villela Brazil 2013 18mins b/w subtitles
Digital
The ‘arapuca’ is a handmade trap used to capture birds,
monkeys and other animals without hurting them.
A battle between a young boy and an old man. (And
a tree.)
Film Source: Primo Filmes
From the forests of Argentina comes
Ricardo Bär, a subtle and complex film
about religion and cinematic representation.
Praised by BIFF 2014 tributee James Benning as “one
of the strangest films I’ve ever seen,” this radical
experiment in documentary form is a thoughtprovoking contemplation of faith and community. The
eponymous Señor Bär is, as his name hints, descended
from Germans who a century ago settled the forested
region where northern Argentina meets Brazil. The
area retains certain linguistic and cultural links with
the Fatherland, providing an exotic backdrop for
Ricardo’s ongoing quest to become a minister. But
whereas many directors would have taken a standard
fly-on-the-wall approach to this material, newcomers
Neumann and Wohlatz opt for a more open, revealing
and original tack. Their narration fills us in on details of
the filmmaking process, and they’re especially candid
about when and why they are altering the course of
events. One of the early scenes even involves Bär being
told that the filmmakers will pay for his theological
studies on condition that he collaborates with their
project. An intense, broodingly handsome chap with
penetrating eyes that always seem to see beyond the
world’s trivial surfaces, our unlikely hero seems to have
stepped straight out of French master Robert Bresson’s
classic ruminations on spirituality in the modern world.
He’s the orthodox heart and soul of an engagingly
unorthodox work. NY
(adv. 12A)
UK Premiere
Dir. Juan Sebastián Jácome Chile/Panama 2012
Jimmy David Suárez, Luis Antonio Gotti,
Victoria Greco, ‘Príncipe’ (the dog)
Film source: Abaca Films
.................................
.................................
.................................
+ THE EMIGRANT
(ADV. 12A)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Mario Cardona Costa Rica 2013 15 mins Digital
Omar first arrives to the capital city, running away from
something that was about to happen.
Film Source: Betta Films
A minutely-observed comedy about an
unorthodox father-son relationship proves
there’s much more to Panama than its
canal.
The verdant Central American highways that connect
Panama and Costa Rica are the setting for writerdirector Jácome’s beguiling debut feature, in which
thirtysomething bowling addict Tito (Suárez) has to
escort his crotchety dad Cesar (Gotti) back home
from hospital – the 13-hours-each-way drive no easy
ask for Tito’s dodgy sky-blue Lada. Macho boxingtrainer Cesar is, heart problems notwithstanding, as
ebullient as Tito is introverted, and it’s evident that
this pair have never been especially close. Close
confinement on such a journey is thus more a roadmap for friction than belated bonding – and that’s
even before the duo pick up the vivacious Yadia
(Greco) and another passenger of the four-legged
variety. An unlikely love triangle thus develops as
father and son contend for Yadia’s affections, but it’s
typical of Ecuador-born Jácome’s fresh approach that
events develop in unexpected but totally believable
ways. Panamanian stage-veteran Gotti and big-screen
newcomer Suárez are, meanwhile, superbly matched,
providing great company over the course of the
picture’s brisk running-time. NY
42
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.....................................................................
A STORY OF
CHILDREN AND FILM
An infectious, enthusiastic film about
children in films from all over the world.
(PG)
A Story of Children and Film is the result of a wonderfully
simple idea, and one that opens up so many possibilities
for how we see the world through films. Mark Cousins,
that long-term champion of the wider world of cinema,
here takes the template of his More4 TV series The
Story of Film: An Odyssey to create the world’s first
movie about kids in global cinema. It’s a passionate,
poetic portrait of the adventures of childhood –
its surrealism, loneliness, fun, destructiveness and
stroppiness – as seen through 53 great films from
25 countries. It includes classic movies like E.T. the
Extra-Terrestrial and The Red Balloon, as well as dozens
of masterpieces (many directed by women) that are
almost unknown. TV
The Strange
Colour of Your
Body’s Tears
Dir. Mark Cousins UK 2013 101mins some subtitles
Digital Documentary
Film source: Dogwoof
.................................
.................................
Mark Cousins will introduce the screening.
(L’étrange couleur des
larmes de ton corps) (18)
Dirs: Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani Belgium/France/
Luxembourg 2013 102mins subtitles Digital
Klaus Tange, Ursula Bedena, Joe Koener, Birgit Yew
.................................
.................................
+ THE BIRTH OF A FLOWER
(ADV. U)
6mins
See page 109
.................................
+ WONDER
(ADV. U)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Mirai Mizue Japan 2014 6mins Digital
This 365-second animation is a sequence of 8,760
pictures hand-drawn by the director over the course
of 365 days. Mirai Mizue (BIFF 2012) is back!
Film Source: CaRTe bLaNChe
A lurid Euro-horror, set in an incredibly
stylish Art Nouveau house, this is sure to
satisfy those seeking festival thrills.
When a husband returns home to find his wife is
missing, a detective comes to investigate and the
two begin to discover the secrets, deception and
lies hidden within the apartment building where the
couple reside. As the detective begins questioning
the building’s other strange tenants, the husband is
drawn into a labyrinthine mystery of sex and murder
that threatens to engulf him. Continuing its directors’
fascination with the blood-drenched aesthetics of
the 70s Italian giallo – even down to its title – The
Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears features a more
structured plot than its predecessor, but employs the
same stunning visuals and artistic vision to create an
enigmatic slice of European cult cinema.– Rob Nevitt,
Celluloid Screams
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.....................................................................
Tracks
The Triplet
(adv. 15)
Dir. John Curran Australia 2013 110mins Digital
Mia Wasikowska, Adam Driver, Emma Booth,
Rainer Bock
Film source: Entertainment One
.................................
Thursday 3 April, 20.45, Pictureville
.................................
.................................
+ JUST SAY HI
(ADV. U)
Dir. John McPhail UK 2013 2mins Digital
When a girl catches the eye of a boy at bus stop
romance ensues.
A stirring depiction of the clarity and selfdiscovery that can come with isolation in
nature.
“Robyn Davidson’s remarkable journey in 1977 across
1,700 miles of Australian desert to the Indian Ocean
with four camels and a dog is given a richly sensorial
screen treatment in John Curran’s Tracks. Alternately
haunting, inspiring and dreamily meditative, this is a
visually majestic film of transfixing moods and textures.
Its stealth-like emotional charge is fuelled by unerring
work from Mia Wasikowska, her affecting performance
grounded in the fortitude and determination essential
to such an undertaking, at the same time subtly
keeping an open window to her character’s fragility.
First published in 1980, Davidson’s book became an
instant modern classic of travel literature and a seminal
nonfiction work for Australians in particular. It remains
a terrific read not only for its immersive, warts-and-all
account of an extraordinary experience, but also for
the specificity of its time frame. The book documents
a lone woman’s odyssey during the height of secondwave feminism and before national attitudes toward
the rights of indigenous Australians had fully begun to
be reshaped.” – David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter.
(Il gemello)
(adv. 15)
Dir.Vincenzo Marra Italy 2012 94mins subtitles Digital
Documentary
print source: RAI Cinema
.................................
.................................
Supported by
.................................
+ JUST THE WAY IT IS
12mins
See page 118
(ADV. PG)
Prison, Italian-style, is the focus of The
Triplet, a droll and informative documentary
about an inmate with more screen presence
than many Hollywood stars.
The Triplet delivers an intimate and engaging characterstudy of a charismatic Neapolitan inmate. It also
provides fascinating glimpses into the Italian penal
system, Italian society in general and that of the Naples
region – Marra’s home turf – in particular. While we
see very little here outside the gray, blockily functional
confines of Secondiglaino jail, plenty of local flavour
is imparted – not least by the thick dialect spoken by
prisoners and guards alike. The eponymous “triplet”,
29-year-old Raffaele Costagliola, certainly has plenty to
say for himself. Articulate, plain-speaking and analytical,
Raffaele’s intelligence and self-possession have evidently
earned him a position of considerable respect and
status within the jail – ditto his long criminal career
that included a stint in reform school and a stab at
armed robbery. With more than half a decade still
left to serve, Raffaele has clearly found ways to cope
with the routines of jail-cell life, including a fastidious
attention to cleanliness that bemuses some of his more
slovenly ‘colleagues’ behind bars. Poised somewhere
between A Prophet and Porridge,The Triplet is a truly
‘captivating’ glimpse behind bars that confirms Marra’s
status among the front rank of Europe’s sociallyconscious documentarians. NY
46
Velorama
(adv. PG)
.....................................................................
WORLD Premiere
Dir. Daisy Asquith UK 2014 60mins Digital
Documentary
.................................
Friday 28 March, 19.00,
Bradford Cathedral Artspace
.................................
This film is presented in partnership with
Sheffield Doc/Fest as part of Tour De
Cinema in the Yorkshire Festival, the first
ever arts festival to precede the Tour de
France, the world’s biggest annual sporting
event. See sheffdocfest.com for the full
programme for Tour De Cinema.
A new documentary created from stunning
British Film Institute archive material
about a century of the bicycle.
From the invention of the bicycle to the gruelling
pursuit of Le Tour, a century of cycling is honoured in
this specially-made new film comprised of fascinating
archive material and music.Yorkshire audiences
will have the first opportunity to see this new
documentary, directed by award-winner Daisy Asquith,
with a soundtrack from cult musician Bill Nelson. For
this original soundtrack Bill will form collaborations
with young Yorkshire musicians. Produced by
Crossover, who complete a trilogy after the muchloved From The Sea To The Land Beyond (British Sea
Power’s lyrical meditation on a century of the British
Coast) and The Big Melt.
Daisy Asquith and Bill Nelson will introduce
the screening.
47
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48
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2014 BRADFORD UNESCO CITY OF FILM
EUROPEAN COMPETITION
BIFF launched its competition for European
films in 2012, when the winner was Rúnar
Rúnarsson’s Volcano from Iceland.
12 months later, the prize went to Emily
Atef’s German/French/Swiss co-production
Kill Me. Now the competition has a new
name, thanks to sponsor Bradford UNESCO
City of Film, and includes documentary
films as well as fiction works for the first
time. NY
The eight films we’ve chosen this year include
snapshots of a Europe still coping with the effects of a
financial crisis that’s now more than half a decade old.
But our continent, while many things, is certainly not
an island, and its artists rove across the globe in search
of material and inspiration. Indeed, anyone coming
‘cold’ to either A Fallible Girl or Phantom might not
even suspect they were European productions at all, so
utterly do their directors immerse the viewer in far-off
locations.
‘European’ in terms of cinema is traditionally defined
in terms of finance – but money, as we know, only gets
us so far. A European sensibility in 2014 encompasses
culture, history and social perspective, as the old
continent seeks to reassert its value and influence in a
planet whose upheavals and turbulences move faster
than its tectonic plates.
THE COMPETING FILMS
2014:
A BOUQUET OF CACTUS
Spain: directed by Pablo Llorca
CLASS ENEMY
Slovenia: directed by Rok Bicek
COSTA DA MORTE
Spain: directed by Lois Patiño
A FALLIBLE GIRL
UK: directed by Conrad Clark
THE JOYCEAN SOCIETY
Belgium: directed by Dora Garcia
MOTHER, I LOVE YOU
Latvia: directed by Janis Nords
MOUTON
France: directed by Gilles Deroo & Marianne Pistone
PHANTOM
France: directed by Jonathan Soler
PREVIOUS EUROPEAN
COMPETITION WINNERS:
2013 Emily Atef, France Kill Me
2012 Rúnar Rúnarsson, Iceland Volcano
Awards presentation
and screening
The winning film in the
European Competition
will be screened again on
Sunday 6 April at 15.45
49
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THE JURY
David Jenkins
David Jenkins is the editor of bi-monthly film magazine,
Little White Lies, to which he has been a contributor
since its inception in 2005. He was also a staff writer
on the film desk of Time Out London between 2007 and
2012. He has written on film for publications such as
Sight & Sound, Mubi, Esquire and the Guardian. His latest
project was overseeing the 50th issue of Little White
Lies which offered a fully-illustrated survey of the last
50 years of cinema.
Bill Lawrence
Bill set up Reel Solutions in 2006 to pursue his passion
for supporting all forms of cinema. He was Creative
Director at Showroom Cinema in Sheffield, one of
the UK’s leading independent cinemas, and was Head
of Film at the National Media Museum. He set up
Bradford International Film Festival in 1995. In 2006 Bill
was one of the key people to set up the partnership
board of Bradford: City of Film and was involved
closely in achieving the UNESCO designation in 2009.
Bill is chair of All Animated Limited and is a director on
the Board of Creative England and previously Screen
Yorkshire.
Dana Linssen
Dana Linssen is a poet, philosopher and film critic
from the Netherlands.She edits the independent film
magazine de Filmkrant, is a critic for daily newspaper
NRC Handelsblad and a regular contributor to the
cultural radio programme Opium. She is the initiator
of the Slow Criticism Project, a series of publications,
debates, events and new ways to present film criticism
in accelerating times.
Vicky McClure
Vicky is one of the country’s most exciting actors.
Her stunning performance in Shane Meadows’ This is
England earned her a Best Leading Actress BAFTA for
her portrayal of Lol.Vicky’s subsequent portrayal of Lol
in Meadows’ TV special miniseries This is England 86
clinched Vicky a Best Leading Actress TV BAFTA.Vicky
has appeared in a number of leading roles, including
the intense and much lauded BBC2 drama Line of Duty.
She has also appeared in True Love, directed by Dominic
Savage and starring David Tennant and Billie Piper.
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.....................................................................
2014 SHINE SHORT
FILM COMPETITION
SHINE JURY 2014
The Shine Short Film Competition
honours the best short film by an emerging
director at Bradford International Film
Festival. Films featured in the competition
are selected from hundreds of entries
submitted to the festival from all over the
world. From these, six films have been
shortlisted by the festival programmers
for the Shine Award. The winner will be
selected by an invited jury. The Jury will
select the winning film from the shortlist
during the opening weekend of BIFF 2014,
and the award will be presented on Sunday
6 April.
“There is often more freshness, more experimentation,
and a greater striving for new cinematic achievements
in shorts than in features.” – Amos Vogel, 1955
THE COMPETING
FILMS 2014: (adv. 15)
Dirs. various, approx 90 mins digital
.................................
Wednesday 2 April, 20.30, IMAX
.................................
SMALL LITTLE THINGS
USA, directed by Jared Hogan
TREE TRAP
Brazil, directed by Helio Villela
IN MY CORNER
USA, directed by Vincent Ma
STAY THE SAME
UK, directed by Sam Firth
CADET
Belgium, directed by Kevin Meul
PREVIOUS SHINE WINNERS:
2013 Ico Costa, Portugal/France Four Hours Barefoot
2012 Lars Kornhoff, Germany Kinderspiel
2011 Philippe Verkinderen, Belgium A Gentle Push
2010 Hans Montelious, Sweden The Man with all the
Marbles
2009 Dana Neuberg, Israel Grown Up
2008 Harry Wootliff, UK Trip
2007 Jon Garaño, Spain Miramar Street
2006 Igor Pejic, France L’Armée du bonheur
2005 Avie Luthra, UK Lucky
2004 Benjamin Diez, Germany Druckbolzen
2003 Anna Ehnsiö, Sweden The Rift
2002 Brian Percival, UK About a Girl
2001 Emmanuael Jespers, Belgium Le Derniére rêve
2000 Guillaume Lecoquierre, France Pixie
1999 Jonathan Hacker, UK The Short Walk
1998 Jophi Ries, Germany Marco at Work
BRADFORD-HALIFAX-LEEDS
UK, directed by Francis Carson Lee
Awards presentation
and screening
The winning film in the
Shine Short Film Competition will be
screened again on
Sunday 6 April at 15.45
Toni Booth
Toni Booth is an Associate Curator at the National
Media Museum, focussing on the Museum’s
cinematography collections. She is currently working
on the forthcoming Summer exhibition tracing the
developments in natural history broadcasting. In 2013
she curated the exhibition Doctor Who and Me: 50
Years of Doctor Who Fans. She has also created displays
about the work of Ray Harryhausen and Kinemacolor.
Joe Goff
Joe Goff is a film programmer from Leeds who has
worked with the film education charity Filmclub for
many years. He has helped to program for many
events including the youth jury Encounters Short Film
Festival and The National Youth Film Festival. Joe is
also the founder of the Meanwood international Film
Festival in Leeds.
Joan Parsons
Joan has worked in cinemas for over ten years in
Sheffield and Essex and studied Film at Sheffield
Hallam University. Joan is passionate about screening
great films, encouraging engagement in film, promoting
understanding of film and creating programmes to
excite and interest audiences. As Festival Director for
Showcomotion, Joan aims to start young audiences on
a road to a lifetime of film loving.
Michael Pattison
Michael Pattison is a freelance film journalist and
programming consultant from Gateshead. His writing
has been published by Sight & Sound, MUBI and others.
He has a master’s degree in Film from Newcastle
University. A participant in the Critics Academies
at Locarno Film Festival 2013 and Rotterdam Film
Festival 2014, he is also a member of FIPRESCI and
the Online Film Critics Society.
Rachael Pocock
Rachael Pocock has worked for several film festivals
and cultural heritage institutions, including the Leeds
International Film Festival, the National Fairground
Archive and currently for the BFI National Archive.
Last summer she graduated with a MA degree in the
Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image
from the University of Amsterdam.
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BIFF
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P
PEO
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BIFF PEOPLE
BIFF PEOPLE
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BIFF
PEOPLE
CONTENTS
BIFF isn’t just about celebrating the best of what’s happening in film
today. Every year we take the opportunity to look back at the careers
of people who have made outstanding contributions to cinema.
We are proud to give our Lifetime Achievement Award for 2014 to
Brian Cox, a true titan of acting. We take a look at some of his finest
performances, including the original Hannibal Lecktor in Manhunter.
He is in fine company, joining a list of former recipients that includes
John Hurt, Barbara Windsor, Ken Loach and Richard Attenborough.
We will also screen the complete filmography of one of the UK’s most
fascinating and influential directors, Sally Potter, who receives the
BIFF Fellowship for 2014.
And finally, we take a look at the career of James Benning, recognised
as a seminal figure of the American avant-garde since the late 1970s.
This tribute will feature the world theatrical premiere of his new
feature, BNSF and the UK premiere of the Venice Film Festival prize
winner, Double Play.
Lifetime Achievement Award: Brian Cox
BIFF Fellowship: Sally Potter
Uncharted States of America:
James Benning tribute
p.56
p.62
p.74
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BIFF PEOPLE
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LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD:
BRIAN COX
This year’s recipient of the BIFF Lifetime
Achievement Award is truly a titan
of the acting profession. Brian Cox has
excelled consistently in distinctive, scenestealing roles in cinema, on stage and
television, and in a professional career that
spans half a century. Renowned for his
Stakhanovite workrate and his unwavering
commitment to excellence in his chosen
craft, the Dundee-born Cox is the ‘actor’s
actor’ and in his dozens of films has
established himself both as a characterplayer par excellence and a leading-man of
compelling stature.
Previous recipients
2013 Tom Courtenay
2012 Barbara Windsor
2011 Claire Bloom
2010 John Hurt
2009 Virginia McKenna
2008 Michael Palin
2007 Ken Loach
2006 Malcolm McDowell
2005 Jenny Agutter
2004 Ian Carmichael
2003 Jean Simmons
2002 Jack Cardiff
2001 Richard Attenborough
Until the 1990s Cox was – despite the occasional
foray onto screens big and small – primarily known
for his stage work: spells at the Royal Shakespeare
Company and the National Theatre included 1987’s
Titus Andronicus for Deborah Warner, a performance
which remains widely regarded as definitive. The
year before he’d played an urbane psychopath named
Hannibal Lecktor in Michael Mann’s Manhunter – a film
which was widely overlooked at the time but is now
firmly established in the modern cinematic canon.
Barnstorming turns in Braveheart and Rob Roy –
both 1995 – brought the proud Scot to Hollywood’s
attention and in the ensuing two decades he’s added
class and gravitas to productions ranging from
blockbusters (X-Men 2,The Bourne Supremacy) to highclass auteur-driven fare (Adaptation, Zodiac, 25th Hour,
Rushmore, Match Point) to edgy indies like L.I.E., which
earned him several awards. Winner of an Emmy for
2000’s Nuremberg, his TV outings include his BAFTAhonoured work in The Lost Language of Cranes, plus
series such as Doctor Who, Deadwood and The Take.
This is by any measure one of the great careers in
British showbusiness, which we proudly salute this
year at the Bradford International Film Festival.
SCREENTALK: BRIAN COX
.................................
Sunday 6 April only, 18.30, Pictureville
Approx 90 minutes
.................................
Brian Cox will be in conversation with BIFF
Co-Director Neil Young.
Tickets £10/£8
BIFF PEOPLE
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BIFF PEOPLE
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BIFF PEOPLE
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The Year of the Sex
Olympics (15)
The Escapist
Dir. Michael Elliott UK 1968 105mins Digibeta
Leonard Rossiter, Brian Cox, Suzanne Neve
Film source: bfi/BBC
Friday 28 March, 20.45, Cubby Broccoli
.................................
“When Big Brother began on Channel 4 in 2000, I took
a principled stand against it. 'Don’t they know what
they’re doing?' I screamed at the TV. 'It’s The Year of the
Sex Olympics! Nigel Kneale was right!' " – so wrote
Mark Gatiss in The Guardian, in an article paying tribute
to the Manx-born visionary who ranks alongside
Dennis Potter and Alan Clarke as a pioneering giant of
British television drama. Having almost single-handedly
defined the art-form in the early 1950s with his
adaptation of Orwell’s 1984, Kneale sketched an even
more pessimistic dystopia with this nightmarish satire
of mass-market entertainment. After The Live Life Show
strands a family on a Scottish island and broadcasts
their travails to the watching millions, Cox’s Lasar
Opie enlivens events by adding a new “character”- a
murderous psychopath.You’ll never look at “reality
television” the same way again – if, indeed, you’re able
to look at it at all...NY
Manhunter
(18)
(15)
L.I.E.
(18)
.................................
Dir. Rupert Wyatt UK/Ireland 2008 102mins 35mm
Brian Cox, Damian Lewis, Joseph Fiennes, Seu Jorge
Film source:Vertigo Films
Dir. Michael Cuesta USA 2001 97mins 35mm
Brian Cox, Paul Dano, Bruce Altman, Billy Kay
Film source: Tartan Palisades
................................. .................................
The subsequent box office successes of both Hannibal
Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal) and Michael
Mann (Last of the Mohicans, Heat) make the apparent
failure of this joint project one of the mysteries of
mid-80s American cinema. Manhunter’s reputation has
soared over the years and it’s now almost a cliché to
say it’s a better movie than The Silence of the Lambs,
and to prefer Cox’s Lecter (or rather, Lecktor, as
he’s spelled here) over Hopkins Oscar-winning turn.
Clichés, perhaps, but in this instance, deadly accurate
ones. One reason why Lecktor’s screen debut caused
less of a splash than his subsequent appearances is
that he’s comparatively underexposed here. But, as
incarnated by Brian Cox he dominates the movie in
much the same way, delivering his terrific lines with
a convincing combination of impish zest and a chilly
Caledonian hauteur. NY
Dominating what now looks rather like an all-star
cast alongside the likes of Damian Lewis (Homeland)
and Dominic Cooper (Mamma Mia!), Cox is the
magnetically world-weary core of this quietly
ambitious British prison-break drama. In a role
written specifically for him by director Rupert Wyatt
(later responsible for Rise of the Planet of the Apes),
Cox exudes his special brand of grizzled authority
as long-time inmate Frank Perry. Learning that his
estranged daughter has fallen ill, Perry puts together
an expert crew with one aim: freedom. But getting
beyond the big-house walls isn't the least of their
problems... Writing in New York's Village Voice, Jean
Oppenheimer praised this “taut thriller that ends on
a note of unexpected grace... With his craggy face and
melancholy eyes, Cox brings a lived-in world-weariness
to Frank. Without lapsing into sentimentality, the actor
suggests a deeply buried humanity and vulnerability
that even Frank had forgotten he had.”NY
“The Long Island Expressway has claimed the mother
of the adolescent Howie (Dano) in this tough yet
tender coming of age story. With his widower dad
wrapped up in his own problems, Howie falls in with
fast company – and then Big John (Cox), community
stalwart with a covert taste for teenage boys. Director
Cuesta subverts potentially exploitative material
by examining the hinterland between sexuality
and emotional connection. Without condoning Big
John’s activities, there’s a troubling understanding
of the meeting point between the older outsider’s
manipulative charisma and the youth’s need for adult
belonging. By turns predatory and paternal, Cox’s
extraordinary contributions is of the performances of
2001.”
– Trevor Johnson, Time Out
Dir. Michael Mann USA 1986 120mins 35mm
Brian Cox, William Petersen, Kim Greist, Joan Allen
Film source: NMeM/Park Circus
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BIFF PEOPLE
Proudly
supports!
Rushmore
(15)
The Bourne Supremacy
...pop in
sometime!
The Bradford
International
Film Festival
(12A)
Dir. Wes Anderson USA 1998 108mins 35mm
Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams,
Brian Cox
Film source: Park Circus
.................................
Rushmore is an engaging and disarming character study
of an engaging and disarming character: Max Fischer,
a 16-year-old schoolboy who must rank as one of
the most original protagonists in recent American
cinema. Max is a scholarship pupil at Rushmore, a posh
private academy on the outskirts of Houston. He’s
undeniably bright but devotes so much of his energies
to extra-curricular school activities that he’s in danger
of flunking his studies and getting kicked out. Part of
the reason he wants to avoid this fate is his hopeless
infatuation with a much older, widowed British teacher,
Miss Cross (Olivia Williams), as well as his friendship
with one of Rushmore’s main benefactors, billionaire
businessman Herman Blume (Bill Murray). Things start
to take unexpected twists, however, when Miss Cross
falls in love with Blume, to Max’s horror. Brian Cox
adds a welcome and wonderfully funny tone to the
film, playing the memorably indignant headmaster Dr.
Guggenheim who has come to regret awarding Max a
scholarship. NY
Dir. Paul Greengrass USA/Germany 2004 108mins
35mm
Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles
Film source: Universal
.................................
The Bourne Supremacy is an absolute treat – a quantum
leap ahead of The Bourne Identity. Matt Damon reprises
his lead-role as amnesiac ex-CIA assassin Jason
Bourne. This time, his attempts at a ‘quiet life’ in Goa
with girlfriend Marie (Franka Potente) are shattered
when he’s inadvertently embroiled in an intrigue
involving the Russian Mafia and his former bosses.
Cox adds class and conviction as the nefarious Ward
Abbott: his delivery of the innocuous line “He’s on the
tram!” is a mini-masterclass in itself. NY
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JURYS INN BRADFORD
• 198 comfortable bedrooms
• Free WiFi in all public areas and bedrooms
• Stylish bar and restaurant
• Cardio gym
• 3 meeting rooms
To book, call 01274 848500
or visit jurysinns.com
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BIFF FELLOWSHIP:
SALLY POTTER
Between 1983, when Sally Potter made
Thriller and 2012, when she made
Ginger & Rosa, British cinema has been
through many trends and phases in both
mainstream and artists’ filmmaking. Over
this past thirty years, Sally Potter’s films
have moved playfully, nimbly between so
many facets of culture – exploring dance,
music, history, gender, performance.
Always asking questions, never resting,
always ambitious, never settling into
whatever “British film” imagines itself
to be at any particular time. Because of
this, she’s one of the truly inspirational
filmmakers. She made her first 8mm film
aged 14. As well as the seven feature films,
and several short films showing here in
Bradford, she has directed a television
series on emotional expression in different
culture, and opera. Her background is in
choreography, music,
performance art and experimental film.
She was awarded an OBE in 2012.
Sally Potter’s new book
Naked Cinema – Working with Actors
is published by Faber & Faber.
Sally Potter is the recipient of the
BRADFORD INTERNATIONAL
FILM FESTIVAL FELLOWSHIP 2014
Previous recipients
2012 Olivier Assayas
2011 Terry Gilliam
2010 Nicolas Roeg
2009 Peter Whitehead
2008 Kenneth Branagh
2007 Terence Davies
2006 Eric Sykes
SALLY POTTER IN CONVERSATION
.................................
Approx 90 minutes
.................................
Sally Potter will discuss her career to date, and in
particular her experience of working with actors.
Following her interview Sally will receive the
BIFF Fellowship Award.
Tickets £10/£8
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THE BLANK PAGE –
(RE) DISCOVERING SALLY POTTER
At the beginning of The Tango Lesson
(1997), a character named Sally (a filmmaker) stares at a blank page on a small,
round table on the spare floorboards of
her London flat. Shortly thereafter, the
flat abandoned to Heathcote Williams’
helpfully pessimistic builder, she is taking
her first lesson in tango – in Paris – from
Pablo Verón: dancer, performer, star.
This balletic leap in space and time represents the
kind of imaginative leaps which Sally Potter makes
seem very natural in her films. The irony of that
image of the blank page is an ideal one for such an
inventive filmmaker. The promise and delight of this
retrospective at the 20th Bradford International
Film Festival is the discovery or rediscovery of the
rich layers of Potter’s imagination and the singular
marriage of ideas and passion in her film-making. The
programme offers a perfect opportunity to revisit the
important work of this contemporary British filmauthor.
Potter was born in London in 1949. She grew up in
a family she describes as ‘atheist, anarchist outsiders’
where creativity and imagination were encouraged
and she began in her teens to make short films on
an 8mm camera given to her by her uncle. She joined
the London Film-makers’ Co-op and her short, Jerk
(1969), was playing in festivals by the time she was
seventeen. There was never any intention to become
anything else, but Potter also took time to become,
as she has put it, 100% a dancer and 100% a musician.
The combination of these skills and passions mark
her work with a personal vision married with a rich
multiplicity of influences. Her earliest films were avantgarde explorations of the possibilities of the medium
and sometimes incorporated live performance. By the
later 1970s she had toured and performed (sometimes
award-winning) work in music and dance for a number
of years.
Sally Potter on the set of Rage
Thriller (1979), a 33 minute short film, arrived out of
that period where politics of gender and class were
part of a vibrant public and intellectual debate. This
so-called ‘feminist mystery film’ retells the story of
La Bohème, and blends it with the cinematic language
of Hitchcock’s Psycho, allowing Mimi to return and
investigate her own death asking: “What if I had been
the hero?” The Gold Diggers (1983), coming shortly
afterwards and supported by the British Film Institute,
posed something of the same question and included
Julie Christie at its centre. On this occasion Colette
Laffont, who had been the warm-voiced, determined
detective of Thriller, rescues this feminine icon from
the throes of yet another costume drama waltz to start
their new adventure. These two films also demonstrate
the rewards of Potter’s years of performing and
collaborating with other artists – dancers and musicians
– such as Rose English, Jacky Lansley and Lindsay
Cooper. It can stand as a (still) noteworthy example of
feminist theory translated into practice as a production
made solely by women behind the camera. Or, more
pertinently, it demonstrates Potter’s ability to bring
exactly the right talent together (including Babette
Mangolte as cinematographer).
It would be some years until Potter embarked on her
next feature – the luxuriant aesthetic of Orlando (1992)
– on which she worked with Christopher Sheppard
as producer in the then recently-formed Adventure
Pictures. Raising finance proved challenging, but Virginia
Woolf’s tour of gender down the centuries became
a cinema spectacle and was a commercial and artistic
success. It is a testament to that ongoing production
relationship that Potter’s budget has never seemed to
be her aesthetic. (How on earth did they make Orlando
for (apparently) $4 million?) It would be a mistake,
however, to read Potter as abandoning her early avantgarde passions and her deeply-held political opinions
in working on a grander scale. Instead, as writer Kristi
McKim puts it, Potter built “stylistic virtuosity” onto
her experimental beginnings and managed to maintain
the artistic and political integrity she shared alongside
other film-makers such as (friend) Derek Jarman.
Thriller
Orlando
Feminist? Art film maker? Labelling is something Potter
herself has generally resisted for its ability to put up
barriers. Her work – whilst it always holds to her
artistic vision – is never self-regarding. Potter makes
her films with an audience – her final collaborators –
always in mind. This sensibility is captured perfectly by
Tilda Swinton’s asides to the camera in Orlando – often
discussed as groundbreaking – which are comic as well
as apposite. Her director knew about that “complicity”
so important between performer and audience,
which says: “you the audience and I the performer,
we understand each other in relation to what we’re
looking at.” It’s part of the way in which Potter’s ideas
are always felt as well as thought. Her passionate
commitment to her themes means she takes them,
her work and that of her associates, very seriously.
Her storytelling, however, does not lack humour or
warmth. That blend is also at the heart of Potter’s
philosophy and practice.
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In this way, through her own experience and
understanding and her desire for artistic exchange, she
has gathered other talented artists of the film medium
around her. Talking about Hors d’oeuvres (1971),
an early film experiment, Potter vividly describes
working with 8mm and 16mm cameras, ground
glass screen and editing at a kitchen table. Training
at art school for a year gave her an opportunity to
explore draughtsmanship in more depth. Potter’s own
experience and commitment to filmic experimentation
no doubt attracts strong individuals such as Aleksei
Rodionov, Robby Möller (cinematography) and
Hervé Schneid (editing) as part of her cinematic
‘troupe’. Dancing and choreographing taught Potter
how to perform, collaborate and to manage others’
performance.
This big screen retrospective is a welcome, and for
some of the films, rare, treat, which will also enhance
the experience of the intense musicality in her films,
an element which pervades Potter’s imagination
both visually and aurally. As a musician and composer,
her films are threaded with affecting original and
personally-chosen pieces, songs and melodies. It’s
no surprise that Roger Ebert, the great American
film critic, walked out of seeing The Tango Lesson and
immediately bought the soundtrack. The power of
music in Potter is not just to gloss a story or character,
but to be at the rhythmic heart of a film. It’s in the
forms of jazz accompanying Ginger’s painful arrival
at political and personal awareness, as she searches
for her own poetic rhythms in Potter’s latest feature
Ginger and Rosa (2012); it’s in Suzie’s homeland lullaby
she carries with her from Russia as she searches for
her father in The Man who Cried (2000); it’s in the literal
poetry – the beat of iambic pentameters – which is
the language of the post-9/11 lovers of Yes (2004).
As Guiliana Bruno writes of this ‘textural weave’, this
film could only be in verse since it allows the saying of
“what could not otherwise be said, the naming of what
could not otherwise even have a name.” In ‘naming’
or expressing these kinds of emotions, Potter’s music
– her own compositions and deep involvement in
soundtrack draw us further into our empathy for the
lives of others: these are stories to truly suggest that
(as Jimmy Somerville’s angel sings so memorably) “we
are joined, we are one, with the human face.”
The Tango Lesson
This also translates into a sensitive engagement
with those in front of the camera too, which Potter
examines in her newly-published exploration of
performance relationships, Naked Cinema. In Rage
(2009) she was able to attract established stars such
as Judi Dench, Jude Law and Steve Buscemi to a
potentially risky exercise in ‘blank page’ filmmaking.
These intense Warholian screen tests may, at first,
seem a particularly simple idea. Their bold, head and
shoulder-shot interviews against a simple colour
backdrop were designed to fit its release onto mobile
phones. However, they tell a subtly complex tale about
the fashion industry which repays repeated viewing. It
affirms Potter’s commitment to continuing to explore
the possibilities of film and to using the innovations of
digital, which can provide grand or tiny alterations to
the canvas.
Potter is a renaissance person worthy of the favour
of the true queen of England (be that Elizabeth Regina
or Quentin Crisp).Vitally, she has demonstrated
it is possible to sustain a film-making career by
remaining largely independent and committed to
her own authorship and artistic ideas. This is not
without experiencing struggle, isolation and hardship.
Even as there is technical brilliance on show and
intellectual thought to engage with, neither of these
will overshadow meeting with those characters for
the time spent in the cinema: Mimi, Ruby, Orlando,
Pablo, Suzie, Him, Her, Minx, Ginger, Sally. The Tango
Lesson laid bare the challenges of being an independent
director whose everyday victory is to ignore the
constraints, keep believing, and, as ‘Sally’ tells Verón,
keep ‘doing it anyway.’ The film is engagingly selfreflexive in this way, but it is the honesty of Potter’s
own emotional performance that strikes home.
Perhaps, then, when we have worked through
the labels – British, female, feminist, avant-garde,
experimental, melodramatic; or the curriculum vitae
– dancer, actor, musician, composer, writer and poet
– we can end best by simply praising her ability as an
emotionally-powerful storyteller.
Rona Murray
Sources quoted or directly referred to in the above:
Bruno, Guiliana, 2008.Yes, it’s about time: A ‘virtual’ letter to Sally Potter.
Journal Of Visual Culture.Vol.7(1), pp.27-40
Fowler, Catherine, 2009. Sally Potter. USA: University of Illinois.
McKim, Kristi, 2006. “A state of loving detachment”: Sally Potter’s
Impassioned and Intellectual Cinema. www.sensesofcinema.com.
Macdonald, Scott, 1995. Interview with Sally Potter. Camera Obscura.
12: 2(35) pp.186-221.
Mayer, Sophie, 2009. The Cinema of Sally Potter. A Politics of Love.
London: Wallflower Press.
A number of the short films can be found on the DVD of The Gold
Diggers (British Film Institute).
For further information and a
detailed filmography on Sally Potter, go to:
www.sallypotter.com
www.sp-ark.com
(online archive of production materials
from Orlando)
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Early
short films BY
Sally
Potter
(adv. PG)
Film sources: bfi/Adventure Pictures
.................................
.................................
BIFF PEOPLE
Jerk
UK 1969 2mins b/w silent digital
Mike Dunford, Sally Potter
.................................
Shot on 8mm film, Jerk uses single frame photography
to thrust the faces of Potter and regular collaborator
Mike Dunford together via alternate frames.
Play
UK 1970 5mins b/w and colour
.................................
A two screen film that looks down on three sets of
twins as they play on the street.
Hors d’oeuvres
UK 1971 10mins
.................................
In a 1998 interview Sally outlined the questions she
implicitly considered with these early films: ‘what is
film space and film time? What is the frame?’ The next
frame, the next film and that which is external to the
frame all form part of the larger meal to which hors
d’oeuvres, or to translate ‘starters’, contributes.
Thriller
UK 1979 32mins b/w
Colette Laffont, Rose English, Tony Gacon,
Vincent Meehan
.................................
Since its release in 1980, Sally Potter’s rewriting of
Puccini’s opera, La Bohème, has become a classic in
feminist film theory.
The London Story
Dir. Sally Potter UK 1986 15mins
George Antoni Lol Coxhill
.................................
The London Story
This lively, accessible spy spoof revolves around the
unlikely alliance of three eccentric characters and their
mission to uncover government foreign policy duplicity.
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9 floors of FREE exhibitions and interactive galleries
3 cinemas including Yorkshire’s biggest IMAX
Plan your visit at:
www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
Bradford BD1 1NQ
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THE GOLD DIGGERS
The Tango Lesson
The Man Who Cried
(PG)
(12A)
Dir. Sally Potter UK/France/Argentina/Germany/
Netherlands 1997 102mins some subtitles 35mm
Sally Potter, Pablo Veron, Gustavo Naveira
Dir. Sally Potter UK/France 2000 100mins 35mm
Christina Ricci, Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, Johnny
Depp, Harry Dean Stanton
Film source: Universal
Following the widespread acclaim for Orlando, Sally
Potter was offered work to direct adverts, music
videos and to film other people’s scripts. The Tango
Lesson was a reaction to all this. In it Potter herself
plays, in a performance with an affecting absence of
polish, a film director who is invited to Hollywood
for a series of frustrating and baffling meetings about
her latest script, which the studio is attempting to
mould into something far removed from her vision.
Taking a break in Paris, Sally sees an Argentine dancer
performing tango, and makes him a deal: he will
teach her how to dance the tango, and she will make
him a star in her film. Potter herself worked as a
choreographer and dancer in the 1970s and The Tango
Lesson, as well as being full of fancy footwork and
lustrous cinematography by the great Robby Müller,
shows us how creativity and passion can be reignited.
TV
A star-studded cast graces this epic story of a Jewish
family’s fight for survival in the 1920s and 1930s. A
young refugee, Suzie (Ricci), heads for America with
Lola (Blanchett), a dancer, to escape persecution in
her Russian homeland. She ends up in England, but
en-route she has fallen in love with a gypsy, Cesar. A
decade later, as war clouds loom over Europe, both
women have moved to Paris but as the Nazis begin
rounding up Jews and other ‘undesirables’, Suzie makes
plans to flee once more.
(U)
Dir. Sally Potter UK 1983 85mins b/w digital
Julie Christie, Kassandra Colson, Siobhan Davies
Film source: bfi
.................................
Sally Potter’s first feature is a very unusual adventure
story. Celeste operates a computer at a City bank,
curious about the significance of the numbers she
investigates. She meets Ruby, a star performer in a
ballroom. Made with an all-woman crew, featuring
stunning photography by Babette Magolte and a
score by Lindsay Cooper, it embraces a radical and
experimental narrative structure.
“Launching a career bent on both lavish experiment
and pleasing an audience, The Gold Diggers failed to
perform the way that Potter’s subsequent Orlando did,
but this isn’t to say that its own alchemical pleasures
aren’t fully available today… It’s not enough to say that
this first Potter feature, which wears its avant-garde
credentials (that is to say, Potter’s own background, in
music, dance, and film) unabashedly, skirts pretension.
More precisely, it glories in pretentiousness, which
in this case basically means a free and highly creative
assertiveness about ideas as well as appearances”
Jonathan Rosenbaum
ORLANDO
(PG)
Dir. Sally Potter UK/Russia/Italy/France/Netherlands
1992 93mins HDCam
Tilda Swinton, Billy Zane, Lothaire Bluteau, Quentin
Crisp
.................................
This thoroughly modern reimagining of Virginia Woolf’s
novel is the film for which Sally Potter became best
known, and neatly straddled the orbits of experimental
and mainstream cinema. It’s a playful, witty and
extremely beautiful treat. Outstanding among a terrific
cast is a compelling performance from Tilda Swinton as
the immortal Orlando, a youth in the court of Queen
Elizabeth I. The Queen, played by Quentin Crisp, is
fond of Orlando and offers him an estate on condition
that he “Do not fade… Do not grow old”. Beginning a
quest for love across the centuries, Orlando appears
and reappears over 400 years of history. Planned by
Potter and Swinton over eight years, Orlando finally
debuted to instant success at the Venice Film Festival
in 1992, and was nominated for two Oscars. It’s
now a cult film, much loved for Swinton and Potter’s
accessible, breezy style. TV
................................. .................................
“Potter drenches her movies in bold, romantic
music, and in wildly involved visuals. Her camera
(here choreographed by the great European veteran
Sacha Vierny) does not observe, but joins. She loves
rich images, unexpected whirls, camera movements
that join unexpected elements. The music this time
is mostly opera, evoking grand emotions that the
action mirrors. The Man Who Cried is like an arthouse
companion to Moulin Rouge.” Roger Ebert
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The Anatomy of a Film:
Professional Filmmaking practice and
process
.................................
Monday 31 March, 13.00, Horton Building,
University of Bradford approx 210 mins
.................................
Yes
(15)
Dir. Sally Potter UK/USA 2004 100mins 35mm
Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian, Sam Neill, Shirley
Henderson
Thursday 3 April, 17.55, Cubby Broccoli
.................................
A romantic drama, modest in scale but nevertheless
ambitious and packed with ideas and exhilaratingly
playful. The dialogue in Yes, which for the most part,
rhymes, is entirely written in rhythmic verse and
is performed brilliantly by the actors, especially
French-Armenian Simon Abkarian. Joan Allen plays
an American woman (there are no names for the
principal characters) whose marriage to her comically
pompous and emotionally distant Ambassador husband
(Sam Neill) is failing. She falls in love with a Lebanese
surgeon (Abkarian) who is now working as a cook.
They embark on a secret affair amid the effects on the
cook of racist prejudices following 9/11. A recurring
theme in Sally Potter’s films is of showing and revealing
the voices of characters who are often hidden in
media representations.Yes was rightly praised as a sadly
too-rare example of a western film with rounded,
sympathetic portrayal of a middle eastern character. TV
Rage
(15)
Dir. Sally Potter UK/USA 2009 98mins format Digital
Riz Ahmed, Steve Buscemi, Lily Cole, Judi Dench
Film source: Adventure Pictures
.................................
Returning, after Yes, to a more formally experimental
style, in Rage is a series of conversations with an
unseen and unheard teenage interviewer following a
murder at a New York fashion show, all of which were
filmed in front of backdrops of bold colours. This is an
ensemble film in which the actors are never actually
assembled. Pick of the many great performances for
sheer gusto are Dame Judi Dench as a withering
fashion critic, Jude Law as preening model Minx, and
Lily Cole as wide-eyed wannabe Lettuce Leaf. A wry
and occasionally cartoon-like view on a self-loathing
fashion industry, Rage can be enjoyed as a series of
intriguing one-off performances from a fascinating and
sometimes self-parodying cast as well as for its slender
story. Rage was the first film to be launched on mobile
phones simultaneously with cinemas. TV
The Rage Portraits, a series of digital
photographs taken by Sally Potter on the
set of the film, is on display at the National
Media Museum throughout the festival.
Ginger & Rosa
(12A)
Dir. Sally Potter UK/Denmark/Canada/Croatia 2012
90mins Digital
Elle Fanning, Christina Hendricks, Annette Bening,
Timothy Spall
Saturday 5 April, 18.35, IMAX
.................................
Whether pushing the envelope with experimental
form or, as she did with Ginger & Rosa, working in a
realist, mainstream style, Sally Potter has explored
gender and politics across almost her entire body
of work. Ginger and Rosa are inseparable friends in
London, 1962, and Ginger, encouraged by her slightly
too-cool sailboat-dwelling activist dad Roland, is
becoming more anxiously and angrily aware of the
looming Cold War. Rosa meanwhile is a few years
older, and with her increasingly friendly rapport with
Roland, represents another challenge for Ginger, played
magnificently by Elle Fanning. TV
This session, for students in further or higher eduction,
provides access-all-areas to Sally Potter’s film Ginger
& Rosa, made possible through archiving the entire
production process. This includes filmed interviews
with every single person involved, from runners
through to the director herself, and contributions
from high-profile practitioners such as the Director of
Photography Robbie Ryan (Philomena,The Angels’ Share)
and editor Anders Refn (long-time collaborator of Lars
von Trier). Details of financing, publicity, distribution,
production paperwork, communications and still
photographs were also gathered during this process.
Participants will be able to see and work with this
fascinating archive of behind-the-scenes materials
first-hand, which form part of Potter’s own online
archive www.sp-ark.org and which offer neverbefore-seen insights into the UK film industry. This
unique opportunity is for anyone interested in finding
out more about any aspect of filmmaking including
camera, sound, costume, make-up, art, special effects,
editing, production design, management, marketing and
distribution.
To book places please email
[email protected]
Ginger & Rosa, free for attendees
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UNCHARTED STATES OF
AMERICA: JAMES BENNING TRIBUTE
Bradford International Film Festival has
been proudly showcasing the work of
American visual artist James Benning
(b. Wisconsin, 1942) since 2007. His films
have been a frequent element of our
Uncharted States of America programmes,
as have several films by his students at
CalArts in California. This year we salute his
lifetime of remarkable achievement with a
special Uncharted States ‘sidebar’ entirely
dedicated to his work and influence. Here
are five of his most ardent admirers to
explain what makes this director such a
unique voice in current world cinema.
James Benning will attend BIFF 1 - 5 April
The film artist James Benning is little known in
mainstream film culture but hugely important to
the small but discerning group of curators, critics,
professors, and fellow artists who continually support
him all over the world. His work has been exhibited at
major galleries, art events, and film and media festivals
from the Jeu du Paume in Paris to the Museum of
Modern Art in New York.
His career started in the sixties, after he left his
mathematics studies to pursue filmmaking, and he has
directed nearly 50 films in a career that now spans
over four decades. Most of his work has been in 16mm,
though lately he has abandoned film for digital, citing
rising prices and a general lack of quality control in the
area of 16mm film laboratory processes and projection
as the main factor in this decision. Discovering digital
in 2007 with his film Ruhr, he has already made
over twenty works using the new medium. He is
also engaged in art projects that have performative,
photographic, architectural, and fine art components.
Added to his fierce productivity, he is a full-time
professor of cinema at the California Institute of the
Arts (CalArts). On his 70th birthday, James wrote on
his Facebook page: “I may look old, but I don’t feel old.”
James lives by himself. He has a house in the Sierra
Nevada mountains north of Los Angeles where he built
two cabins himself, initially as a distraction, eventually
as part of a more thought-out project. When I asked
him if he had any experience as an architect, he told
me that he didn’t. I asked then how he managed to do
this. He said, “Well you just buy some wood and you
start cutting it.”
Gabe Klinger (USA. Writer/director of Double Play:
James Benning, Richard Linklater, BIFF 2014)
It all started with my head in the clouds. Ten Skies
was the first film from James Benning that I saw. Ten
skies, ten + ten minutes plus some little seconds = ten
film reels from the days when film came in metres;
meaning that time was a measurement of space. The
dark cinema space. The concentration capsule. I liked
the simplicity of that. And I liked the skies. There we
western skies, and science fiction skies, and political
paranoia thriller skies.You should have witnessed what
was going on in my head. It was like the surrealist’s
automatic writing. My mind was working overtime.
Exploding. I could feel every impulse racing from my
eye to my brain cells and back.
One-minute shots in One way boogie woogie, two-anda-half minutes in the California Trilogy, ten minutes in
13 Lakes and Ten Skies... For many years every article
about James Benning was full of numbers, as if his films
were only ruled by elementary arithmetic. The fact of
the director having earned a degree in mathematics
was usually quoted as an additional proof, but, as
he explained to Reinhard Wulf in the documentary
*Circling the image, “that isn’t where the math comes
in”. The connection is that both maths and cinema
need some kind of abstract thinking in order to find
an “elegant solution” to a problem. An elegant solution
that is generally “the simplest”, “the most creative.”
And after a while they became just skies. But what
does that mean? ‘Just skies’?! That means the world
and everything. I am still thinking about it. And then I
became sky. Maybe it’s a bit silly to talk about the skies,
when talking about Benning. I could take about the
endless glance of Gena Rowlands in his digitized and
slowed down remake of John Cassavetes Faces. And
about how some 1982 Chevrolet C10 pickup from
small roads multiplied by a freight train on Tennessee
River Bridge in RR plus a sunset on Stemple Pass create
an awareness of space and landscape, of transportation
and progress that is often overlooked in cinema,
because most of the time we simply forget to see.
To be. To be moved.
Numbers were never important, neither before,
when he filmed in 16mm, nor now he is working in
digital and can extend a shot for hours. Five years
ago I asked Benning about Ruhr, his first feature film
in video. His answer was very expressive: “It’s about
the first derivative of the function, f(t), that is, it looks
closely for change over time”. I think it is the most
thorough definition of his artistic intentions: Benning is
interested in the subtle, essential transformations that
are revealed to us when we sit to look and listen.
It is easy to talk about Benning’s work in big
constructivist and conceptual terms. Those are the
mathematics of criticism. They exploit his minimalism
and lose something on the way. Because in the end
it comes all down to maximizing your eye. Just see.
There’s great fulfilment in that. We should do it more
often. It brings you down to earth. The same earth we
should watch more closely, take better care off. There’s
a big social and political commitment in that. And a lot
of beauty and joy.
Dana Linssen (Netherlands. Journalist, BIFF 2014
juror)
And here it becomes the idea of derivative, a tool of
calculus that measures the rate at which a quantity
changes with respect to another quantity. The
derivatives study how an infinitesimal variation of a
variable modifies the result of the final function. So,
the cinema of James Benning is not about arithmetic,
but mathematical analysis: for him “place is always a
function of time” and his images are the most beautiful
way to show the derivative of landscape with respect
to time.
Martin Pawley (Spain. Producer of Costa da Morte,
BIFF 2014)
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‘Looking and Listening’ was the first class I signed up
for at CalArts. Every Thursday we would pile into a
van and drive to some mysterious and overlooked
part of Southern California. We would get out –
and look, and listen. It was my introduction to the
world of James Benning. A world where oilfields
and mountains are classrooms, building cabins is
conceptual art, and films are radical and beautiful.
Some of my greatest pleasures are walking, driving on
small roads and watching trains. One of my dreams
is to build a cabin in the woods. So it is no surprise
that I loved James immediately and continue to do so
ten years later. James is the first person I met whose
life and work appeared seamless. Teaching, art-making
and casual conversation were all connected – each
activity deepening, and connecting to, the next. James
introduced me to the place where art is not about
something, it is a way to more deeply connect with
that thing.
James visited a friend of mine in West Texas last year.
My friend said they were sitting with a small group of
people in his backyard by the railroad tracks. It was
dusk and everyone was talking and drinking beer when
a train whistle blew in the distance. James suggested
everyone quiet down and observe the train going by.
The hushed group turned to watch the train approach,
roar by, and slowly disappear into the desert. After
several moments of silence everyone burst into
laughter and applause. James has created a unique path,
I’ll have to make my own but it’s nice to have such a
solid reference.
David Fenster (USA. Writer/director of Lineaus
Lorette, BIFF 2013; Pincus and The Livelong Day, BIFF
2012)
Ten Skies
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James Benning stared into the eye of a dying cow –
watched life slip from that bovine eye – on the side
of a Midwest road – maybe it was the Midwest, could
be in the jungle, could be in the desert – strangely,
the landscape is unimportant to what I found most
striking about this story. It was the steady gaze – from
eye to eye – this quiet, patient gaze – that I found so
hauntingly profound. This is the very first story James
told me – before introducing Himself – before saying
hello – before I knew it was James Benning talking to
me.
Amy Seimetz (USA. Writer/director of Sun Don’t
Shine, star of Shane Carruth’s Upstream Colour)
BNSF
(adv. U)
World THEATRICAL Premiere
Dir. James Benning USA 2013 193mins Digital
Documentary
Film source: James Benning
.................................
Supported by
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A new landmark in 21st-century digital
cinema, railway epic BNSF is a three-hour
invitation to observe and contemplate.
Embassy of the United States of America
13 Lakes
Previously only shown in installation form, Benning’s
colossal work BNSF is now presented in a cinema for
the first time anywhere in the world. The director’s
longest stand-alone production to date, it’s a grand
follow-up to RR, the 115-minute railroad study (shown
at BIFF in 2008) which was among the very last
films Benning shot on 16mm. Switching to digital has
enabled Benning to assemble longer takes than ever
before, and he now takes the one-shot concept into
new territory as his fixed camera captures more than
three hours of activity on a single stretch of rural
track. The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway
(officially now just ‘BNSF’) was formed in 1996 by the
merger of the Burlington Northern Railroad and the
venerable Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway - the
latter having been immortalised in Oscar-winning song
via Judy Garland in the 1946 musical The Harvey Girls.
The BNSF Railway is now North America’s secondlargest rail-freight network and their hardware takes
a starring role in this epic contemplation of light
and dark in the American desert. “I like trains a lot,”
Benning told Cinema Scope magazine. “When I was a
kid I had a little model train, an American Flyer. I’d get
another piece every Christmas because I never could
really afford it, so…it grew over time, but it became a
really nice set.” NY
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DOUBLE BILL:
UTAH ON 16mm
Twenty
Cigarettes
(adv. 12A)
Dir. James Benning USA 2011 99mins Digital
Documentary
Film source: James Benning
.................................
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Taking a break from the landscape contemplations
which have become his trademark, Benning delivered
one of his most accessible works to date with this
tobacco-centric jeu d’esprit, in which shot-length is
determined by how long it takes each of his twenty
subjects to smoke a single cigarette. Eagle-eyed fans
of avant-garde cinema will spot Sharon Lockhart
(Double Tide) and Benning’s CalArts colleague Thom
Andersen (Los Angeles Plays Itself) among those puffing
away in fixed Warholian solo-closeup, the pair reacting
in strikingly different ways to the camera’s presence.
As Benning told the New York Times, “I wanted to do a
portrait film with extended takes. Smoking came into
it later, as the ploy to get people to stand still and not
be totally conscious of being filmed, although a big part
of Twenty Cigarettes is that very self-consciousness of a
person in front of a camera and how that changes over
time.” NY
Deseret
(adv. PG)
(adv. U)
Dir. James Benning USA 1995 82mins 16mm
Documentary
Print source: Austrian Filmmuseum
.................................
Arguably the boldest and most visually stunning of
Benning’s films, Deseret is a masterpiece of focused
economy and intellectual ambition. It chronicles the
history of what’s now the state of Utah, dating back
to 1850 when it was simply a ‘territory’ and was also
known to its Mormon inhabitants as ‘Deseret,’ (their
word for the industrious honeybee.) But this is history
as presented through a very specific filter, namely
the pages of the New York Times newspaper - far, far
away on the other side of this gigantic land. Benning
thus is able to track the development of American
journalism’s language and syntax over the course of
nearly a century and a half, as the length of each shot
– some of them very short – is determined by how
long it takes narrator Fred Gardner to speak each
sentence of news-copy. As veteran US critic Jonathan
Rosenbaum puts it, the results are “haunting, beautiful,
and awesome.” NY
From the collection of the Austrian Film Museum /
Frame enlargement G. Wasner
+ casting a glance
(adv. U)
Dir. James Benning USA 2007 80mins 16mm
Documentary
Film source: James Benning in collaboration with the
Austrian Filmmuseum, Vienna
.................................
The last 16mm film Benning made before his digital
switch, casting a glance is a sublime culmination of a
three-decade infatuation with celluloid. The habitually
footloose director here restricts himself to just one
location: the Spiral Jetty, Robert Smithson’s 1,500ftlong piece of ‘land art’ whose basalt boulders reach
coilingly out into a corner of Utah’s Great Salt Lake.
Benning precisely maps the history of the Jetty from its
completion in 1970, his ingenious methods allowing us
to observe how it fluctuated in and out of view due to
changing water-levels. A quiet, ruminative spellbinder
which conceals much beneath its placid surfaces,
casting a glance is a playful and elegant tribute from one
American giant to another. As Smithson (1938-1973)
himself wrote, “Not everybody sees the art the same
way, only an artist viewing art knows the ecstasy or
dread, and this viewing takes place in time. A great
artist can make art by simply casting a glance.” NY
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James Benning-
Carte Blanche selections
BLOW JOB
Dir. Andy Warhol USA 1963 35mins 16mm
+ SleeP
Dir. Andy Warhol USA 1963 42mins 16mm
Film source: Museum of Modern Art
.................................
.................................
(adv. PG)
“All of us still working with duration today,” James
Benning wrote in 2008, “[are] indebted to Warhol.
Thank you, Andy.” Given free programming rein to
present any film(s) of his choosing at BIFF, Benning
requested these two underground classics – Blow Job
famously shows only the presumed recipient’s face,
Sleep is more directly self-explanatory – by the most
influential and commercially successful artist of his
generation. Benning first heard of Warhol “around
1964, when I was studying mathematics. Before that
time it never occurred to me that being an artist
could be a profession. I grew up in a working-class
family, which owned no art and few books. My
main interest then was Number Theory, a field in
mathematics driven only by intellectual curiosity
with little connection to the realities of science: for
example, there is no practical value to the prime
numbers. So when Warhol presented the art world
with Brillo boxes, they spoke directly to me, and the
early criticism that cried ‘cultural terrorism’ brought
me even greater appreciation. It was like being able to
square the circle...” NY
James Benning’s
CalArts Harvest
(adv. 18)
Various directors USA approx 90mins
.................................
A truly special programme, curated for BIFF by Benning
himself, in which he assembles some of the best work
produced by his students at CalArts over the last
few years. The California Institute of the Arts, to give
the private university its full name, was founded by
Walt Disney in the early 1960s as an interdisciplinary
environment designed to develop careers in the
creative industries. In 1987, Benning was invited to
teach for one year at the campus in Valencia, north of
Los Angeles – and has remained on staff ever since. His
idiosyncratic syllabus includes the legendary “Looking
and Listening” sessions in which students are taken
to outdoor locations and given the opportunity to
immerse themselves in the landscape’s details. Benning
also runs a more conventional workshop-type class in
which participants present their works in progress for
group critique, and it’s from the latter that this ‘Harvest’
will probably be drawn. The exact nature of what’s going
to be on view must, however, remain a mystery to all
– including BIFF’s organisers – until Benning arrives in
Bradford with the materials in his luggage. NY
James Benning
on Campus
When we asked James Benning what he would be
doing during this special appearance - a masterclass,
a lecture, a discussion of his work at CalArts, a
reminiscence - his response was simultaneously to-thepoint and enigmatic: “all I can say is that I will be there
and do something interesting”. It seems reasonably
safe to predict that Benning will discuss aspects of
his career and approach, and that the results will be
stimulating and illuminating for film-students and filmlovers alike.
Wednesday 2 April,
15.00 Horton Building D3.01,
University of Bradford
Approx 90 mins, free
To book places
please email: filmeducation@
nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
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BIFF
CLOSE-UPS
CONTENTS
Our Close-ups give you the opportunity to go behind the scenes for
a more in-depth look at some fascinating subjects.
Considered one of the pioneers of Japanese film noir, Yoshitarö
Nomura (1919 – 2005) is renowned in Japan for a string of highly
successful thrillers and crime films adapted from the writings of
Japan’s most popular and highest paid writer of the time, Seichö
Matsumoto. We’re thrilled to be hosting the first ever retrospective
of Nomura’s work in the UK. Elsewhere, we take a look back at the
first ever BIFF with its Director Bill Lawrence, continue our strand
of late night frights in Bradford After Dark and we get really, really,
really close-up, with a selection of science films made by The Charles
Urban Trading Company. As part of our Charles Urban strand,
retro electronic group Metamono will give the first live performance
of an original composition alongside specially selected silent films
performed on exclusively recycled and handmade equipment.
The Crime Films of Yoshitaro Nomura
20th Edition Programme
Michael Pattison: Step outside, go for a walk
Bradford After Dark
Charles Urban
Bradford UNESCO City of Film events
SUFF’s Up! Sydney Underground shorts
All Aboard! Cinetrain Russian Winter
p.86
p.92
p.96
p.100
p.104
p.112
p.114
p.117
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THE CRIME FILMS OF
YOSHITARO
NOMURA
A long-distance train journey, like a trip
to the cinema, is full of promised treats.
Trains and cinemas relieve us happily from
responsibility while stories, characters,
history and images slip by. In repose, we’re
shown things. The train journeys in these
crime films directed by Yoshitaro Nomura
(1919-2005), and adapted from stories by
the writer Seicho Matsumoto (1909-1992),
are always to and from remote parts of
Japan, the travellers in search either of
people, or of information. And so these
journeys also signify promise. They say
“we’re going to travel to rural Japan in
the 50s, 60s or 70s”, or “someone has
been wronged, we’re going to investigate
a crime”. For the investigating viewer,
they may remind you of other favourite
crime journeys, with Hitchcock, or of other
Japanese movies from the mid-century
(Ozu loved trains too). These films were
never the fashionable kind to be promoted
at overseas festivals, and distributed to
overseas art cinemas, and so the chances
are they also promise something new.
Supported by
The son of important silent film director Hotei
Nomura,Yoshitaro Nomura practically grew up in
Shochiku’s Ofuna studio in Tokyo, his childhood spent
with the stars of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1951 he
began as a director, and for several years churned out
films in a range of genres that included comedy and
period swordfight, at a furious rate.
Nomura and Matsumoto’s first collaboration was
in 1958, the year in which the greatest number of
Japanese people went to the cinema; 1.2 billion tickets
were sold to a population of 90 million. After that,
decline, and in the 1960s and 1970s Japan’s studios
dallied with a series of luridly entertaining film cycles –
sci-fi, horror, gangster films, softcore sex - designed to
tempt people back to cinema. In the late 1950s the selftaught, late-blooming, left-leaning crime writer Seicho
Matsumoto was the most popular and the highest paid
in Japan. His prodigious output, which ran to hundreds
of stories and dozens of novels, chimed well with a
downbeat, psychologically modernist strain of post-war
Japanese literature. The crimes in these stories speak of
a compromised society, damaged, and mistrustful.
Matsumoto and Nomura collaborated eight times in
total, and the first five of these will be shown here,
their screenings almost unique outside of Japan. The
films combine a honed, old-school populist studio
craft with a nose for the anxieties of Japan’s post-war
decades. Those journeys by train to under-explored
regions reveal tensions between Japan’s city life
that was thrusting the nation back into the world
at breakneck speed, and an abandoned older Japan
often yearned for in popular culture. These regions,
like northern Tohoku in The Castle of Sand, or the
towns around Saga, Kyushu in Stakeout, were still very
beautiful, and Nomura’s films never offer them as
touristic backdrops, always as real places where real
people live.
The pleasures of these films is in travelling. To see them
is to put aside the map of Japanese film that we’ve been
using since the 1950s, and to go somewhere else. In
their particular blend of craft and commercial nous,
they show you things: a rich culture that’s also pensive,
crimes under duress, a vanishing, beautiful vista. TV
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Chiaki Omori from
Shochiku’s International
department will attend the
Nomura programme.
The Crime Films of Yoshitaro Nomura
will also be shown at the
Institute of Contemporary Arts
in London between 18 and 23 April.
Please see www.ica.org.uk
for details.
STAKEOUT
(HARIKOMI)
(adv. 12A)
Dir.Yoshitaro Nomura Japan 1958 116mins b/w
subtitles 16mm/Digital
Minoru Oki, Seiji Miyaguchi, Hideko Takamine
Film source: The Japan Foundation/Shochiku Company
.................................
Nomura poured his heart and soul into Stakeout, a
stylish mystery in which two Tokyo detectives come
to sympathise with those on whom they’re spying.
They travel to a small town on the southern island
of Kyushu to observe the suspected hideout of Ishii,
a lowlife murder suspect who they believe is being
protected by his lover Sadako, who is eking out a sad
life as the unloved wife of an arrogant businessman.
By 1958 Nomura had become established at Shochiku
as a versatile and highly efficient director. Stakeout
was, incredibly, his 25th film within six years. But this
was a special project for the 39 year old director,
who, understanding the step up in terms of talent and
resources available, recognised that it could be his
breakthrough film. And it was. It was the first of his
eight collaborations with the already popular writer
Seicho Matsumoto, who in the same year had three
series and two novels published. An emotive take
on the US noir template, somewhat reminiscent of
Hitchcock’s Rear Window, it boasts some thrillingly
modern, gliding cinematography by Seji Inoue, Stakeout
also established at least two patterns for the Nomura/
Matsumoto films: the train journey to an outlying
region, and a sympathetic interest in marginalised
characters. Fans of Japanese cinema may recognise
detective Shimo-oka, played by Seiji Miyaguchi, the
master swordsman Kyuzo from Kurosawa’s Seven
Samurai, and Hideko Takamine, the iconic star of Mikio
Naruse’s best films. TV
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Zero Focus
(Zero no shôten)
The Shadow Within
(Kage no kuruma)
The Castle of Sand
(Suna no utsuwa)
(adv. 12A)
(adv. 12A)
(adv. 12A)
Dir.Yoshitaro Nomura Japan 1961 95mins b/w subtitles
16mm/Digital
Yoshiko Kuga, Hizuru Takachiho, Ineko Arima
Dir.Yoshitaro Nomura Japan 1970 98mins subtitles
16mm/Digital
Shima Iwashita, Gô Katô, Mayumi Ogawa,Yûsuke Takita
35mm
Tetsurô Tanba, Gô Katô, Kensaku Morita, Chishû Ryû
Film source: Shochiku Company
Zero Focus has the most overtly film noir stylings of
all Nomura’s films – it’s all voiceover, revelations,
duplicitous characters, and has a general sense of
unease. It’s also the one most clearly indebted to
Alfred Hitchcock, with a dual-identity plot and elevated
showdowns reminiscent of both Vertigo and Rebecca,
plus a Bernard Hermann-like score. Teiko has only been
married to her ambitious salesman husband Kenichi for
a week before he leaves to tie up business in coastal
Kanazawa. He promptly disappears, and so Teiko treks
off to find him. She uncovers a murder plot against a
legacy of wartime prostitution, stigma and shame. A
great example of Japan’s noir boom, this is the first of
two film versions, the latter was released in Japan in
2009. TV
Adapted from a 1961 Matsumoto story that was
originally serialised in the upmarket (and feministleaning) Fujin Koren magazine, The Shadow Within
is a sometimes lurid psychological drama about an
emasculated husband,Yukio, and his affair with a
childhood friend Yasuko.Yasuko, a widow, has a young
son, and he becomes the focus of Yukio’s paranoia
as we tries and fails to play the substitute father to
him. The Shadow Within was made in 1970, just as
Japan was accelerating back onto the world stage
in a period of startling economy growth, and Yukio’s
Shinjuku workplace is filled with the signs of ambitious
confidence – all international style glass and steel.
Yet this go-getting world seems to be passing him by.
At work he’s a stressed, lowly figure in a cluttered
office. At home he’s often left alone - his wife Keiko
out working happily on her various businesses.Yukio’s
affair with a friendly girl from his hometown, and
his frequent flashbacks to that rustic life, seem like
expressions of nostalgic yearning for old Japan. A film
that, like The Demon, adds a dash of horror to often
unsettling effect: witness the gang of malevolent crows
that observe the film’s damning climax. TV
The Castle of Sand is the film for which Nomura will
forever be most associated. It’s a sprawling, twisty
police procedural that criss-crosses rural Japan and
uncovers a tragic story of anger and discrimination,
in search of the solution to a murder mystery. A pair
of detectives, one rookie, one senior, are investigating
the Tokyo rail yard murder of Miki, a much loved
policeman who was a pillar of his community. Their
single extremely slender clue has taken them to the
north part of Japan’s main island, though they are
soon forced to return to their baffled colleagues
in frustration to search for more clues. Based on
Matsumoto’s highly popular 1960 serialisation in the
national daily newspaper the Yomiuri Shimbun, the film
version had been a project in gestation for 14 years
at the studio Shochiku, who by 1974 were trying to
make films for the mass audience that cinema had by
then lost to TV. The Castle of Sand was an unexpectedly
huge hit in Japan. It remains a classic of the mainstream,
and ranks still as one of the greatest of all Japanese
films among Japanese critics. It combines a cool, careful
police investigation in the first half with a sweeping,
emotional payoff in the second. TV
................................. .................................
+ Introduction to Yoshitaro Nomura
by Alexander Jacoby
Approx 20 minutes
This talk will explore the consistency and variety of his
work, setting it in the context of his studio, Shochiku, his
collaboration with author Seicho Matsumoto, and the
contrasts between urban and rural Japan in the postwar
years. Alexander Jacoby’s A Critical Handbook of Japanese
Film Directors is published by Stone Bridge Press
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The Demon
(Kichiku) (adv.
15)
Digital
Ken Ogata, Miyuki Yoshizawa, Hiroki Iwase
Film source: Shochiku Company
Saturday 5 April, 14.20, Cubby Broccoli
.................................
Originally a 1957 short story, which in turn is based
on a real life incident, The Demon is the disturbingly
detached account of a pathetic father, Sôkichi, who’s
encouraged to commit awful crimes by his partner.
The film begins in a low-rent downtown Tokyo suburb
where Sokichi runs a declining printing business
with his unhappy wife. One sweltering summer’s
day, Sokichi’s mistress – hitherto unknown to the
wife - arrives from another part of the city with their
three children. At the end of her tether after Sôkichi’s
maintenance payments have stopped, she is resigned
to leave their children with him. This is perhaps one
of the most downbeat of all the films that Nomura
made from Seichô Matsumoto sources, and the earlier
scenes, which depict a deeply unhappy domestic
situation, are particularly tough. The film’s great asset
is a performance of real skill by Ken Ogata (also in The
Castle of Sand), who plays wretched Sôkichi, and lends
him, if not exactly sympathy, a tangible sense of hurt
and conflict. Ogata originally hesitated at accepting
this role but was persuaded to sign on by a friend. The
result was the Best Actor award from the Japanese
Academy, and a subsequent career playing powerful,
difficult characters, most notably the infamous writer
Yukio Mishima in Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four
Chapters. TV
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MASAHIRO KOBAYASHI
ON YOSHITARO NOMURA
Masahiro Kobayashi (b.1954) collaborated
with Yoshitaro Nomura as a scriptwriter
in the early 1980s. He is an established
director whose documentary-style dramas
Bashing (2005) and The Rebirth (2007) have
competed at Cannes and Locarno Film
Festivals, the latter winning Locarno’s
Golden Leopard. He lives and works in
Tokyo.
Tom Vincent: How did you meet Yoshitaro
Nomura?
Masahiro Kobayashi: : I met him when I was 27
at an awards ceremony where I was collecting a prize
for my scriptwriting. Nomura was one of the judges.
After the ceremony he asked me if I’d like to join Kiri
Productions – the company he formed with Seicho
Matsumoto following the success of The Castle of Sand
– as a junior scriptwriter. I said “yes”. That was in 1981.
TV: You have said that during the time that you
worked together, Nomura told you about a particular
kind of “Japanese realism”. Can you explain a bit more
about this?
The Demon
MK: Early Japanese cinema was heavily influenced
by classical Kabuki theatre, which is highly stylized
with elaborate costumes, exaggerated gestures and
men playing the female roles. Nomura, like many of
his generation who had fought overseas, became very
interested in Western culture, and was especially
influenced by the European and American films which
started to be shown in Japan after the war. The fashion
for realism in Japanese cinema of the 1940s owed
much to Italian neorealist and French New Wave
films, particularly the work of directors like Roberto
Rossellini and André Cayatte. The films Akira Kurosawa
made in the 1940s were also a big influence, as were
those by a lesser-known filmmaker whom Nomura
helped, Tai Kato, who made gangster films.
TV: The old days of the studio system operated in
a similar way to many kinds of trade in Japan, where
an apprentice would train under the supervision
of an acknowledged master, and I think that’s how
Nomura himself started out – he practically grew up in
Shochiku’s Ofuna studio. Was that system still there in
the early 80s when you knew Nomura?
The Castle of Sand
MK: I don’t think our relationship went as far as
master and apprentice. When I joined Kiri that tradition
of master and apprentice had gone from the studio
system. I think he saw me as a young writer who could
write decent scripts. Around that time Nomura was in
contact with a few young writers like myself.
TV: How was Nomura seen within the Japanese film
industry? He spent his entire career working for one
studio…
MK: Nomura was very much a representative director
of Shochiku studio. His father Hotei was also a director
for Shochiku, and a big figure in the silent era. Hotei
made a lot of very cheap, quickly made ‘programme
pictures’, or supporting features. Nomura’s early
work was just like his dad’s – he was making popular
entertainment films. But his capabilities were vast, and
after the release of Stakeout in 1958 Nomura started
to garner more respect and had more say. It helped
that he also brought Akira Kurosawa to Shochiku, and
worked as Assistant Director on Kurosawa’s The Idiot
(1951).
TV: How did Nomura’s career change after the
release of The Castle of Sand in 1974?
MK: It took a long time for The Castle of Sand to be
approved by Shochiku because it was such a big job.
When it was finally finished in 1974, people at the
studio didn’t think it was a big deal, and at one point it
seemed that the film was going to be buried, and given
only a very short run. But on release, it was a huge
hit. That was the moment when Nomura’s name was
made, and he was acknowledged as a master director.
Nomura suddenly had much more influence in a
very profit-driven environment. In 1977, he produced
another blockbuster, Mount Hakkoda, and this increased
his standing still further.Yet Nomura’s big successes as
director almost always came from collaborations with
Matsumoto, and this became something of a hindrance
for his own creativity. I don’t think Shochiku would
have approved Nomura’s ideas without Matsumoto’s
involvement.
TV: Nomura wasn’t just a director, he also worked as
a producer…
MK: Yes, he was as much a producer as he was a
director, and very talented at it. His most successful
films, like Zero Focus,The Castle of Sand and Village of
Eight Gravestones (1977) were made from a producer’s
point of view. Nomura and Matsumoto created Kiri
Productions after the success of The Castle of Sand
because Matsumoto was really happy with his work.
TV: I read that Nomura’s favourite film was the French
New Wave director Agnes Varda’s Happiness, from 1965,
and that you and he talked about that film. Could you
tell me about that? What kinds of conversations did
you have about films?
MK: There was a slight gap between Nomura’s
inclinations as a filmmaker and the films that he
ended up making. By 1981, he could command a very
large budget for his films, with high-profile actors
and writers. As a result, he was expected to make big
profits for the studio, so naturally he pursued a mass
audience. But the films that Nomura really wanted to
make were much smaller, more personal films, in the
style of the much more free and experimental Japanese
production company, the Art Theatre Guild. He was
a great admirer of Varda’s Happiness, and I wonder
whether the way Nomura’s films observe and consider
their characters with composure and a certain irony
might come from this.
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20TH EDITION
PROGRAMME
Surprise Sneaky
Show
---FILM DETAILS TOP SECRET! --Saturday 29 March, 18.00 til late,
a Secret Bradford location!
.................................
We’ve teamed up with Sneaky Experience to invite you
to a one-off movie spectacular! The film and location
will be kept secret until the last minute - expect classic
scenes to be re-enacted, live entertainment, food
stalls and a licensed bar.You’ll see a great cult film
which screened at the first ever Bradford Film Festival
(as it was called then), in March 1995.Your sneaky
experience will start at the National Media Museum
at 6pm. Check facebook.com/sneakybradford
and @sneakyexp for clues.You may have seen the
film before: but never like this! All will be revealed on
29 March.
Tickets £10 – 15, group discounts available.
To book visit
www.sneakyexperience.eventbrite.co.uk
Virgin Media
BEST OF BIFF
Film details TBC (by you!)
.................................
Help us pick the best British film from 20 editions of
the Bradford International Film Festival.Vote for your
favourite from our list of 20 iconic British films shown
at BIFF since 1995, and be in with a chance of claiming
a pair of tickets to attend a special screening of the
winning film on the closing night of this year’s festival.
So here’s our Best of BIFF selection:
Amazing Grace
Atonement
Bend it like Beckham
Casino Royale
The Constant Gardener
Four Lions
The History Boys
In Bruges
The Look of Love
My Name is Joe
My Summer of Love
Nil By Mouth
Pierrepoint
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Richard III
Sexy Beast
Slumdog Millionaire
This Is England
Trainspotting
Twin Town
Cast your vote at
www.bradfordfilmfestival.org.uk
by 30 March. Good luck!
The Madness of
King George (PG)
Dir. Nicholas Hytner UK/US 1994 107mins 35mm
Nigel Hawthorne, Helen Mirren, Ian Holm,
Rupert Graves
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+ BRADFORD-HALIFAX-LEEDS
(ADV. U) IN COMPETITION
Dir. Francis Carson Lee UK 2013 9mins Digital
Shot in real time with one camera position and one
continual take, a family take the 10:22 train from
Bradford to London. Dad soon loses his rag and their
teenage daughter aches from embarrassment on just
another family outing.
Film Source: Francis Carson Lee
In celebration of our 20th edition, a revival
of the film that started it all for BIFF!
Bradford Film Festival, as it was then known, was born
on Friday 10 March 1995. The very first film in our
very first edition was The Madness of King George. We
like to think that we can pick a winner here at BIFF,
and so it proved. In 1995 The Madness of King George
was awarded an Oscar for Art Direction and three
BAFTAs including Best British Film, and Best Actor.
Helen Mirren received the Cannes Film Festival’s Best
Actress award. As these multiple prizes suggest, here
is a film in which all participants are at the very top of
their respective games. As we said in our brochure, 20
festivals ago: “an ebullient tragicomedy, a ribald romp
through the royal courtyards of Georgian England
that is swept along by Nigel Hawthorne’s irrepressible
performance as the eponymous George. The film is a
far cry from the staid costume drama often used to
portray British history, but it looks set to repeat the
success of Alan Bennett’s stage play.” We are immensely
proud to have launched BIFF 20 editions ago with this,
now considered one of the finest ever British films. TV
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REMEMBERING THE FIRST
BRADFORD FILM FESTIVAL
“I didn’t know what you couldn’t do.
I didn’t deliberately set out to invent
anything. It just seemed to me, why not?
And there is a great gift that ignorance has
to bring to anything.”
- Orson Welles on making Citizen Kane
Pressure had been building. Bradford had a museum for
film, it had two art house cinemas and yet Leeds had a
film festival. Why not Bradford? In 1993, the Museum
held a Widescreen Film Festival. In 1994 the Bradford
Playhouse & Film Theatre held an Italian Film Festival. It
was decided to combine that and the widescreen event
in 1995 as the inaugural Bradford Film Festival. The easy
bits came first. We announced the dates. Now there
was no going back. In six months we had a festival to
launch.
We needed money and sponsorship in kind. Logistics
company Media Freight were first in with support
for film transport, and we kept on going, contacting
people about films that we had read reports on, all by
phone or fax; no overseas travel in those days. Calls
to America about films: “Ah. Bradford? Is that North
London or South London?” Fortunately, London based
distributors were a lot more helpful and they came
through with many new previews of forthcoming
releases.
I always admired Edinburgh International Film Festival,
and loved their retrospectives. A local friendship
with Ukrainian immigrant Wally Demstchuk led to
building relations with the Film Museum in Kiev and
to the first great Bradford retrospective, the complete
works of Alexander Dovzhenko, to mark the 100th
anniversary of his birth. Other retrospectives included
the continuance of the Italian season, Mike Figgis,
Widescreen and a bit of Alan Bennett, whose diaries
would reminisce on our opening night:
“10 March. To Bradford for the provincial premiere of
the Madness of King George. The Lord Mayor is present,
and R. sees him afterwards in the gents, mayoral chain
around his neck, trying to have a pee. His badge of
office dangles just over his flies, so that he has to take
great care not to piss on it. Eventually he slings it back
over his shoulder rather like a games mistress and her
whistle.” - Alan Bennett, Writing Home
The programme was coming together nicely.
However, we had overlooked one major and essential
part of any film festival – money. Six weeks to go and
we had very little, but some crucial sponsorship in
kind. We had carried on in blissful ignorance or even
stupidity. There was a chance phone call with BT about
something unrelated and bizarrely, we suddenly had
£10,000 in the bank.
One of the unknowns of Film Festivals is transport
and 1995 set the marker. Mike Figgis got a train
from London, but was diverted to Sheffield by a
storm, and completed his journey to Bradford by
taxi. Mark Kermode drove through the same storm
from Southampton to interview him, completed the
interview, and then set off back that same evening.
However, the most bizarre was the arrival of the
complete 35mm archive of the works of Alexander
Dovzhenko in a Ford Transit van, complete with a
team of four people including the Director of the
Dovzhenko Film Museum, Tatiana Derevyanko, a very
pleasant elderly woman with bad arthritis in her hip
– no first class travel for museum directors in the
Ukraine!
That was just the start of the problems with the
Dovzhenko films. The projection team began to unload
the 35mm film cans to see what we had. Fantastic
rare prints in great condition, but no English subtitles.
With a quick bit of organising we were able to rig up a
microphone for one of the Ukrainian team to provide
a simultaneous translation relayed through the PA
system, in his broken English.
At the interval Sara Moss, a delightful student from
the University of Bradford Modern Languages course,
came up to me and said “you do realise your translator
is rubbish?”, but in a pleasant way. I introduced her to
the translator, they discussed the issues, and she agreed
to translate from Ukrainian for the audience. It turned
out that the next film was in Russian, not Ukrainian! So
it was translated twice, first from Russian to Ukrainian,
before Sara completed the translation into English!
Sara bravely volunteered to translate for the next two
weeks and another 12 films, a task of epic proportions.
The experience of the first Bradford Film Festival
was exhilarating, intimidating, traumatic and ultimately
rewarding meeting many special guests including
James Ellis, Gurinder Chadha and Alex Cox, and
customers who were as excited about film as we were.
It was certainly full of surprises: one member of the
Hungarian community, who came to a Dovzhenko
screening, turned out to be the son of Fritz Lang’s
dentist.
There was a great pleasure in bringing together many
parts of the Bradford communities, and there was the
occasional shock; a verbal fight breaking out during the
screening of The Battle for the Soviet Ukraine – revealing
wounds that had still not healed.
If I’d known what I was getting into I would never
have done it. But that foolish ignorance took me to a
platform that gave me many rewards and insights into
people and cinema that for me lasted until 2008. We
never thought in terms of reaching 20 editions. So it is
an extraordinary pleasure for me that we have reached
this mark. I wish Tom, Neil and the team that deliver
the festival the best of luck for another 20 editions and
hope they and audiences have as much fun as I did.
Bill Lawrence
Bill Lawrence was Head of Film at the National Media
Museum from 1991 until 2008. He established Bradford
Film Festival in 1995.
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STEP
OUTSIDE,
GO FOR
A WALK
"Mystics and metaphysicians used to
acknowledge that everything in life
revolved around exceptional moments.
In their view, life found expression and
was concentrated in them. These moments
were festivals: festivals of the mind or the
heart, public or intimate festivals".
- Henri Lefebvre, quoted in Patrick
Keiller’s essay Imaging, 2010
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I want to talk here about space.
One evening at the Viennale last year, I arrived upon
the Gartenbaukino – one of the festival’s five screening
venues – from such an angle that I could see the
cinema and St. Stephen’s Cathedral, located in Vienna’s
centre, from the same vantage point. Though the
religious building towered upward in the background,
it seemed to have been overtaken as Vienna’s primary
hub of activity – secondary to the picture house I was
about to enter.
In December last year I was on the International
Competition jury at the 10th edition of Curtocircuíto,
a festival of short films in Santiago de Compostela.
The capital of the autonomous region of Galicia
in northwest Spain, Santiago de Compostela is
historically a city of pilgrimage. Its cathedral, the
reputed burial place of St. James, is the final destination
of a major Catholic pilgrimage route that dates back
to the 9th Century.
Luis Buñuel shot his 1969 feature The Milky Way along
this route. The film culminates in Santiago’s cathedral.
Though predominantly Romanesque, the twin-spired
building also contains additional architecture in the
Baroque and Gothic styles. To view its exterior is,
therefore, to absorb several historical periods in the
same instant, in the same expression.
Such expressions are at once harmonious and
contradictory. They are harmonious because, though
a cathedral or a monument (or better yet, a town or
a city) might consist of multiple and often opposing
artistic sensibilities – each of which belongs to a
different historical period – an untrained eye (such
as mine) wouldn’t know it, and would subsequently
accept such sites as unproblematic. They are
contradictory because their component parts seldom
proceed from one another in a harmonious fashion.
History progresses in staggered leaps and stuttered
bounds. One historic period may very well reject the
prevailing currents of its predecessor just as much
as it may reform them. It will gilden them or it will
blacken them. It will romanticise or revise them. It will
preserve and restore them: when I was in Santiago
de Compostela, one of the cathedral’s towers was
entirely covered in scaffolding.
Film festivals are also expressions of contradiction – of
harmony and of diversity. As social events, they bring
people together: people of different genders, races,
ages, classes, beliefs and so on. In turn, they exhibit
films that respond to and articulate the contradictions
of their time.
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The greatest tension to negotiate for an international
film festival like Bradford, of course, is that between
the preservation of local identities and the aspiration
toward an international status. If there is something
truly inclusive about notions of the international, are
these contradicted by the more inward-looking values
of localism?
The obvious answer is no. Film festivals are also sites
of pilgrimage. For almost two decades, BIFF has hosted
guests and has welcomed attendees and visitors from
all over the world. Bradford is its name, International
is its status. (If we took that further, we might say that
Film is its focus, and Festival is its promise.)
Cultural exchanges are never one-way. A pilgrimage
site has in some way to be welcoming, accommodating.
The pilgrims who made it to Santiago de Compostela
in the 9th Century were granted shelter and what
was known as a ‘plenary indulgence’ (a sanctioned
remission of punishment).
Today, cinemas also provide shelter in some way,
and their darkness as well as their imposed silence
suggest a kind of religious practice, as patrons file in
to share the same space, to face the same direction
and look at a projected beam of light… Festivals take
this to an even more ritualised extreme. In 1955, the
influential French critic André Bazin wrote an essay,
The Festival Viewed as a Religious Order, arguing for such
comparisons at length.
These shifts – if they are shifts – find other means of
expression. My own local independent exhibitor, the
Tyneside Cinema, is situated at the intersection of
Pilgrim Street and High Friar Lane in Newcastle city
centre. The former street name refers to a reported
pilgrimage route that led to the friary of Greyfriars, a
Franciscan religious house that dated back to 1274,
but which was destroyed when Henry VIII dissolved
the monasteries in the 16th Century. No such friary
exists today, but the site remains one of pilgrimage: at
the time of writing, the cinema has just recorded the
busiest Saturday footfall in its 77-year history.
I don’t mean to overstate matters. One of the short
films I presided over on the Curtocircuíto jury was
Till Nowak’s The Brain Centrifuge Project, a fauxdocumentary in which scientists carry out elaborate
tests to make complicated theme park rides that defy
gravity. One such ride resembles a waltzer, suspended
in mid-air, rotating on its axis while carriages revolve
around one another, locked in their own orbits and
switching places as they head toward the centre and
out again.
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It got me thinking about film festivals in the same way:
how the festival itself might be at the centre, with
guests and attendees heading in and out of screenings
and intermingling with each other in between. Guests
and visitors of differing interests, needs, cultures. This
social element – the festival as meeting space – can
be difficult to achieve, but it is certainly true of BIFF,
whose central venue, the National Media Museum, is
just about big enough to fit a crowd in and just about
small enough to facilitate an introduction, a stop-andchat, a meet-and-greet and so on. The key word here
is ‘fluidity’.
There’s another way of conceptualising the imaginary
theme park ride. What if the carriages aren’t festival
attendees and festival guests, but festivals themselves?
The resulting image is one of saturation and activity, of
festivals busily interacting with one another in some
way, sharing a kind of constantly overlapping space
powered by some unseen, centrifugal force.
This space might be virtual or intellectual rather
than physical, but this is precisely my point. Film
festivals often compete with each other, but they must
also share the same cultural space. Space is always
contestable, but here the contest is one of ongoing
negotiation, reciprocal communication, and mutual
understanding. These tensions are sharpened by the
financial uncertainties and even hostilities increasingly
faced by the arts across Europe: festivals must stick
together – or else, divided, fall.
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are a social phenomenon. They take place in the real
world, of real people. One day during the Viennale last
year, I set time aside from the film programme to walk
around Vienna: to simply walk, beyond the outskirts
of the city centre, way past the Ferris wheel from The
Third Man (still in use!) to Kagran – a district seldom
visited by city-centre Viennese – and back again.
With few exceptions, for instance, the films
programmed by one festival will have been scouted at
a number of others. I left last year’s BIFF disappointed
to have missed at least one film others had raved about
(David Fenster’s Pincus, BIFF 2013), only to then catch
up with it at IndieLisboa, in Lisbon, days later. If it was
an entirely different geographical space, it was at least
the same cultural sphere.
At Locarno Film Festival later in the year, someone
painted a mental image to me. The festival, he said, was
an island, and a critic such as myself was arriving, staying
for however long, and then reporting back home
(or elsewhere) on the fruits I’d found during my stay.
And I wasn’t the only critic there, let alone the only
attendee. Among the latter, we include local residents,
international visitors, and of course programmers of
other festivals – or, to continue the metaphor, islanders
from other islands.
In this sense, film festivals challenge the arbitrary
boundaries by which we define space in the first
place. This is important when thinking of ways in
which we might challenge received notions of identity,
to say nothing of the rigid spatial implications of a
word like ‘culture’. Not to sound too utopian, but
an international festival such as BIFF can enable an
engagement with physical and perhaps even political
landscapes different from but somehow relatable to
our own.
It does this by participating in the virtual space of film
exhibition and the cultural space of the festival circuit.
Spatial engagement is inextricably bound to ideas of
travel. While at the Seville European Film Festival last
November, I attended many films in a multiplex cinema
located inside the Plaza de Armas, an entertainment
and retail complex that was originally built, in 1901,
as a railway station. This is another instance of the
contradictory and the harmonious finding expression
in the same instant: Seville’s railway station today is
nowhere visible from the Plaza de Armas site – though
the name is given to the city’s main bus interchange just
over the road.
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Again, it’s harmonious because to look at the building
you might not immediately know its history. And it’s a
fitting contradiction: somehow, despite the building’s
otherwise drab interior, it seems only fair that the
Plaza de Armas houses today a five-screen multiplex,
given the long history shared by railways and films.
This history has been well discussed – most recently,
perhaps, by previously BIFF-honoured filmmaker
Patrick Keiller, in an anthology of his essays that, by
coincidence, I began to read in Seville Airport. At any
rate, if actual travel is no longer possible from the site,
at least its virtual equivalent might be.
This notion of virtual travel – and of spatial engagement
– is of course particularly suited to the cinema space,
whose lighting conditions and heating systems are both
conducive to dreamlike states. It’s no coincidence that
we sometimes struggle to stay awake in the pictures.
Even when we’re not asleep – and we often are –
we sit there in the darkness immersed in the story
unfolding before us. And that story exists in a world
spatialised by editorial manipulation, by surround sound,
by 3D glasses.
Such truisms are often overstated. I don’t believe in
notions such as ‘the hypnotic potential of the image’
or ‘the passive viewer’. Rather, I think when we watch
a film today, these different worlds – the imagined and
the actual – are colliding in a constant and automatic
negotiation. We’re kind of used to it. But that doesn’t
mean that some kind of virtual transportation isn’t
happening. It just means that by now we might possibly
take it for granted. To reiterate an earlier point, festivals
Step outside, then, and go for a walk. Engage with
Bradford, investigate its space, enjoy its views – those
harmonious views! Appreciate the contradictions and
the anomalies, the eccentricities and the curiosities
that leap out, take your eye and draw you in.You
needn’t even go far. Cross the road – as I did between
films last year – and take in the National Media
Museum, a modern cathedral of cinematographic
rituals and other pastimes (there’s an ice rink out
back).
I say all this not only because the films at a film festival
are only part of the fun, but because I wonder if,
somewhere in the evolution of film festivals – all these
interrelating orbs, these busy centres of gravity, these
competing and complementary islands – somewhere
in the development of all that, the appeal of virtual
travel began to overtake our curiosity for the physical
space more immediately around us.
So walk. And enjoy it. But don’t go too far, for there
are films to see.
Michael Pattison
Michael Pattison is a
freelance film journalist
and programming consultant
from Gateshead.
Michael will attend this year’s
festival as a member
of the Shine Short Film
Competition jury
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BRADFORD
AFTER DARK
Our horror strand Bradford After Dark
returns with a selection of late-night
treats to satiate your desire for the
strange, the extreme and the fantastic.
This year’s programme demonstrates
the far-reaching frontiers of modern
genre cinema, with films that are all
special in their own peculiar way, often
defying categorisation altogether. From
the paranoid nightmare of Escape From
Tomorrow and the found-footage chills
of The Borderlands through to the raw
dissection of modern youth that is The
Dirties and the bloody divide between
rich and poor in Cheap Thrills, each film
has something to offer those with a taste
for the darker side of modern cinema.
Bringing up the rear we have Bad Milo,
and if an ass-dwelling stress demon
doesn’t float your boat, we’re not sure
what will. Enjoy!
ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW
(adv. 18)
Dir. Randy Moore USA 90mins b/w Digital
Roy Abramsohn, Elena Schuber, Katelynn Rodriguez,
Jack Dalton
Film Source: Mankurt Media
.................................
A surreal and mesmerising debut feature,
filmed guerrilla-style inside Disney World,
Florida.
Supported by
Family man Jim White’s vacation with his loving wife
and two children is interrupted by a phone call from his
boss, who tells him he no longer has a job. Rather than
risk ruining the last day of their holiday, Jim chooses
to say nothing and immerses himself in the theme
park’s garish world. As the characters and attractions
all around him begin to take on a sinister, nightmarish
quality, Jim becomes obsessed with two mysterious and
attractive young girls he sees around the park and he
starts to suspect that the park’s wholesome exterior
is hiding a seedy and disturbing underbelly, far from the
dreamlike wonder of the Magic Kingdom. RN
+ NEON SPREAD (adv. 18) 6mins
+ HOLIDAY (adv. 15) 4mins See page 116
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THE BORDERLANDS
BAD MILO
(15)
Dir: Elliot Goldner UK 2013 89mins Digital
Aidan McArdle, Patrick Godfrey, Gordon Kennedy,
Luke Neal
Film Source: Metrodome
.................................
A highly-effective supernatural thriller;
an utterly terrifying experience.
A team of specialists from the Vatican are dispatched
to a remote West Country church after a series of
supernatural occurrences are reported. Drawing on
their experience in disproving faked miracles, the
team’s natural scepticism is challenged as they are
presented with seemingly-legitimate video evidence
of religious artefacts moving on the church altar and
other strange phenomena. They scrutinize the footage
and when they are unable to disprove it, the team
set up their own cameras in the church to get to the
bottom of the mystery, not least the strange scratching
sounds that seem to be coming from the walls. The
Borderlands takes the contemporary found footage
thriller and infuses it with ancient evil. RN
+ DOUBLE GRAFFITI (adv. PG)
11mins See page 115
THE DIRTIES
(adv. 15)
Dir. Matthew Johnson Canada 2013 80mins Digital
Matt Johnson, Owen Williams, Krista Madison
Film Source: Pulse Films
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A faux-documentary portrayal of teen
angst spiralling dangerously out of control.
High school students Matt and Owen spend their
time obsessing over cinema and trying to avoid the
unwanted attention of a gang of school bullies who
make their life a living hell. Sick and tired of walking
the halls in fear, they begin working on a class project:
a film where they as protagonists get revenge on the
gang, who they nickname ‘The Dirties’. As the film’s
Tarantino-esque plot escalates, it becomes apparent
that for one of them, the violent revenge fantasy has
gone way beyond the confines of a school project.
Matt Johnson’s stunning directorial debut sidesteps the
hyperbole surrounding the complex issue of bullying to
create a fascinating and unsettling experience. RN
+ PREPARE FOR THE
ENLIGHTENMENT (adv. 15)
6mins See page 116
+ COMFORTABLE (adv. 12A)
2mins See page 115
(adv. 18)
CHEAP THRILLS
(adv. 15)
Dir. Jacob Vaughan USA 2013 85mins Digital
Ken Marino, Gillian Jacobs, Patrick Warburton, Peter
Stormare
Film Source: Sony Pictures Releasing
Dir.E.L. Katz USA 2013 85mins Digital
Cast: Pat Healy, David Koechner, Sara Paxton,
Ethan Embry
Film Source: Koch Media
A wickedly funny horror comedy that
promises to ease the stress of your day-today life.
This pitch-black comedy thriller delivers
some sicko shocks.
................................. .................................
Duncan’s life is a never ending pattern of stress, which
results in severe bouts of gastrointestinal pain. When
he visits a specialist, Duncan discovers that stress can
be a major pain in the ass, especially when it manifests
itself as a small demon that has taken up residence in
your lower intestine. Duncan’s demon (named Milo)
emerges only to viciously attack those he believes to
be the cause of his host’s stress, and Duncan must learn
to control his stress and befriend Milo before everyone
he cares about ends up dead. Bad Milo (edited by 2012
David Nordstrom (Sawdust City) ) combines the lowbudget splatter of Basket Case and the 80s creaturefeature charm of Gremlins. RN
+ AUTO BAMBINA (adv. 15)
4mins See page 115
Craig is down on his luck. Fired from his job, months
behind on his rent and with a young family to provide
for, he heads to a local dive bar in an act of avoidance
to drown his sorrows. There he bumps into Vince,
his best friend from high school who now works as a
low-paid debt collector. The cash-strapped friends are
soon roped into a night of drinking with a jaded rich
couple intent on setting a series of initially innocuous
challenges for their own entertainment, all in exchange
for cold hard cash. As the night unfolds these wagers
become more and more extreme, and Craig and Vince
must consider the extent to which they will degrade
and debase themselves for financial gain. RN
+ FILTH (adv. 18)
13mins See page 115
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CHARLES
URBAN
This man was Charles Urban, who during the early
20th century was the most influential producer and
distributor of films in the UK. As Luke McKernan,
film historian has written, ‘it was his position as the
dominant figure in British films ... which allowed him
to promote the value of the non-fiction film and in
particular the educational possibilities of the cinema’.
On 29 August 1942 a 75 year old American
died in Brighton. It is unlikely that many
around him realised that this signified the
end of one of the most important figures
in the history of British cinema. A slick
businessman, an enthusiastic showman,
a man who passionately believed in the
necessity of cinema to educate and inform.
Urban was born in 1867 in Cincinnati, Ohio. As a
young man, he sold Thomas Edison’s phonograph
which subsequently led him into the world of moving
pictures. By 1895 he was managing one of the new
Kinetoscope parlours, through which Edison’s
invention allowed the general public to see animated
pictures for the first time.
HE PUT THE WORLD
BEFORE YOU
Promotional brochure for Britain Prepared, 1915
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1907 saw Urban publish what can be seen as his
personal film manifesto: The Cinematograph in Science,
Education and Matters of State. Many however, remained
to be convinced by Urban’s passion for cinema as
an educational tool, in 1908, the National Education
Association’s response to Urban’s catalogue of films
‘Urbanora, The World’s Educator’, was dismissive (using
language very much of its time):
‘I very much doubt the value of bioscope pictures in
education. To the mental strain on the backward part
of a class, there is also to be added ...the strain and
damage to the eyesight’.
Urban was not slow to recognise the potential in this
new technology and to see its possible applications, as
he stated in his memoirs, written in 1942:
“My interest has always been to find anything new
which has practical value, especially of an instructive
value in the motion picture as an educational factor”.
In August of 1897, Urban arrived in London to manage
the UK office of Maguire and Baucus, Thomas Edison’s
motion picture agents in the UK, ostensibly to bring
some new ideas to what had become a rather staid
operation. Urban wasted no time in setting to his task,
he quickly recognised that they needed to be in the
heart of this new and rapidly developing film industry.
He relocate the offices and changed the name of the
firm to something he felt had a more British appeal
– The Warwick Trading Company (also no doubt
suggested by the firm’s new address 4-5 Warwick
Court, London).
Under his guidance the Warwick Trading Company
went from strength to strength, they acted as agents
not only for Edison’s films but also for Georges Melies,
The Lumiere Brothers, George Albert Smith and James
Williamson. Cameramen were despatched to the Boer
War, to Abyssinia and to the Alps to put the world
before British audiences. Filmgoers experienced a
variety of subjects including Shanghai Shops and Opium
Dens (1900), SS Netherland Labouring in a Storm (1901)
and Parade of Prize Cattle (1899) for the first time.
The Warwick Trading Company reaped the rewards
with sales rising from £10,500 in 1897 to more than
£45,000 in 1901.
105
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Daily Mirror poster for The Acrobatic Fly, 1908
After five years with the Warwick Trading Company,
Urban took closer control over his cinematic output
by establishing the Charles Urban Trading Company,
which was registered on 20 July 1903. The window
of the rather grand premises on Rupert Street
read ‘Manufacturers and Exporters of all requisites
pertaining to Animated Photography’.
The Unseen World series of films produced with
micro-photographer F Martin Duncan furthered
the educational remit of Urban’s work through the
use of new technical applications to film scientific
subjects. Possibly the best known example of their
work is Cheese Mites from 1903, which as the name
suggests presented a close up view of the microscopic
creatures which may be living in your dairy produce
(unsurprisingly, not at all popular with the British
cheese industry). Other titles included Anatomy of the
Water Flea and Circulation of Blood in the Frog’s Foot.
These films were hugely popular, although some often
softened the scientific edge, moving towards what
might be seen as a ‘lower’ form of entertainment,
presenting pugilistic toads and comedic monkeys.
The Balancing Blue Bottle (also known as The Acrobatic
Fly) proved to be a sensation, demonstrating how with
a little light silk tethering a fly was seemingly able to
juggle a variety of miniature objects in its legs. It was
made by one of Urban’s most important collaborators,
F Percy Smith. It was through Urban’s careful nurturing
of the retiring Smith, that he was able to provide the
perfect surroundings for him to develop his use of
both time lapse and micro cinematography, to produce
many titles, including To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly
(1909) and The Birth of a Flower (1910).
Many had been striving to add colour to the moving
image since its inception, however finding a practical
and successful process was proving elusive. To date all
colour in film was either hand or mechanically applied,
costing both time and money. Urban was foresighted
enough to purchase the work carried out by Edward
Raymond Turner on a natural colour process. This
work was passed on to George Albert Smith, an
experienced film maker and inventor (Urban had been
distributing Smith’s work for several years). Despite
his skills, he was unable to make Turner’s three colour
process work and so simplified it to a two colour
process (retaining the red and green, dispensing with
the blue). When Smith first showed the end results to
Urban, he ‘...yelled like a drunken cowboy’.
Ever the businessman, rather than selling the process,
named Kinemacolor (the spelling giving away Urban’s
country of birth, even though he had become a
naturalised UK citizen in 1906) he retained a tight
hold of it. This proved to be a shrewd move. Urban
established The Natural Color Kinematograph
Company in March 1909.
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From February 1909, the new Kinemacolor films were
included in the regular programme of entertainments
at the Palace Theatre of Varieties in London. In April
1911 it moved to a more permanent home at the
Scala Theatre. Over the next five years, Kinemacolor
was wildly successful thanks to its varied programme
of non-fiction subjects. Undoubtedly the most
spectacular Kinemacolor production was the 2 ½
hour film of George V’s Coronation tour of India
of December 1911 and January 1912, including the
Coronation Durbar held in Delhi.
of informal multi-subject magazine type newsreels and
he also continued to try to exploit his enormous back
catalogue for educational purposes.
Rather than rushing his new footage straight back
to the UK as other topical film agencies did, Urban
was confident enough in his colour process to wait
until the whole tour had ended and then present an
experience as close to being there as he could muster.
He presented the colour footage inside a custom
built stage design (a reproduction of the Taj Mahal),
accompanied by a 48 piece orchestra, a 24 piece choir
and live bagpipers. This extraordinary presentation
ensured twice daily screenings for the next 15 months.
Unfortunately, all that remains of the original film is a
small section held in a Russian film archive.
Issues of colour fringing (the colours on screen
recording imprecisely as subjects moved due to the
fraction of a second interval between the green and
Advertisement for Kinemacolor film With Our King and Queen
Through India, 1912
Charles Urban's private office
red exposures) and eye strain brought criticism.
Kinemacolor operated perilously close to the frames
per second threshold (16) at which the human eye
detects flicker on screen.
These technical issues along with Urban’s claims
that Kinemacolor could show all the colours of the
spectrum despite being a two colour process, ultimately
led to its end. William Friese Greene (inventor of
a rival colour process, Biocolour), mounted a legal
challenge to the validity of the Kinemacolor patent
which was successful – Kinemacolor’s heyday was over.
By 1915 Urban had moved on and turned his attention
to the major event enveloping the globe – World War I.
Urban became a member of the cinema trade’s British
Topical Committee for War Films which had War
Office permission to film on the front line. In 1915, he
produced Britain Prepared an early example of officially
authorised cinema propaganda, produced primarily for
exhibition to allied and neutral audiences to reinforce
or encourage their involvement in the conflict.
Urban’s speedy editing skills were exploited for the film,
The Battle of the Somme (1916) (which has subsequently
become known for the use of re-staged shots of men
going over the top). Deploying his wealth of experience,
it was Urban who suggested a single feature length film
rather than a series of shorts would have more impact
on the audience.
After the end of WWI Urban tried to establish himself
in the American film industry. He worked as ceaselessly
as ever with several projects underway at one time: the
Spirograph, an amateur projection device; Kinekrom, a
new colour film process; Urban’s Movie Chats, a series
In 1920, he founded Urban Motion Picture Industries
(incorporating The Urban Institute, a tellingly academic
sounding establishment housed within a vast 80,000
square feet building) at Irvington, New York. However,
by this time Urban’s film activities had been overtaken
by other advances in the field (Kinekrom could not
hope to compete with the ever advancing Technicolor).
In due course, Urban Motion Pictures had become
‘financially embarrassed’ and there is no evidence
of Urban activity in the film world beyond 1925.
He returned to the UK in 1929, began to write his
memoirs in April 1942, but was only able to tell the
story up to 1903, before his death in August of that
year.
Brochure for The Battle of the Somme, 1916
There is no doubt Urban had a keen understanding
of the importance of his life’s work and ensured
that his diligently collected personal archive was
maintained for posterity by donating it (tellingly) to
the Science Museum in London. It includes thousands
of documents outlining a lifetime dedicated to actuality
film making. This archive is now held by the National
Media Museum and is a graphic illustration of the
stature of this man of the cinema.
Toni Booth
Associate Curator, National Media Museum
Further reading
Charles Urban: Pioneering the Non-Fiction Film in Britain and America
1897-1925, Luke McKernan, University of Exeter Press, 2013
Whos’Who of Victorian Cinema, Stephen Herbert & Luke McKernan,
BFI Publishing, 1996
The First Colour Motion Pictures, D B Thomas, HMSO/Science Museum,
1969
A Yank in Britain,The Lost Memoirs of Charles Urban, Luke McKernan (Ed),
The Projection Box, 1999
Free guided tour of the National Media
Museum's Charles Urban collection.
Saturday 5 April, 14.00.
Places are limited, so please book in advance by
contacting the box office on 0844 856 3797
The National Media Museum
holds Charles Urban’s
collection of papers,
which was originally donated to
the Science Museum by
Urban in 1937.
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Cheese Mites (or What
the Professor Saw in
His Cheese) (adv. U)
A selection of the
science films made by the
Charles Urban Trading
Company
will be shown before selected
feature films.
Dir. F. Martin Duncans UK 1903 2mins b/w silent DVD
Documentary
Film source: Rob Crow
.................................
Cheese Mites is reputed to be the first ever science
documentary. A gentleman is here shown partaking of
a little lunch of bread and cheese, and occasionally is
seen to glance at his morning paper through a reading
glass. He suddenly notices that the cheese is a little
out of the ordinary, and examines it with his glass. To
his horror, he finds it to be alive with mites, and, in
disgust, leaves the table. Hundreds of mites resembling
crabs are seen scurrying in all directions. A wonderful
picture and a subject hitherto unthought-of in animated
photography.
British Birds of Prey
(adv. U)
Dir. unknown UK 1911 6mins b/w silent 35mm
Documentary
.................................
A compendium depicting the daily activities of our
feathered friends.
To Demonstrate How
Spiders Fly (adv. U)
Dir. Percy Smith UK 1909 1min b/w silent 35mm
Documentary
The Birth of a Flower
(adv. U)
Dir. Percy Smith UK 1910 6mins silent 35mm
Documentary
.................................
A lyrical record of nature in action, The Birth of a Flower
is a very early example of time-lapse photography,
exploring a variety of plants as they burst into bloom.
Beautifully capturing the poetry of flowers as they
open their petals to the light, Innovative filmmaker
Percy Smith dedicated much time and ingenuity to the
recording of his slow-growing subjects. Even rigging up
a system to continue filming their movements as he
slept, he utilised gramophone needles, candle wicks and
other assorted objects to modify his equipment.
The Strength and
Agility of Insects
(adv. U)
Dir. Percy Smith UK 1911 4mins b/w silent 35mm
Documentary
.................................
A highly entertaining and revealing account of insect
ability, The Strength and Agility of Insects presented a
view of arthropods quite unlike anything ever seen on
film before. Premiering in 1911, the production caused
a sensation, detailing our insect friends as they lift tiny
dumbbells, twirl matchsticks and juggle objects much
heavier than themselves. Sparking a huge press debate,
renowned wildlife photographer Percy Smith had to
dispel rumours of trickery and cruelty by sharing his
innovative filming techniques.
.................................
Promotional poster for The Urban Institute, 1920
109
.....................................................................
Percy Smith believed that he could cure people of their
fear of spiders by showing them blown up images of
their eight legged foes on the cinema screen. This short
film uses an animated model spider to show how the
spider ‘throws’ its silken threads to make a web. The
little fellow is quite comical and is the first of several
animated creatures to appear in Smith’s films.
Source for all Charles Urban and
Secrets of Nature films: BFI
All images: Charles Urban Archive
National Media Museum
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A selection of Charles Urban films will also
feature in the following event
Secrets of Nature:
with live music by
Metamono (adv. U)
WORLD Premiere
Dirs. various UK 1903 - 1927 approx 90mins Digital
.................................
All tickets £8.50
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Retro electronic group Metamono give
the first live performance of an original
composition to specially selected silent films.
The natural world has always inspired fascination. In the
early decades of cinema pioneering filmmakers in Britain
made a series of films exploring animal, plant and insect
life, and made wondrous worlds and natural processes
visible for the first time: sweet peas unfurl in the sunlight,
white owls swoop in on their prey, sea life lurks on the
ocean floor and moths patiently spin their cocoons.
These films, made by enterprising men and women at
the forefront of science and nature filmmaking,
developed groundbreaking techniques of time-lapse,
microscopic and underwater cinematography. Paving the
way for the natural history programmes that we know
and love today, these Secrets grant us an entertaining,
absorbing, and very special glimpse into the mysteries of
the natural world.
This new musical commission will be performed on
exclusively recycled and handmade equipment as South
London three-piece Metamono restrict themselves to
analogue electronic technology. Drawing on styles and
techniques from the cutting edge of contemporary
popular and art music, back to the days of silent cinema
itself, the band avoid digital audio entirely. This lends
their music an ethos in keeping with the films - not to
mention an unmistakably British sense of fun, wonder
and resourcefulness.
111
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Legal Advice
That Shines
Commercial Property Corporate and Commercial
Dispute Resolution Education Employment Private Client
Projects Property Litigation Restructuring and Banking
BRADFORD 01274 306000
LEEDS 0113 2206270
Clear Legal Thinking.
www.schofieldsweeney.co.uk
112
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BRADFORD UNESCO
CITY OF FILM EVENTS
Innovative pioneers from Bradford
contributed to the development of early
British cinema in late 1800s. They created
new technology in the form of magic
lanterns and early film projection systems
that were cutting edge at that time and
distributed all around the world. Some
of the first cinematic productions to be
screened outside of London took place in
Bradford in 1896 at the Palace Theatre,
now the site of the National Media
Museum.
Bradford has a rich film heritage and throughout 2014
we are developing an interactive app and exhibition to
highlight the many productions which have been made
here over the years thanks to lottery funding from the
Heritage Lottery Fund.
We have seen a marked increase in film and television
location requests in the past twelve months and look
forward to working with our key partners Screen
Yorkshire, Creative England and BBC to live up to our
reputation as a film friendly City.
We also continue to extend our international links
with other UNESCO Creative Cities and look forward
to welcoming more film cities into the network. From
all at Bradford City of Film enjoy the festival.
David Wilson –
Director, Bradford UNESCO City of Film
www.bradfordcityoffilm.com
@BFDcityoffilm
Brontë Films
at The Brontë Parsonage, Haworth
Wuthering Heights
Monday 31 March, 19.30
.................................
Jane Eyre
Friday 4 April, 19.30
.................................
Devotion
Saturday 5 April, 19.30
.................................
£4/£2
Please see www.bronte.org.uk/whats-on
for details
Film Talk:
ON FILM FESTIVALS
.................................
Thursday 27 March, 17.30, City Library
Approx 60 minutes, Free
.................................
An exciting new series of free film talks has been
arranged by the team at Bradford UNESCO City of
Film and will be held at Bradford’s new City Library
in City Park. For our festival special, film programmer
and cinema manager Mike McKenny will investigate
the dichotomy between art and commerce in cinema
and look at the global film festival network, situating its
various historic incarnations within their geopolitical
context. The talks are free but spaces are very limited
so booking is essential.
[email protected]
or call 01274 433600
Film Walk n’ Talk
.................................
Saturday 29 March, 9.30 and 11.30
Approx 60 minutes, Free
.................................
New for BIFF 2014 – we are walking the (film) talk.
City of Film Director, David Wilson, will be joined by
Film & TV Locations Manager Jonathan Davies (The
Selfish Giant,The Mill, Bedlam, DCI Banks) to lead a
guided walk around film locations in Bradford City
Centre. From classics such as Billy Liar and Room at the
Top to more contemporary films and TV dramas, the
guided walk will provide an insight into the role and
challenges of the Locations Manager. There will also be
an opportunity to see some hidden gems and secret
locations. Places are free but strictly limited.
[email protected]
More details are available on
www.bradfordcityoffilm.com
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SUFF’S UP!
SYDNEY
UNDERGROUND
SHORTS
From one UNESCO City of Film to another
– here come seven shorts to shock, stir
and stimulate. Sydney became the second
UNESCO City of Film in 2010, a year
after the prestigious status was bestowed
upon Bradford, and now BIFF is thrilled
to unleash some highlights from the 2013
Sydney Underground Film Festival (SUFF).
In its seven editions SUFF has carved out a
reputation for programming independent,
experimental films that challenge the
conventions of cinematic language, and for
initiating an international perspective in
which local filmmakers can be discussed and
promoted. The films included here – each
of them recommended to BIFF by SUFF’s
co-director Stefan Popescu – are abrasive,
unflinching and unapologetic in their
radicalism, bristling with aggressive energy
and anti-establishment sentiments. These
films demonstrate a punkish enthusiasm
for new forms of cinema, and provide a rare
chance to see what Sydney’s independent
scene has to offer.
Auto BamBina (adv. 15)
International Premiere
Dir. Rob Crow Australia 2013 4mins Digital
Film source: Rob Crow
Double Graffiti
This dark and disturbingly hilarious animation, about a
man receiving a terrifying phone call from a young girl,
is based on a sketch from the Chris Morris-scripted
radio-show Blue Jam.
Graffiti has long been a means of expression and
identity for the politically marginalised: sign a wall,
immortalise your name. Winkler’s shot-on16mm
portrait illuminates, obscures, bedazzles.
Comfortable (adv. 12A)
Dir. Natasha Foster Australia 2013 2mins Digital
Film source: Natasha Foster
Filth
Foster’s intimate portrait of the human face unfolds
to a thunderous soundtrack, challenging perceptions
of comfort in its nightmarish riff on disconnection,
hopelessness, misery and dysmorphia.
In a stygian world in which heroin addiction suppresses
traditional expressions of affection, how else are two
lovers to communicate than by tattooing one another
– using blood, semen, excrement and hair?
(adv. PG)
Dir. Paul Winkler Australia 2013 11mins Digital
Film source: Paul Winkler
................................. ................................
(adv. 18)
European Premiere
Dir. Emma Varker Australia 2013 13mins Digital
Film source: Emma Varker
................................. .................................
Filth
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ALL ABOARD!
CINETRAIN
RUSSIAN WINTER
Holiday (adv. 15)
Dir. Tony Lawrence Australia 2013 6mins Digital
Film source: Tony Lawrence
.................................
This genuinely eerie, Lynchian nightmare (complete
with strobe effects) has a unique visual texture – the
result of having been shot on black-and-white Super
8 film and then projected through a homemade
refraction chamber.
Prepare For The
Enlightenment (adv.
15)
Dir. Maximilian Reinthal Australia 2013 6mins Digital
Film source: Maximilian Reinthal
.................................
A serious-tinged mockumentary about a cyber game
turns into a conspiracy thriller, in which virtual reality
becomes just another tool by which the world’s
governing elites control information, truth and human
lives.
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Cinetrain takes inspiration from a group
of 1930s Russian filmmakers who, under
the guidance of revolutionary director
Aleksandr Medvedkin, travelled across the
Soviet Union to make films with and about
marginalised communities. Cinetrain places
its international selection of participants
in extreme weather conditions and hostile
terrains in order to create a number of
documentary works responding to a single
theme. Following editions in 2008 (on ‘The
European Border’) and 2010 (on ‘Cultural
Neighbouring’), last year’s Cinetrain proved
to be its most successful yet: two films
won three prizes between them when
they premiered at the 2013 Locarno Film
Festival – Zima was nominated as best
short at the European Film Awards – while
another competed at Sundance earlier this
year. Responding to the theme ‘Russian
Winter’, each of these new documentaries
has a distinct subject matter of its own,
though together they are remarkably
consistent in tonal and aesthetic qualities.
Wrap up warm for these – and bring a hot
drink!
NEON SPREAD (adv. 18)
Dir. Tony Lawrence Australia 2013 4mins Digital
Film source: Tony Lawrence
.................................
Found negative footage of an erotic nature unfolds
to a broodingly simmering synth soundtrack. Are we
witnessing a recorded past or some sexily dystopian
future?
Banya
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BANYA (adv. 15)
WORLD Premiere
Dir. Fyodor Druzin Russia 2013 13mins Digital
Documentary
Lada (adv. PG)
WORLD Premiere
Dir. Dieter Deswarte Russia 2013 19mins Digital
Documentary
Zima
Traditionally considered one of the worst automobiles
in the world, the Lada proves to be the unlikely
protagonist in this idiosyncratic look at Russia from
behind a dashboard.
London-based Picchi’s poignant, evocative and awardwinning tribute to a typical north-Russian and Siberian
winter allows its landscape imagery to linger just long
enough to make you a shiver.
.................................
Dip into Russia’s bathing ritual – and emerge an image
of health! This amusing introduction to the sauna-like
‘banya’ should be of especial interest to fans of the
late Alexey Balabanov, whose work BIFF showcased
in 2013.
The Green Serpent:
of Vodka, Men and
Distilled Dreams (adv.
15)
UK Premiere
Dir. Benny Jaberg Russia/Switzerland 2013 21mins
Digital Documentary
.................................
Swiss filmmaker Benny Jaberg’s astute portrait of three
men (an actor, a poet and a physician) – for whom
Russia’s famous 40% spirit is a staple – is relatable and
hilarious in equal measure.
(adv. PG)
UK Premiere
Dir. Christina Picchi Russia 2013 12mins Digital
Documentary
................................. .................................
Source for all films: Cinetrain
Fairytale of the Three
Bears (adv. 12A)
European Premiere
Dir. Tristan Daws Russia 2013 11mins Digital
Documentary
Saturday 5 April, 20.20 IMAX
Just the Way it is…
(adv. PG)
Dir. Bernadett Tuza-Ritter Russia 2013 13mins
Digital Documentary
................................. .................................
As we pass through landscapes at once stunningly
Between Russia’s northern tundra and the lakes of
Eastern Siberia, three men share their memories of a
soviet past – a bygone era whose legacies still haunt
its remote landscapes today.
beautiful and icily cold, an economy-class carriage
attendant on the Trans-Siberian Railway shares her
dreams and anxieties.
Love, Love, Love (adv. 12A)
Dir. Sandhya Daisy Sundaram Russia 2013 11mins
Digital Documentary
.................................
Images of a single but ever-evolving human emotion,
from one winter to the next, from one generation to
another, as experienced (like a Russian doll) by several
women in one.
Winner of the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury
Award for Non-fiction.
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BIFF
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CONTENTS
One of the things that helps BIFF to stand out from the crowd is
our commitment to giving you those one-off close encounters that
can’t be experienced anywhere else. This year we’ve pulled off a
major coup in securing the services of both Graham Fellows and John
Shuttleworth to accompany our screening of It’s Nice Up North. John
will give a short musical performance before the film, and afterwards
Graham will be interviewed by Greg Hobson, the curator of the
National Media Museum’s new exhibition, Only in England.
The Dodge Brothers and Neil Brand are back for their now annual
pilgrimage to BIFF, this year accompanying the 1916 silent western
Hell’s Hinges.
Our special events also give you privileged access to key practitioners:
Richard Jobson will talk about his career and recent experiments
with new technologies; and the Filmmakers' Weekend in association
with the Northern Film School returns to bring new and aspiring
filmmakers closer to industry professionals.
The Dodge Brothers and
Neil Brand accompany Hell’s Hinges
TIMECODE: Richard Jobson
It’s Nice Up North + John Shuttleworth
Filmmakers' Weekend
Widescreen Weekend
Family Programme
p.124
p.125
p.127
p.129
p.132
p.134
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TIMECODE:
RICHARD JOBSON
.................................
Monday 31 March, 18.00,
National Media Museum Action Zone, Free
Approx 90 mins
.................................
Image credit: Adam Prosser
THE DODGE
BROTHERS
AND NEIL BRAND
ACCOMPANY
HELL’S HINGES
(adv. U)
Dirs. Charles Swickard, William S. Hart USA 1916 b/w
Digital
William S. Hart, Clara Williams, Jack Standing,
Alfred Hollingsworth
.................................
All tickets £18.50
.................................
Presenting Partner
Bequiffed Dapper Dans and festival favourites The
Dodge Brothers (featuring Theremin-bothering BBC
and Observer film critic Mark Kermode) and Neil
Brand (The Sound of Cinema) are back at BIFF after
the last two years’ electrifying performances. They
present the World Premiere of a new score for this
terrific 1916 silent western Hell’s Hinges, starring the
original screen cowboy William S Hart as gunslinger
Blaze Tracy.
Hell’s Hinges tells of Reverend Bob Henley, a preacher
who arrives at the lawless town of Hell’s Hinges with
his sister. A barkeep senses trouble and dispatches
gunslinger Blaze Tracey to run Bob out of town.
80 years after it was released the U.S. journal Film
Comment praised the film for its highly advanced
storytelling techniques: “The camera placement here,
the simple yet effective symbolism, and the flair for
spectacle as in the brilliantly handled mob scenes
where all of Inceville goes up in smoke, the real
‘feel’ of the old, dusty, unglamorised West, all should
have earned Hart a reputation as one of the great
directors…”
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Richard Jobson is one of the most fascinating and
innovative contemporary British film directors. Jobson
began his career as singer with angular New Wave
group The Skids. He then became interested in art and
formed the experimental rock group The Armoury
Show. Jobson became fascinated by the cinematic and
made records of poetic/filmic soundscapes for the cult
Belgian record label Les Disques Du Crépuscule, inspired
by the writings and films of Marguerite Duras. His first
feature 16 Years of Alcohol (2003), was a cult hit. Based
on his novel of the same name, it told the harrowing
story of a violent, dysfunctional upbringing tinged
with the hope of redemption. More recently he has
explored the haunting nature of military conflict in The
Somnambulists (2012) and the fictional world of the
ghost story with A Woman in Winter (2006). In this talk
he will discuss his career and his recent experiments
with innovative new film technologies.
TIMECODE is a seminar series in media. Run by the
Communication Culture and Media research group
in the Bradford Media School, School of Computing
Informatics and Media (SCIM), this regular seminar
series explores the increasingly important relationship
between media, technology, culture and society.
Supported by
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Detail of Brighton Beach, 1966 by Tony Ray-Jones © National Media Museum
It’s Nice Up North
(U)
+ John Shuttleworth and
Graham Fellows in person
Dir. Graham Fellows UK 2006 79mins DVD
Graham Fellows, Martin Parr
Film source: Chic Ken Productions
.................................
Tickets £8/£6
.................................
28 March - 29 June 2014, Free
nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
Supported by
MICHAEL AND
JANE WILSON
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John Shuttleworth will give a short musical
performance before introducing It’s Nice
Up North, after which John’s creator and
the film’s director, Graham Fellows will be
interviewed by Greg Hobson, the curator
of Only in England: Photographs by Martin
Parr and Tony Ray Jones.
John Shuttleworth’s quest for niceness
is marred only by Martin Parr’s shaky
camerawork.
Singer-songwriter John Shuttleworth will be familiar
to many for his attempts to submit his catchy song
Pigeons in Flight to Norwegian officials at the 1998
Eurovision Song Contest (John impressed the entry
committee, but was thwarted by the lateness of his
submission), and from his frequent appearances on
BBC2 (500 Bus Stops) and BBC Radio 4 (his 9th series
to be broadcast this summer). Less known is John’s
often uneasy working relationship with photographer
Martin Parr, with whom he collaborated on It’s Nice
Up North, a travelogue in which John travels by his
trusty Austin Ambassador to the Shetland Islands in
order to test his theory that, the farther north a place
is, the nicer the people are. John’s investigation of his
northern/niceness equation yielded much fruit: the
unexpected friendliness of disaffected youths, the very
generous provision of bistro napkins in an island cafe).
Yet John’s film was marred by Martin Parr’s amateurish
cinematography, which to John’s dismay included
prolonged and distorted close-ups of the Ambassador’s
upholstery, the result of Martin forgetting to switch off
his rather unimpressive camera (which also lacked a
much needed ‘night vision’ setting).
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FILMMAKERS’ WEEKEND
.................................
Saturday 29 & Sunday 30 March
.................................
Film Courses at
Leeds Metropolitan
Find out about our film courses:
• BA (Hons) Filmmaking
• BA (Hons) Animation
• MA Music for the Moving Image
• MA Filmmaking
• MSc Sound Design
For more information on the above courses
Tel: 0113 812 3113
Email: [email protected]
We also have a range of professional and creative short
courses, as well as three summer workshops covering all
areas and levels of Film, Music & Performing Arts.
For more information visit: www.leedsmet.ac.uk/fmapcourses
www.leedsmet.ac.uk
The Bradford International Film Festival
Filmmakers’ Weekend, in association
with the Northern Film School at Leeds
Metropolitan University, returns in 2014
to support new and aspiring filmmakers,
bringing them closer to industry
professionals.
So, if you are working in, or aspire to
work in independent film, join us for some
insightful master-classes, panels and
practical sessions designed to help you
move forward in your filmmaking career.
In addition to presentations from key
industry figures the weekend will focus
on the film festival experience; helping to
answer questions such as: ‘Which festival is
right for your film?’ and ‘What are festival
programmers looking for?’
The Filmmakers’ Weekend ticket price also includes
a BIFF Film Lover’s Weekend pass, giving delegates
the opportunity to see festival films in addition to
attending the scheduled sessions.
Sponsored by the Northern Film School
at Leeds Metropolitan University
The Northern Film School, part of the School of Film,
Music and Performing Arts at Leeds Metropolitan
University, is one of the UK’s longest established
and leading schools in practical film and animation
production, and offers undergraduate through to PhD
study. Their courses develop critical understanding,
collaborative working and high level practical skills
taught by passionate and experienced practicing
filmmakers.
The Northern Film School is a thriving creative
community with workshops, screenings, seminars
and master-classes running alongside a full time slate
of student productions being made locally, nationally
and internationally. Their Alumni Production Scheme
has recently supported the multi-award winning
documentary, We Are Poets, and Ahlaam by Oscar
nominated Mohamed Al Daradji. Northern film
students go on to work in all areas of the industry
including television and feature films to art installation
and successful online filmmaking. Their short films
win awards at festivals around the world and their
filmmakers go on to be nominated for BAFTAs,
Oscars and Emmys.
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SESSIONS AT THIS YEAR’S
FILMMAKERS’ WEEKEND
WILL INCLUDE:
Reaching an Audience –
Creating an effective Festival Strategy
When there are so many film festivals to enter
worldwide, how do you plan and create an effective
festival strategy for your short or feature film? This
workshop with short filmmaker and Northern Film
School alumnus, Paul Vernon, will focus on choosing
and targeting the right festivals for your film, navigating
the festival circuit, which festivals to attend, and how
to maximise the benefits of festival screenings. Dave
Turner, former Festival Co-ordinator for the Northern
Film School, will also look at practical issues such as
financial considerations, screening formats, and what
festivals need from filmmakers before and during the
festival.
Welcome to the BIFF Filmmakers’
Weekend
Larra Anderson, Director of the Northern Film School,
will officially open the 2014 Filmmakers’ Weekend.
Special Guest Speaker –
Frank Cottrell Boyce
We are delighted to welcome to the Filmmakers’
Weekend one of Britain’s most respected and versatile
screenwriters, Frank Cottrell Boyce. This is a unique
opportunity for filmmakers to hear about Frank’s long
career in film, and his collaborations with acclaimed
filmmakers such as Michael Winterbottom and Danny
Boyle. Frank will talk about his writing processes, and
discuss his most recent work, including The Railway
Man, starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman, and the
2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony.
Getting your Film Into Festivals –
Meet the Programmers
Do you want to understand more about securing
screenings at festivals? In this panel discussion,
representatives from a variety of high profile UK
film festivals, including BIFF, Edinburgh International
Film Festival, Aesthetica Short Film Festival, and
Sheffield DocFest will give an insight into their festival
programming processes and decision-making. The
panel will also examine how filmmakers can best
engage with festivals to maximize exposure of their
film, as well as using festivals and film markets to find
sales and distribution opportunities.
It’s all About Who You Know…
Networking event
Making of good contacts in the film industry is a vital
part of career development, and networking is a great
way to find and create new opportunities. This evening
event will provide a chance to get to know fellow
delegates and Filmmakers’ Weekend speakers in an
informal atmosphere with drinks and nibbles. To kick
off there will be an inspiring talk from filmmaker James
G Wall, a film school graduate who has used YouTube
to get his debut feature The Truth About Romance out
to a large audience.
Special Guest Speaker – TBC
A chance to hear from a special guest filmmaker
visiting this year’s festival. Keep checking the website
for updated details of speakers and events.
Making Filmmakers –
An Overview of the Northern Film School
Thinking of studying film? The Northern Film School at
Leeds Metropolitan University has a wide range of film
courses for undergraduate and graduate students. This
overview of the school will include information on the
school’s new programme of short courses, designed
to help filmmakers further develop their knowledge
and skills.
Yorkshire Afternoon Tea with
Sally Potter…
Hear from one of the UK’s foremost film directors
responsible for films such as Orlando,The Tango Lesson,
and most recently, Ginger & Rosa. As well as collectiong
the BIFF Fellowship award Sally is in Bradford
promoting The Anatomy of a Film, an online education
resource based on the extensive archive of her work
as a writer, director, choreographer and composer.
Her new book, Naked Cinema – Working With Actors,
will be released in March. Put your questions to Sally
in a relaxed, informal environment with a pot of tea or
coffee and some lovely cakes.
Information is correct at time of going
to print. Please check the website for
programme additions and changes.
BE INSPIRED
Make use of your
BIFF Film Lover’s pass
and go to see some
great festival films!
SPECIAL OFFER
TO FILMMAKERS’ WEEKEND
DELEGATES
A to Z of Film Delivery
Northern Film School Short course
Saturday 5 April, National Media Museum
This introduction by Mireille van Helm of Ginger Film
Services will focus on how to prepare your film for
delivery to an international sales agent, international
film festivals and/or international territories. The
course will use current films as examples and case
studies, and there will be an opportunity to bring your
own film budget and any questions on your budget for
a group discussion.
Ginger Film Services is an international film
consultancy and servicing company, which offers
Sales Agents, Producers and Distributors full postproduction and distribution services on theatrical and
television productions.
Cost: £75 / £50 Concessions / £30 for Filmmakers’
Weekend delegates.
Booking info: Tickets can be purchased online
in the short course section of Leeds Metropolitan
University online store:
onlinestore.leedsmet.ac.uk
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WIDESCREEN WEEKEND
2014
.................................
10 -13 April, Pictureville
.................................
Thursday 10 April
17.30 White Christmas (120)
20.10 The Big Blue 70mm (132)
Friday 11 April
10:05 Seven Wonders of the World (121 +
intermission)
13.00 Fortress Of Peace – curved screen (60)
15.00 The Widescreen Student Film of The Year (90)
16.50 Big Trouble in Little China 70mm (99)
18.45 Delegates’ Reception (75) Experience TV
20.00 The Way We Were (118)
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Saturday 12 April
10:00 Remembering Widescreen (45)
11:15 Searching For Paradise Illustrated
Presentation by David Coles (30)
13:00 Search For Paradise (120 + intermission)
16:00 Widescreen Aesthetics of Sergio
Leone – Presentation by Professor Sir
Christopher Frayling (30)
16.30 For A Few Dollars More (132)
18.40 Professor Sir Christopher Frayling –
Book Signing (60)
19:40 West Side Story 70mm (152 + intermission)
Sunday 13 April
10:00 Cineramacana (120)
13:15 City Heat 70mm (97)
15:30 Terminator 2: Judgment Day 70mm (137)
19.00 It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World 70mm (192
+ intermission)
All intermissions approx 15 minutes
All films will be preceded by a 10 minute
introduction.
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FAMILY PROGRAMME:
Free Chaplin activities
for families at
CHAPLIN’S TRAMP
Charlie Chaplin’s bumbling, well-meaning
little Tramp was the first global cinema
icon and the first ever character to be
recognised all over the world. 100 years
after he was created, he is still loved by
those who discover him, and has become a
part of world culture.
To mark 100 years of the Tramp we
present some of the character’s funniest,
and most fascinating films. We hope that
you can join us in celebrating the Tramp’s
greatness, and can help us introduce him
to generations of new fans. The short
films will be shown with live music, just
as they would have been when they were
first shown, and there will be related free
activities for families at the National Media
Museum.
Double-bill
with live piano
.................................
.................................
Sunday 30 March, 14.30, Hyde Park
Picture House
.................................
The Immigrant
Dir. Charles Chaplin USA 1917 30mins b/w DVD
Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell
+ Easy Street
In The Immigrant, Charlie’s Tramp is a poor immigrant
on a ship to America. On board he endures rough seas
and befriends a fellow traveller.
Easy Street sees the Tramp step forward to become a
policeman to rid the street of bullies, help the poor,
and save women from madmen.
Introduction by
Keith Withall,
piano by
Darius Battiwalla
£3 per ticket;
£10 for a family of 4
Easy Street
Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 March
Saturday 5 and 6 Sunday April
(U)
.................................
The Immigrant
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.....................................................................
Modern Times (U)
Dir Charles Chaplin USA 1936 87mins b/w digital
Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman,
Tiny Sandford
After enjoying some great Charlie Chaplin films, have
a go at making your own silent film. Learn more about
Chaplin and early filmmaking techniques, and see
photographs and objects related to Chaplin and silent
film from the Museum’s Collection.
.................................
.................................
The first film that Chaplin made after five years away
from filmmaking is one of his best. It featured the very
last appearance of the Tramp, and is full of the kind of
antics of his earlier short films. By the 1930s sound had
come to cinema, but Chaplin didn’t much like talkies,
and used sound here in clever ways - a mean boss talks
over CCTV; a crackpot inventor brings in a recorded
sales pitch – to show how ‘modern times’ were
changing the world. The only ‘live’ sound happens when
Charlie tries out as a singing waiter. Modern Times is a
fantasy about modernisation, assembly lines, man and
machines, and it remains absolutely fantastic.
Introduction by Keith Withall
Drop in.
Suitable for families with
children of ages 7-11
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FESTIVAL
VENUES
NATIONAL
MEDIA MUSEUM
HYDE PARK
PICTURE HOUSE
IMPRESSIONS
GALLERY
Bradford BD1 1NQ
Tel: 0844 856 3797
E-mail: [email protected]
73 Brudenell Road, Leeds. LS6 1JD
Tel: 0113 275 2045
www.hydeparkpicturehouse.co.uk
Centenary Square, Bradford BD1 1SD
Tel: 01274 737843
www.impressions-gallery.com
How to get there: The museum is a ten minute
walk from Bradford Interchange and a 15 minute walk
from Bradford Forster Square Station. If travelling by
car follow the brown tourist signs on your approach
to Bradford. The nearest car parks are on Sharpe
Street and Radwell Drive behind the Museum.
How to get there: Located in the suburb of
Headingley, Hyde Park Picture House is two miles
from Leeds City Centre. From the city centre, the
56 bus stops right outside the cinema entrance.
Alternatively, Burley Park Rail Station is a three minute
walk from the cinema. Direct trains to Leeds city
centre leave from Bradford Interchange.
How to get there: Impressions Gallery is in the
heart of Bradford City Centre, and is a five minute
walk from the National Media Museum. If travelling by
car, follow directions to city centre and then brown
heritage signs to City Hall.
Accessibility: All areas are wheelchair accessible
with designated disabled parking outside. Front of
house staff are trained in disability awareness and if
you have specific requirements please call our Access
Co-ordinator on 01274 203359
The National Media Museum contains
Pictureville, Cubby Broccoli and IMAX
cinemas, The Media Café and Room at
the Top
Accessibility: Wheelchair access is available via
Brudenell Road, and there are four wheelchair spaces
in the cinema. Guide dogs are welcome with water
bowls available upon request.
Accessibility: Wheelchair access to all public areas.
Disabled parking for blue badge holders is available
immediately outside Town Hall.
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BRADFORD
HOW TO GET HERE
By Car
Bradford district is served well by motorways and
main trunk roads. Bradford’s own motorway the M606
brings you within 1.5 miles of the city centre and links
with the M1, A1 and M6 via the M62. There are many
car parks within walking distance to the National
Media Museum.
By Train
There are two train stations in Bradford City Centre.
BRADFORD
CATHEDRAL
UNIVERSITY
OF BRADFORD
1 Stott Hill, Bradford BD1 4EH
Tel: 0871 200 2000
Tel: 01274 777720
www.bradfordcathedral.org
West Yorkshire BD7 1DP
Tel: 01274 232323
www.bradford.ac.uk
How to get there: Situated in the centre of
Bradford, Bradford Cathedral is well signposted and
easy to find. The nearest train station is Bradford
Forster Square which is just a short walk away from
the Cathedral.
Accessibility: Most of the Cathedral is accessible by
wheelchair via ramps. There is also a disabled WC.
How to get there: Situated in the centre of
Bradford, the University of Bradford is well signposted
and easy to find. The nearest train and bus station is
Bradford Interchange.
Accessibility: The majority of University campus
is wheelchair accessible, despite the difficulties of
having changes in level. A small number of Schools and
Divisions do not currently have access to all rooms. If
you need level access, you should email disabilities@
bradford.ac.uk or phone 01274 233739 before coming
to the University.
Bradford Interchange
Bradford Interchange is a ten minute walk from the
National Media Museum and accommodates rail, train
and taxi services. It has direct trains to Leeds train
station which links to most major cities and airports.
Bradford Forster Square
Bradford Forster Square is a 15 minute walk from the
National Media Museum and accommodates rail and
taxi services. It has direct trains to Leeds train station
which links to most major cities and airports. Bradford
Forster Square is useful for accessing the surrounding
villages of Bradford.
For further information on travel services at Bradford
Interchange and Bradford Forster Square, contact
Metroline on: 0113 245 7676
Manchester International Airport
Tel: 08712 710 711
www.manchesterairport.co.uk
Manchester International Airport is accessible by all
major public transport routes. Trains go to and from
Bradford Interchange to the airport (change at Leeds
train station). The Skylink moving walkway links the
airport station to all terminals.
For further information on train services to
Manchester International Airport, contact National Rail
on: 08457 48 49 50
ACCOMMODATION
Jurys Inn
2 Thornton Road, Bradford BD1 2DH
Tel: 01274 848500
www.bradfordhotels.jurysinns.com
Jurys Inn is our official festival hotel and is a five minute
walk from the National Media Museum in Bradford
city centre. From Jurys Inn there is easy access to all
transport routes.
By Plane
There are two major airports which are close to
Bradford.
Leeds Bradford International Airport
Tel: 0871 288 2288
www.leedsbradfordairport.co.uk
Leeds Bradford Airport is between Leeds, Bradford
and Harrogate and is easily accessible by all major
public transport routes. There are direct Airport
shuttle buses which travel to and from Bradford
Interchange every day and leave every hour.
For information on airport bus services contact
Metroline: 0113 245 7676
BIFF OFFER
During the festival Jurys Inn
is offering a special rate to visitors
starting at just £49 (room only).
Book via the Jurys Inn website
using the promotional code FEST
or by calling them on
01274 848500.
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FESTIVAL STAFF
& THANKS
FESTIVAL STAFF
Directors: Tom Vincent and Neil Young
Festival producer: Fozia Bano
Film manager: Kathryn Penny
Short film programmer and Film festivals assistant:
Rebecca Hill
Widescreen Weekend programmer: Duncan McGregor
Film transport coordinator: Jennifer Weston-Beyer
Film education officer: Jen Skinner
Cine Yorkshire project manager: Rachel McWatt
Audience development coordinator: Mandy Tennant
Visitor experience coordinator: Sarah Jarvis
Film bookings assistant: Gillian Reid
Press officer: Phil Oates
BIFF press officer: Clare Wilford
Communications manager: Will White
Senior marketing executive: Harriet Hudson
Marketing executive: Kieron Casey
Head of development: Rob Shaw
Senior development executive: Rebecca Bentham
Media development: Tom Perkins
Web producer: Pete Edwards
Senior web content coordinator: Emma Thom
Web designer: Patu Tifinger
Web developer: Jaspal Sahota
Community learning programmes coordinator:
Elaine Richmond
Associate curator: Toni Booth
Graphic designer: Janet Qureshi
Honorary President: Lord Puttnam of Queensgate CBE
Museum Director: Jo Quinton-Tulloch
GUEST CONSULTANTS
Consultant programmer: Michael Pattison
Dr. Mark Goodall: University of Bradford
David Nicholas Wilkinson: Guerilla Films
Bradford After Dark programmer: Robert Nevitt
Filmmakers’ Weekend consultant: Abbe Robinson
Bradford UNESCO City of Film events: David Wilson
Technical consultant: Andy Atkinson, AM Digital Ltd
Digital cinema consultant: Darren Briggs, Arts Alliance
Media
NMEM PROJECTION TEAM
Projection Team Manager: Duncan McGregor
IMAX Theatre manager: Dick Vaughan
Senior Projectionist: Tony Cutts
Projectionist: Roger Brown
Projectionist: John Cahill
Projectionist: Dave Chambers
Projectionist: Symon Culpan
Projectionist: Allan Foster
Projectionist: Tom Perkins
Projectionist: Andrew Walker
Projectionist: Jennifer Weston-Beyer
THANKS
Steve Abbott, Adventure Pictures (Christopher
Sheppard, Mike Manzi, Clare Holden), Austrian
Filmmuseum (Alexander Horwath, Regina
Schlagnitweit), bfi (Fleur Buckley, Bryony Dixon, Jan
Faull, James King, Isabel Shapiro George Watson)
Lucius Barre, Darius Battiwalla, James Benning, Jo Blair
(Institute of Contemporary Arts), Neil Brand, Kitty
Cleary (Museum of Modern Art), Mark Cousins, Adam
Dawtrey, Marjolein den Bakker (Filmhouse), The Dodge
Brothers, Tony Earnshaw, Graham Fellows, David
Fenster, Raisa Fomina (Intercinema), Karpo Godina,
Joe Goff, Sheldon Hall, Sarah Hatton (Universal),
Greg Hobson, Independent Cinema Office (David Sin,
Kate Taylor, Simon Ward), Alexander Jacoby, Marcel
Karst (Artificial Eye/Curzon Film World), Tomoko
Kidahashi, Gabe Klinger, Masahiro Kobayashi, Rachael
Koczan (Liongate Films), Bill Lawrence, Pablo Llorca
(La Cicatriz), Fahad Mustafa, Jurij Meden (Slovenian
Cinematheque), Metamono (Jono Podmore, Paul
Conboy; Mark Hill), Ben Metcalf (Entertainment One),
Rona Murray, Susan Meehan (Daiwa Anglo-Japanese
Foundation), Tamaki Okamoto (CaRTe bLaNChe),
Chiaki Omori (Shochiku Co., Ltd), Joan Parsons, Martin
Pawley (Zeitun Films), Picturehouses (Mike Matthews,
Paul Ridd), Jono Podmore (Metamono), Stefan Popescu
(Sydney Underground Film Festival) Guillaume
Protsenko (Cinetrain), Rada Film Group (Gregory S
Jones, Michèle Stephenson), Nick Sarson, Amy Seimetz,
Damian Spandley (Metrodome), Rory Steele (The
Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation) Junko Takekawa
(Japan Foundation UK), Mark Truesdale (Park Circus),
Michael Wailes (Vertigo Films), Keith Withall
All National Media Museum Members.
Particular thanks also to the directors and
producers of the selected films, and to all of
the other filmmakers who submitted films
for consideration.
Film selection and commentary by:
Rebecca Hill, Robert Nevitt, Michael Pattison,
Tom Vincent and Neil Young.
Festival identity:
Design by David Doran
Animated trailer by Curve Agency
Catalogue and publicity materials design
Sally Walker Design
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NOTES
NOTES
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NOTES
NOTES
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INDEX OF
FILMS AND
EVENTS
Escape From Tomorrow
The Escapist
Everybody Street
Exhibition
Fairytale of the Three Bears
A Fallible Girl
Family programme: Easy Street and
The Immigrant with live piano
Filmmakers’ Weekend
Filth
Flo
Ginger & Rosa
The Gold Diggers
The Green Serpent
Greenland Unrealised
Hello Sunshine
Here I Am, Here I Am Not
Holiday
In My Corner
It’s Nice Up North
James Benning CalArts Harvest
James Benning on campus
The Joycean Society
Just Say Hi
Just the Way it Is
Karaoke Girl
The Kiss
L.I.E.
Lada
Lasting Winter
Lilting
Lineaus Lorette
Locke
Love, Love, Love
The Lunchbox
The Madness of King George
The Man Who Cried
Manhunter
Modern Times
Mother, I Love You
Mountain in Shadow
Mouton
Moving
Neon Spread
Never Die
Niche in the Market
Orlando
Phantom
Powerless
20th Edition Surprise Sneaky Show
American Promise
Aningaaq
The Anatomy of a Film
Auto Bambina
European Features and Shine awards
presentation and screening
Bad Milo
Banya
Barre’$ Silence
Before the Winter Chill
Beyond the Edge 3D
The Birth of a Flower
Blacksmith
Blow Job
Blue Ruin
BNSF
The Borderlands
A Bouquet of Cactus
The Bourne Supremacy
Bradford - Halifax - Leeds
Brian Cox Screentalk
British Birds of Prey
Brother
Cadet
casting a glance
The Castle of Sand
Charles Urban collection tour
Charlie Says
Cheap Thrills
Cheese Mites (or What the Professor Saw
in his Cheese)
City of Film events
Class Enemy
The Coalminer’s Day
Comfortable
Costa da Morte
The Demon
Deseret
Diego Star
The Dirties
The Dodge Brothers and Neil Brand
Accompany Hell’s Hinges
Double Graffiti
Double Play: James Benning and
Richard Linklater
Early short films by Sally Potter
El Futuro
The Emigrant
p.92
p.14
p.31
p.73
p.115
p.48-51
p.103
p.118
p.15
p.16
p.17
p.109
p.28
p.80
p.18
p.77
p.102
p.19
p.60
p.93
p.56
p.109
p.20
p.21
p.79
p.89
p.107
p.33
p.103
p.109
p.112-113
p.21
p.22
p.115
p.23
p.89
p.79
p.24
p.102
p.124
p.115
p.25
p.68
p.26
p.41
p.101
p.59
p.27
p.28
p.118
p.29
p.134
p.129-131
p.115
p.27
p.73
p.70
p.118
p.31
p.37
p.30
p.116
p.34
p.127
p.81
p.81
p.31
p.44
p.118
p.32
p.16
p.59
p.119
p.24
p.33
p.17
p.13
p.119
p.12
p.93
p.71
p.58
p.135
p.34
p.23
p.35
p.36
p.116
p.37
p.33
p.70
p.38
p.39
Prepare for the Enlightenment
Rage
Ricardo Bär
Route of the Moon
Rushmore
Sally Potter in conversation
Secrets of Nature with live music by Metamono
The Shadow Within
Sleep
Small Little Things
Stakeout
Stay the Same
A Story of Children and Film
The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears
The Strength and Agility of Insects
The Tango Lesson
Terra
TIMECODE: Richard Jobson
To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly
Tokyo Dreams
Touch
Tracks
Tree Trap
The Triplet
Twenty Cigarettes
Velorama
Virgin Media Best of BIFF
The Visitor
Whale Valley
Wonder
The Year of the Sex Olympics
Yes
Zero Focus
Zima
p.116
p.72
p.40
p.41
p.60
p.62
p.110
p.88
p.80
p.18
p.87
p.26
p.42
p.43
p.109
p.71
p.15
p.125
p.109
p.38
p.12
p.44
p.40
p.45
p.78
p.46
p.92
p.30
p.32
p.43
p.58
p.72
p.88
p.119
BIFF INFO
154
155
.....................................................................
2O
D
R
O
F
D
A
B R R N AT I O N A L
TH
L
A
V
INTE
I
T
F E S APRIL 2O14
M
L
F I 7 MARCH - 6
2
I N PA RT N E R S H I P W I T H
THURSDAY 27 MARCH
TIME EVENT
VENUE
19.30 The Lunchbox + Touch (106mins)
PV
FRIDAY 28 MARCH
PAGE NO.
p.12
TIME EVENT
VENUE
PAGE NO.
13.30 Before The Winter Chill + The Kiss (111mins)
PV
p.16
15.10 Ricardo Bär + Tree Trap (111mins)
IMAX
p.40
15.35 Route of the Moon + The Emigrant (90mins)
PV
p.41
17.45 Never Die + Hello Sunshine (102mins)
IMAX
p.37
18.00 Phantom + Tokyo Dreams (86mins)
PV
p.38
18.10 American Promise (140mins) CB
p.14
19.00 Velorama (60mins)
BC
p.46
19.45 Blue Ruin + Small Little Things + To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly (120mins)PV
p.18
20.05 Here I Am, Here I'm Not + The Visitor (104mins)
IMAXp.30
20.45 The Year of the Sex Olympics (105mins)
CB
p.58
22.10 Escape From Tomorrow + Holiday + Neon Spread (101mins)
PV
p.101
Whenever possible, all films will be preceded by a short introduction
O F F I C I A L S E L E C T I ON
PEOPLE
C LO S E - U P S
SPECIAL EVENTS
PV
CB
IMAX
IG
BC
HPPH
UOB
AZ
Pictureville
Cubby Broccoli
IMAX
Impressions Gallery
Bradford Cathedral
Hyde Park Picture House
University of Bradford
Action Zone
BIFF INFO
156
.....................................................................
SATURDAY 29 MARCH
VENUE
9.00
CB
Filmmakers' Weekend
MONDAY 31 MARCH
TIME EVENT
BIFF INFO
PAGE NO.
p.129
157
.....................................................................
TIME EVENT
VENUE
13.00 The Anatomy of a Film
UOB
PAGE NO.
p.73
10.25 Shine short films (100mins)
PV
p.50
13.35 Exhibition + Blacksmith + British Birds of Prey (120mins)
CB
p.28
12.55 Modern Times (87mins)
PV
p.135
13.40 Diego Star + Lasting Winter (109mins)
PV
p.24
13.10 Early short films by Sally Potter (77mins)
CB
p.68
15.50 Mother, I Love You + In My Corner (98mins)
PV
p.34
14.45 American Promise (140mins)
PV
p.14
15.55 Costa da Morte + Mountain In Shadow (93mins)
CB
p.23
15.55 Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater (70mins)
CB
p.25
16.15 A Bouquet of Cactus + Fairytale of the Three Bears (105mins)
IMAXp.19
17.20 Manhunter (119mins)
PV
p.58
18.00 TIMECODE: Richard Jobson (90mins)
AZ
p.125
17.30 A Story of Children and Film (106mins)
CB
p.42
18.05 L.I.E. (97mins)
CB
p.59
18.00 20th Edition Surprise Sneaky Show
????
p.92
18.15 Before The Winter Chill + The Kiss (111mins)
PV
p.16
19.40 A Fallible Girl + Zima + The Strength and Agility of Insects(125mins)PV
p.29
18.15 Barre'$ Silence + Terra (80mins)
IMAX
p.15
20.00 Lilting + Charlie Says + Niche in the Market (115mins)
CB
p.33
20.20 Orlando (93mins)
PV
p.70
20.15 El Futuro + Stay the Same (86mins)
IMAX
p.26
20.25 Class Enemy + Cadet (125mins)
CB
p.21
22.00 The Borderlands + Double Graffiti (100mins)
PV
p.102
20.30 The Lunchbox + Touch (106mins)
IMAX
p.12
SUNDAY 30 MARCH
TUESDAY 1 APRIL
TIME EVENT
VENUE
9.30
CB
p.129
13.30 Blue Ruin + Small LittleThings +To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly (120mins) CB
p.18
12.00 Double-bill: Easy Street and The Immigrant (54mins)
PV
p.134
13.30 Tracks + Just Say Hi (112mins)
PV
p.44
13.30 The Escapist (102mins)
PV
p.59
15.40Mouton + Banya (113mins)
PV
p.35
Filmmakers' Weekend
PAGE NO.
TIME EVENT
VENUE
PAGE NO.
13.45 The Gold Diggers (89mins)
CB
p.70
15.50 Never Die + Hello Sunshine (102mins)
CB
p.37
HPPH
p.134
17.50 The Tango Lesson (100mins)
CB
p.71
15.30Brother +The Green Serpent ofVodka, Men and Distilled Dreams (116mins)PVp.20
17.55Moving (124mins)
PVp.36
15.45 Twenty Cigarettes (99mins)
CB
p.78
18.00 Class Enemy + Cadet (125mins)
HPPH
p.21
17.45 Beyond the Edge 3D + Lineaus Lorette + Cheese Mites (111mins) PV
p.17
18.30 The Joycean Society + Greenland Unrealised + Aningaaq (69mins) IMAX
p.31
17.55 Sally Potter in conversation (90mins)
CB
p.63
20.15 Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater (70mins)
IMAX
p.25
18.00 The Coal Miner’s Day + Love Love Love (91mins)
IMAX
p.22
20.30 Zero Focus + talk (115mins)
CB
p.88
20.00 Everybody Street + Flo (93mins)
CB
p.27
20.15 The Madness of King George + Bradford-Halifax-Leeds (116mins) PV
p.93
20.30 Karaoke Girl + Whale Valley (92mins)
p.32
PV
158
BIFF INFO
.....................................................................
WEDNESDAY 2 APRIL
TIME EVENT
FRIDAY 4 APRIL
VENUE
12.50 Beyond the Edge 3D + Lineaus Lorette + Cheese Mites (111mins) PV
BIFF INFO
PAGE NO.
p.17
159
.....................................................................
TIME EVENT
VENUE
13.40 Ricardo Bär + Tree Trap (111mins)
CB
PAGE NO.
p.40
15.00 James Benning on campus
UOB
p.81
13.50Powerless + Lada (103mins)
PVp.39
15.50 Brother (96mins)
CB
p.20
15.50 The Coal Miner's Day + Love, Love, Love (91mins)
CB
p.22
16.00 Here I Am, Here I'm Not + The Visitor (104mins)
PV
p.30
15.55 El Futuro + Stay the Same (86mins)
PV
p.26
18.15 Sleep + Blow Job (76mins)
CB
p.80
17.50 Karaoke Girl + Whale Valley (92mins)
PV
p.32
18.15 Phantom + Tokyo Dreams (86mins)
IMAXp.38
17.55 Costa da Morte + Mountain In Shadow (95mins)
IMAXp.23
18.20 The Man Who Cried (100mins)
PV
p.71
18.05 Rage (98mins)
CB
p.72
20.15 Stakeout (116mins)
CB
p.87
20.00 The Strange Colour of + Wonder + The Birth of a Flower (120mins) PV
p.43
20.30Exhibition + Blacksmith + British Birds of Prey (120mins)
PV
p.28
20.05 The Castle of Sand (143mins)
p.89
20.30 Shine short films (94mins)
IMAX
p.50
THURSDAY 3 APRIL
CB
22.15 Bad Milo + Auto Bambina (89mins)
PV
p.103
22.20 The Triplet + Just the way it is... (101mins)
IMAX
p.45
SATURDAY 5 APRIL
TIME EVENT
VENUE
PAGE NO.
13.20 The Triplet + Just the way it is... (101mins)
PV
p.45
TIME EVENT
VENUE
14.50 Casting a Glance + Deseret (162mins)
CB
p.79
PV
p.134
15.45 Barre'$ Silence + Terra (80mins)
IMAX
p.15
13.30 BNSF (193mins)
PV
p.77
17.55 Yes (100mins)
CB
p.72
14.00 Charles Urban collection tour
INSIGHT
p.107
18.00 Diego Star + Lasting Winter (109mins)
IMAX
p.24
18.00 Everybody Street + Flo (93mins)
IGp.27
PAGE NO.
14.20 The Demon (110mins)
CB
p.89
17.40 It's Nice Up North + John Shuttleworth (140mins)
CB
p.127
18.45 The Dodge Brothers & Neil Brand accompany Hell's Hinges (64mins) PV
p.124
18.25 Rushmore (93mins)
PV
p.60
20.05 The Shadow Within (97mins)
p.88
18.35 Ginger & Rosa (90mins)
IMAX
p.73
20.40 The Joycean Society + Greenland Unrealised + Aningaaq (69mins) IMAX
p.31
20.15 A Fallible Girl + Zima + The Strength and Agility of Insects (125mins) PV
p.29
20.45 Tracks + Just Say Hi (112mins)
p.44
20.20 A Bouquet of Cactus + Fairytale of the Three Bears (115mins)
IMAX
p.19
p.102
21.00 Secrets of Nature with Metamono (90mins)
CB
p.110
22.35 Cheap Thrills + Filth (87mins)
PV
p.103
CB
PV
22.55 The Dirties + Prepare for the Enlightenment + Comfortable (89mins) PV
160
BIFF INFO
.....................................................................
SUNDAY 6 APRIL
TIME EVENT
VENUE
PAGE NO.
11.00 Mouton + Banya (113mins)
CB
p.35
11.30 Modern Times (87mins)
PV
p.135
13.30 James Benning CalArts Harvest (120mins)
CB
p.81
14.00 Mother, I Love You + In My Corner (98mins)
PV
p.34
15.45 Awards presentation and screening
CB
p.48
15.55 The Bourne Supremacy (108mins)
PV
p.60
16.00 Virgin Media Best of BIFF winning film + Touch
IMAX
p.92
18.25 Powerless + Lada (103mins)
IMAX
p.39
18.30 Brian Cox screentalk (90mins)
PV
p.56
18.35 Route of the Moon + The Emigrant (90mins)
CB
p.41
20.30 Locke (87mins)
PV
p.13
Don’t miss Widescreen Weekend –
10-13 April 2014
Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD1 1NQ
Box Office 0844 856 3797
All programme information is correct at the time of going to print.
Please check www.bradfordfilmfestival.org.uk for updates

the BIFF 2014 brochure

Transcription

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