the 2007 brochure

Transcription

the 2007 brochure

9-24 March 2007
Artistic Director’s Introduction
Programme at a Glance
Festival Awards
The Shine Jury
Opening Night Gala
Closing Night Gala
3
4
6
8
10
11
FILMS
Premieres & Previews
Uncharted States of America
CineFile
13
73
89
SPECIAL GUESTS
Ken Loach
Michael Parkinson
Patrick Keiller
Godfrey Reggio
Trudie Styler
David Arnold
Alan Bennett
Denis Dercourt
Terence Davies
Euan Lloyd
104
110
112
114
118
119
120
122
124
126
SPECIAL EVENTS
Crash Symposium
3rd Film & Music Conference
Industry Weekend
Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards
Pandora’s Box + Live Music
128
130
132
134
136
Widescreen Weekend
TV Heaven
The Shine Award
Exhibition: Roy Alon
Family Events
Thanks...
General Information
Festival Staff
Festival Diary
Index of Films
Index of Directors
139
147
152
154
156
158
159
160
162
164
166
BRADFORD INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 1
Bradford International Film Festival 2007 is generously
supported by the following funders and sponsors:
To discuss sponsorship opportunities for this and other museum events please contact
Helen Hawney on 01274 203330 or email [email protected]
Introduction
I am reliably informed that 13 is a difficult age...
But the onset of ‘the terrible teens’ doesn’t just relate to children. Oh no. Film festivals work to the
same formula: as they get older, they become a little more difficult to control. The Bradford
International Film Festival has now been running since 1995 and it officially enters its teenage years
in 2007. And, just like an awkward child who prefers doing anything other than the bidding of boring
old Mum and Dad, so the Festival’s on-going expansion leads to something akin to growing pains.
Still, there is a saying among film industry folk that film festivals do well to last more than five years.
Doing so sets them apart from other ventures that quickly rise and just as quickly disappear. This year
the Bradford International Film Festival notches up 13 years – longer than some, not as long as others,
but a healthy age for any developing festival.
Since the Festival began 12 years ago the number of screenings and special guests have increased
year-on-year. In 1995 we were proud to welcome Alan Bennett when he accompanied the opening
night screening of The Madness of King George. Twelve years later he’s back amongst a line-up of
filmmakers and celebrities that includes Ken Loach, Michael Parkinson, Terence Davies, Euan Lloyd,
Trudie Styler, David Arnold, Denis Dercourt, Patrick Keiller and Godfrey Reggio.
And in keeping with our tradition of digging up new and exciting talent we are delighted to unveil
Uncharted States of America, a strand dedicated to emerging directors from the American
independent circuit, while CineFile, our trawl through documentaries about movies and filmmakers,
also makes an appearance.
For the first time this year the Festival will host an Industry Weekend – two days crammed with
events and masterclasses for the region’s filmmakers. We are grateful for the support of Guerilla
Films, Screen Yorkshire, Propeller TV, Skillset, Regional Language Network and our various guest
speakers, and hope that this busy, buzzy gathering will become a regular feature.
Finally, this year the Bradford Film Festival became the
Bradford International Film Festival. Some would argue
that it’s just a word; others in the industry have pointed to
the inclusion of the word ‘international’ as signifying that
Bradford has taken a mighty step forward in joining a
global community of similar events. In reality it is probably
‘just a word’, but if ‘international’ helps to spread the name
and reputation of Bradford, then we’re all for it.
Welcome to the Bradford International Film Festival
and another packed 16 days of movies.
Tony Earnshaw,
Artistic Director
9-24 March 2007
INTRODUCTION 3
Programme at a glance
CINEFILE
INDUSTRY WEEKEND
SCREENTALKS
A small but eclectic documentary strand, CineFile is a
kaleidoscopic collection of films that record and
document the world of movies and moviemakers.
A weekend of events and masterclasses for the region’s
filmmakers offering vital networking opportunities between
filmmakers and industry professionals. Book now to avoid
disappointment!
Meet the people who helped make cinema great in our
annual series of live on-stage interviews. Guests this year
include Koyaanisqatsi creator Godfrey Reggio, architectturned-filmmaker Patrick Keiller, writer/director Terence
Davies and chat show king Michael Parkinson. Other guests
participating in interviews include Alan Bennett, Ken Loach,
Denis Dercourt, David Arnold, Euan Lloyd and Trudie Styler.
CRASH CINEMA 6
A unique, stimulating and thought-provoking event that
considers the effects of edgy and often controversial
cinema such as the ‘mondo’ phenomenon.
DENIS DERCOURT RETROSPECTIVE
Denis Dercourt has made a series of films that highlight
his profession in music education, but equally are
fascinating and enjoyable stories with a twist on
traditional genres. He is a great developing European
talent and we are delighted to welcome him to Bradford.
FAMILY EVENTS
Morning kids’ screenings, workshops and storytelling
sessions.
FILM AND MUSIC CONFERENCE
Academic paper sessions, a round-table discussion and a
keynote interview with a leading practitioner of film
music. Among this year’s special guests are film composer
David Arnold and orchestrator Gary Carpenter
GODFREY REGGIO RETROSPECTIVE
Few directors of modern cinema have captured the
tensions between nature and industrialisation, humans
and animals, entertainment and education as effectively
as Godfrey Reggio. The cult filmmaker and academic
behind the acclaimed ‘Qatsi’ trilogy receives a complete
retrospective of his work to date.
4 PROGRAMME AT A GLANCE
KEN LOACH RETROSPECTIVE
We are delighted to present this retrospective of the work of
one of the great modern British filmmakers. Ken Loach will
join us on the evening of Monday 19 March for a Screentalk
interview in Pictureville Cinema.
KRASZNA-KRAUSZ BOOK AWARDS
The Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards celebrate and
acknowledge the best literature about the still and moving
image. Now administered by the National Media Museum,
this year’s awards will be presented by Alan Bennett.
MICHAEL PARKINSON
RETROSPECTIVE
THE SHINE AWARD
The Shine Jury will convene on March 10 to select the best
new short film from the hundreds submitted to BIFF every
year. The Shine Award will be presented on March 24 – the
final day of the festival.
TERENCE DAVIES RETROSPECTIVE
We are pleased to welcome one of Britain’s greatest living
filmmakers to the festival to discuss his work to date. Terence
Davies will also receive the BIFF Fellowship Award. His
Screentalk interview takes place on Sunday 11 March.
The undisputed doyen of the British talk show, Michael
Parkinson brought intelligence, wit and a keen journalistic
perspective to interviews with celebrities from the golden
age of cinema. His Screentalk interview takes place in
Pictureville Cinema on Wednesday 14 March.
TV HEAVEN
PATRICK KEILLER RETROSPECTIVE
UNCHARTED STATES OF AMERICA
The first UK retrospective of the work of architect-turnedfilmmaker Patrick Keiller includes a rare Screentalk interview
with the man himself on Tuesday 13 March.
PREMIERES & PREVIEWS
The very best of new cinema from both independent
producers and commercial studios, our Premieres &
Previews strand offers a taste of what’s to come and
showcases indie movies that might otherwise not be seen in
the UK. Our line-up this year includes releases from the UK,
central Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, Latin
America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and
Hong Kong.
Our annual trawl through the vaults. Gems this year include
Alan Bennett comedies and dramas, documentaries on James
Mason, J.B. Priestley and James Bond, TV plays from Graham
Greene and a series of classic Parkinson interviews.
Indie movies you’ve never seen, made by people you’ve
probably never heard of. These filmmakers could be the Big
News of tomorrow.
WIDESCREEN WEEKEND
Wallow in the great old widescreen movies of yesteryear as
we present some extremely rare titles and old favourites.
Films include Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines,
Cleopatra and Shalako. Guests will include producer Euan
Lloyd and composer David Arnold.
PROGRAMME AT A GLANCE 5
Festival Awards
The BIFF Lifetime Achievement Award
2007 Ken Loach
2006 Malcolm McDowell
2005 Jenny Agutter
2004 Ian Carmichael
2003 Jean Simmons
2002 Jack Cardiff
2001 Richard Attenborough
The BIFF Fellowship
2007 Terence Davies
2006 Eric Sykes
Shine People’s Choice Award
The winner is chosen via audience votes.
2003 Carine Tardieu, France, Les Baisers des autres (Others’ Kisses)
2001 Hardeep Singh, Great Britain, The Drop
1998 Jophi Ries, Germany, Marco at Work
Shine Feature Film Award
2005 No award given
2004 No award given
2003 No award given
2002 No award given
2001 Lisa et Andre (Denis Dercourt, France)
2000 The Waiting (Simon Bovey, Great Britain)
The Shine Short Film Award
Treading the borders yet pushing the boundaries
Inaugurated in 1998, Shine is the short film platform in the Bradford Film Festival. This
international forum showcases the five films short-listed for the Shine Award - our
competition for best international film. Works featured in competition are selected from
hundreds of entries submitted to the festival each year.
The focus of the Shine Award is to honour the best short by an emerging European
director, and to support innovation and originality. Films short-listed for the Shine Award
are selected because they succeed in pushing the short film further, ranging from idea
and concept to filmmaking process and presentation. Essentially, they add something
extra and are doing something a little different with the form of the short film.
2006 Igor Pejic, France, L’Armée du Bonheur (Army of Happiness)
2006 Avie Luthra, Great Britain, Lucky
2005 No award given
2004 Benjamin Diez, Germany, Druckbolzen (Pressure Bolt)
2003 Anna Ehnsiö, Sweden, The Rift
2002 Brian Percival, Great Britain, About a Girl
2001 Emmanuel Jespers, Belgium, Le Derniere Rêve (The Last Dream)
2000 Guillaume Lecoquierre, France, Pixie
1999 Jonathan Hacker, Great Britain, The Short Walk
1998 Jophi Ries, Germany, Marco at Work
The Bafta North Crystal Mask
Inaugurated in 2004 “in recognition of outstanding achievement within the motion
picture industry”, the first Bafta North Crystal Mask was presented to scriptwriter and
filmmaker Simon Beaufoy. The writer of The Full Monty, Among Giants and The Darkest
Light (which he also co-directed), Yorkshire-born Beaufoy has been at the forefront of
digital filmmaking and exhibition. His pursuit of this new technology culminated in the
first premiere of a feature film on the internet with Footprint Film’s This is Not a Love
Song in 2003.
2004 Simon Beaufoy
6 BRADFORD INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
The Shine Jury
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON (Chairman)
LIZ RYMER
James Cameron-Wilson has been writing about film for more than 30 years. Since
1986, he has been editor of Film Review Annual, the world’s longest-running film
publication, and is the author of the books The Moviegoers’ Quiz Book (written in
collaboration with F. Maurice Speed), CineStars, The Cinema of Robert De Niro, Young
Hollywood and Hollywood: The New Generation. He has been a habitual face on Sky
TV since its inception (when he was a consultant and presenter on the daily Movie
Show), has been syndicated critic for BBC Radio, a feature writer for The Times and
was a regular presenter of the Radio 2 Arts Programme. He is currently critic for the
magazines Film Review, TwentyFour7 and What’s On in London and still regularly
reviews for radio and television. He has also written on art, theatre, rock music and
the paranormal.
Liz Rymer has been a key member of the Yorkshire region’s film community for almost
20 years. She was one of the founding directors of Leeds International Film Festival and
became sole director in 1995. In 1999 she became Chief Executive of Yorkshire Screen
Commission (YSC), a body that encouraged and supported production in the region,
eventually becoming an important resource for upcoming talent on both sides of the
camera. She was instrumental in creating the agency that would become Screen
Yorkshire, the UK Film Council’s regional development agency for film and media. She
left in 2002 to pursue her writing and producing interests; her first feature script was
optioned in 2006 and will be filmed in Scotland. Liz is also producing Lipgloss, a feature
based in Sheffield. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Film Industry and Practice at
Trinity & All Saints’ College, Leeds, and an external examiner for the Screenwriting MA
at Leeds Metropolitan University
JACK GOLD
A filmmaker for five decades, Jack Gold is perhaps best known for the multi awardwinning play The Naked Civil Servant (1975), his classic portrayal of the flamboyant
homosexual Quentin Crisp. Having studied law at London University he later joined
the BBC’s Tonight show as an editor. During the 1960s he helmed a string of
documentaries and TV plays including the BAFTA-winning anti-foxhunting film
Death in the Morning. His feature film debut came with The Bofors Gun; he would
go on to direct The National Health, Who? Aces High, The Medusa Touch and The
Chain. Gold’s television work has been prolific, eclectic and exceptional. Alongside
the Crisp biopic he directed Praying Mantis, Macbeth, Sakharov, Escape from Sobibor,
Murrow, Stones for Ibarra, The Return of the Native, Goodnight, Mr. Tom and The
Remorseful Day, the final episode in the long-running Inspector Morse series.
DAVID LASCELLES
David Lascelles is an independent film producer of drama for television and the
cinema. His television credits include the ever-popular Inspector Morse (which won a
BAFTA for Best Television Series in 1991), Moll Flanders for Granada TV and Second
Sight for the BBC. His cinema credits include the Richard Loncraine/Ian McKellen film
of Shakespeare’s Richard III (as Line Producer) and The Wisdom of Crocodiles. He is
currently developing an animated feature film, Grass Roots, aimed at teenagers. He is
also Chairman of the Harewood House Trust and owner of the Harewood Estate. For
the first time he is combining these roles with his production experience to bring
Carnival Messiah back to Yorkshire for a two-week run in a big top in the grounds of
Harewood in September 2007, as part of the celebration of the bi-centenary of the
Abolition of the Slave Trade.
NEIL YOUNG
International Consultant for the Bradford Film Festival, Neil Young is also Chairman of
the Guild of Regional Film Writers and a member of the international film critics’ union
FIPRESCI. Born in Easington, County Durham, in 1971, he is a freelance journalist who
broadcasts a regular film review slot on BBC Radio. He writes weekly for the longrunning political magazine Tribune (London), and daily for the website Jigsaw Lounge.
A graduate of Manchester University, he has written extensively on film for a wide
range of publications including The Independent (London), City Life (Manchester)
CinemaScope (Toronto), Impact, Hotdog, Dazed and Confused and Critical Quarterly. He
has served on the main-competition juries at film festivals including Ljubljana
(Slovenia), Rotterdam (Netherlands) and Tromso (Norway). He is a programming
advisor for the Ljubljana and Tromso events, and also for film festivals in Izola
(Slovenia: Kino Otok) and Linz (Austria: Crossing Europe). He attends numerous film
festivals all over Europe every year, and resides in Sunderland.
MICHAEL APTED
Born: 10 February, 1941
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire,
England
Selected filmography
1972 The Triple Echo
1974 Stardust
1977 The Squeeze
1979 Agatha
1980 Coal Miner’s Daughter
1981 Continental Divide
1983 Gorky Park
1987 Critical Condition
1989 Gorillas in the Mist
1991 Class Action
1992 Thunderheart
1992 Incident at Oglala
1994 Blink
1994 Nell
1996 Extreme Measures
1999 The World Is Not Enough
2001 Enigma
2006 Amazing Grace
OPENING NIGHT UK PREMIERE
CLOSING NIGHT GALA
Friday 9 March 9pm
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Michael Apted GB 2006 116 mins (adv PG)
Ioan Gruffud, Romola Garai, Benedict Cumberbatch, Albert Finney, Michael Gambon, Rufus
Sewell, Youssou N’Dour, Ciaran Hinds, Toby Jones, Nicholas Farrell, Sylvestra Le Touzel
Saturday 24 March 8.15pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Shane Meadows GB 2006 100 mins (18)
Thomas Turgoose, Jo Hartley, Joseph Gilgun, Stephen Graham, Frank Harper
AMAZING GRACE
England, 1797. Exhausted by his crusading campaign to bring an end to the British Empire’s
tradition of slavery, the young MP William Wilberforce retreats to his friends’ home to
recuperate. Eight long years have passed since the 34-year-old Yorkshireman took up the
fight. On the way he has been roundly defeated. The burden of carrying the debate and
pursuing his anti-slavery bill has taken its toll.
History shows that Wilberforce returned to the fray and, with a combination of obsession
and evangelical zeal, raised sufficient support to eventually win the day. That he was
unorthodox cannot be denied: he was a God-fearing radical, an idealist and a humanitarian
in a world of state sanctioned cruelty. That alone made him a figure of ridicule; his pursuit
of an end to the trade of human beings as commerce made him a pariah.
In this sumptuous re-telling – part history lesson, part conscience-pricker – director
Michael Apted and screenwriter Steven Knight journey deep into the heart of 18th century
British politics and present a Machiavellian world of intrigue and skulduggery that, one
assumes, might not be too different from today. Wilberforce, played with warm and a
touch of naivety by Ioan Gruffud, is persuaded to embark on his quest by friend and
political soulmate William Pitt (Cumberbatch) but finds himself abandoned when his
tireless campaigning threatens to embarrass his ambitious friend.
Wilberforce emerges as a truly heroic figure – the original lone voice who, through
perseverance, attrition and sheer bloody-minded slog forced an empire to listen to its
collective conscience. It is appropriate that Amazing Grace is given its release in 2007 as
the year marks the bicentenary of the introduction of a bill that made it illegal for British
ships to transport slaves. The moment when Wilberforce rolls out (literally) his masterplan
packs a real emotional punch and highlights the personal and professional sacrifices he
made to get there. At its end, Amazing Grace is a gutsy tale of resilience in the face of
intolerance that plucks at the heartstrings. Tony Earnshaw
We hope to be joined by director Michael Apted for this Gala UK Premiere of Amazing Grace.
Print source:
Momentum Pictures
2nd Floor, 184-192 Drummond Street, London, NW1 3HP, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 388 1100
www.momentumpictures.co.uk
10 OPENING NIGHT GALA
Courtesy of Momentum Pictures
THIS IS ENGLAND
An explosive montage of ‘80s life opens this powerful tale of innocence and
corruption of innocence in Thatcher’s Britain: riots, skinheads, war, Rubik Cubes and
leg-warmers, the Royal wedding and a resurgent National Front. Following up Dead
Man’s Shoes (2004) can’t have been easy, but once again writer/director Meadows
shows his amazing ability to capture the genuine texture of ordinary life, yet finds in
it something transcendent.
For 12-year-old Shaun (Turgoose), life is tough: his father’s been killed in the
Falklands, he’s taunted, punched and punished at school. One day he happens upon
a group of skinheads who, despite daunting first appearances, take him under their
friendly wing. The summer passes idyllically, as the gang larks about in the scrubby
fields and derelict housing. Shaun gets his first smoke and his first snog. Life is at
last good. But the Eden-like status quo comes to an abrupt end with the arrival back
from prison of former group member Compo (Graham). He’s volatile and violent,
with a brutal new companion and ideas he’s picked up inside about who actually
“belongs” in England and who doesn’t...
One of the hallmarks of Meadows’ career to date has been his terrific rapport with
juvenile actors: even by these high standards, however, he elicits a stunning debut
from young Turgoose. His comic timing is terrific - there are lots of laughs along the
way - but as ever Meadows is expert at turning (on a sixpence) from high comedy to
shocking violence, making his film both a gut-wrenching experience and also a warm
portrait of boyhood and masculine bonding. A vindication of the peaceful, anti-racist
roots of the skinhead movement, and a peek at the sinister powers behind its
corruption, it sums up Meadows’ view of the ordinary people of England in all their
dangerous vulnerability. Sheila Seacroft
We hope producer Mark Herbert, actors Thomas Turgoose and Stephen Graham and
director Shane Meadows (subject to filming commitments) will join us to introduce this
BIFF2007 gala screening of This is England and participate in a post-screening Screentalk
interview.
Print source:
Optimum Releasing
22 Newman Street, London, W1T 1PH, United Kingdom.
Tel: 00 44 207 637 5408
E-mail: [email protected]
Courtesy of Optimum Releasing
UK PREMIERE
KADOGO
Dir. Daniel Lambo Belgium 2006
6 mins (adv 12A) Subtitles
Dimatsho Longonde Blaise, Lucie Finkin,
Uwamungu Cornelis
Mokili, a former Congolese child soldier,
has started a new life in Brussels. He has
a good job and a nice girlfriend. All is
well until Aziz, a member of his old
platoon, pays him an unexpected visit.
The vicious killer can’t seem to let go of
his old ways and pulls Mokili back into a
spiral of violence. Child soldiers are called
Kadogo in Congo. Kadogo is Swahili for
“Little thing of no importance”.
Contact: [email protected]
Potemkino
Aalststraat 79, Brussels 1000, Belgium
Tel: 00 32 2 477 216 098
CLOSING NIGHT GALA 11
Premieres and
Previews
UK PREMIERE
UK PREMIERE (NEW DIGITAL PRINT)
Wednesday 21 March 2pm Pictureville Cinema
Dirs. Marcin Ramocki, Justin Strawhand USA 2006 77 mins (adv 12A)
Some subtitles
Documentary with: Bit Shifter, Alex Galloway, Eddo Stern, teamtendo, Glomag
Wednesday 14 March 1.50pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Sidney Lumet USA 1957 95 mins (12A)
Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, E.G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Jack Warden, Robert
Webber, Martin Balsam, George Voscovec, Ed Binns, Joseph Sweeney, John Fiedler
The geek, so the saying goes, shall inherit the earth. And judging by 8-BIT, a criminally
watchable, dazzlingly eclectic, fresh-as-paint documentary that’s already causing a
major stir in digital circles, the process is well under way. Lovingly assembled by Justin
Strawhand and Marcin Ramocki - whose New Jersey based multi-media operation goes
by the name Mutation Engine - the film starts as a history of computer games before
tracing the development of computer-made music (original score by Bit Shifter, among
others) and exploring the wilder excesses of digital art.
Fifty years after its initial release, claustrophobic courtroom drama - or rather, juryroom drama - 12 Angry Men is firmly established as one of those rare films that finds
equal favour with critics and public alike, thanks partly to its frequent appearances in
our TV schedules. We’re therefore especially delighted to present 12 Angry Men in a
gleaming, digitally-restored new version - back up on the big screen where it
belongs.
8-BIT
THE VISITORS
(Die Besucher)
Dir. Ulrike Molsen Germany 2006
38 mins 10 secs (adv 15) Subtitles
Johanna Geissler, Myriam Schroeder, Dirk
Borchardt, Moritz Fuehrmann
Student Karla drifts through her days
working in a bar, longing for her
boyfriend who is abroad. Karla offers
Sugar a room, but she brings her
husband and son. They soon take over.
Sugar and her husband give two
contradictory stories about why they are
on the run. Both stories are very
plausible; both visitors very loveable.
Karla can’t see the truth. Ulrike Molsen’s
short drama is a well-made and slowburning story that focuses on a young
woman waking up to her real world.
Best actress (Winnipeg International
Film Festival)
Best Narrative Short/Best Female
Performance (Idaho Panhandle
International Film Festival)
Maedchen, die fluestern FILMS
Koepenicker Strasse 5, Berlin, 10997,
Germany
Tel: 00 39 30 61 62 67 55
14 PREMIERES AND PREVIEWS
The film first came to BIFF’s attention via ARTFORUM’s online magazine, where
zeitgeist-watcher Barbara London – media department curator at New York’s Museum
of Modern Art - included it (alongside Jia Zhang-Ke’s Still Life and Michel Gondry’s The
Science of Sleep) among her top five films of the year. Her citation in full: “A first feature
that is part rockumentary, part art exposé, and part culture-critical investigation, 8 BIT
cleverly ties together 1980s phenomena of the demo scene, chip-tune music, and
artists using ‘machinima’ and modified computer games.”
Though appetite-whetting, this heads-up didn’t really prepare us for the eye-popping
visual delights of the film itself - nor for the way Ramocki and Strawhand so carefully
ensure their material is accessible for general audiences (who may not know their bit
from their byte) while also catering to the most hardcore of ‘Second Lifer’ tech-nerds.
8-BIT may strike a particular chord, meanwhile, with anyone who grew up on the video
and arcade games of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Who’d have guessed that those
plinking-plonking, blocky Commodore and Spectrum games would, only a couple of
decades later, be the subject of such veneration and cultural analysis? Who, indeed,
would guess that the humble GameBoy console could, with only a little software
tweaking, become an underground global phenomenon - as a musical instrument?
Confused? Let 8-BIT be your guide to the recent past - and the technologies of
tomorrow... Neil Young
Production company:
mutationengine
285 West Side Avenue, Jersey City, NJ 07305, USA
Tel: 00 1 551 689 0615
www.8bitmovie.com
Courtesy of mutationengine
12 ANGRY MEN
There’s some irony in 12 Angry Men becoming a cathode-ray staple, of course: it was
originally written for the nascent medium, where it was broadcast in 1954. The
success of the ‘teleplay’ soon led to no less an eminence than Henry Fonda stepping
in as producer (in conjunction with the play’s author, Reginald Rose). Fonda delivers
one of his finest performances in one of his most iconic roles: having heard evidence
at the trial of an 18-year-old accused of patricide, Juror #8 - the epitome of decent,
articulate, honest liberalism - is the only one of the titular dozen to feel “reasonable
doubt”. Initially, the other 11 are mystified - some even outraged - by Juror #8’s
“stubbornness”. But as they examine the specifics of the case, they’re gradually
persuaded that things may not be quite so open-and-shut as they initially seem...
Anyone who’s performed jury service will have their own view of 12 Angry Men’s
veracity - but even those who reckon it a rosy-spectacled view of the justice system
admire the taut brilliance of the film’s design and execution. On his very first film as
director, Sidney Lumet - working in particularly close conjunction with veteran
cinematographer Boris Kaufman - achieved such wonders with such limited means
that he was rewarded with an Oscar nomination. Similarly recognition for each of his
superb cast wouldn’t have been excessive, but was of course impossible due to the
Academy’s strict regulations. Rough justice, if you like. Frank Mangus
UK PREMIERE
FLOWER BELOVED
(Älskade blomma)
Dir. Jakob Arevarn Sweden 2006
6 mins 43 secs (adv 12A) Subtitles
Benedicte Slendal Hansen, Daniel Lund
A distraught looking Frida sits in her
sombre apartment slowly descending
into despair. She is anxious about the
whereabouts of David, who she
believes will bring happiness back to
her life. But happiness isn’t always
what it seems.
N.ersmarksgatan 57, Umea, 903 44,
Sweden
Tel: 00 46 90 70 307 53 10
Print source:
Park Circus Limited
22-24 Woodlands Terrace, Glasgow, G3 6DF, Scotland
Tel: 00 44 141 332 2175
www.parkcircus.com
Courtesy of Park Circus Limited
PREMIERES AND PREVIEWS 15
UK PREMIERE
A ROOF OVER OUR HEADS
(Un acoperis deasupra coprolui)
Dir. Adrian Popovici Romania 2006 110 mins (adv 12A) Subtitles
Mara Nicolescu, Gabriela Butuc, Valentin Popescu, Alin Panc, Sorin Misiriantu,
Ovidiu Nicolescu, Marius Bodochi
UK PREMIERE
CENTSLESS
Dir. Kelsey Wander USA 2006
1 min (adv U) Animation
We have all had our bad ideas, but
putting those ideas into action
separates those who are and are not
senseless. When Benny sees the
biggest coin he has ever seen he does
not choose the best method of
obtaining it...
Shannon Farney
Special Projects Coordinator
Savannah College of Art and Design
3515 Montgomery Street, Savannah,
Georgia, 31405, USA
Tel: 00 1 914 525 8502
These are exciting times in Romanian cinema. In the wake of the bleakly funny
critical favourite The Death of Mr Lazarescu, films re-evaluating the 1989 overthrow
of the Ceausescu regime have hit the European film festival circuit over the past few
months. A Roof Over Our Heads takes a wry look at Romanian society - this time set
in a little known corner of the country, where the Danube meets the Black Sea. We’re
among reed beds, meandering streams, in an environment that hardly seems like
any previously seen in much of European cinema.
When Romania’s overcrowded asylums decide to discharge all patients suffering
‘merely’ from neurosis or depression in a cost-cutting exercise, two such individuals timid, sometime-suicidal Mona (Butuc) and down-to-earth, volatile Cati (Nicolescu) find they have nowhere to go. They form an unlikely alliance in adversity and set off
together into the world outside. Mona’s grandparents once left her a “house” in the
Danube Delta, so with no money off they go, Mona hoping it will have the charm of
the idyllic childhood visits there that she remembers. The Delta area proves dreamy,
laid-back and apparently laissez-faire - but it’s also peopled by drunks, wife-beaters,
an eccentric priest who’s the laughing stock of the community and a crazy but
benign old man who sleeps in a coffin. What’s more Mona’s “house” has no roof.
So despite sometimes over-warm welcomes from the locals, two young independent
women with their own ideas about life don’t fit in quite as well as Mona dreamed
they might, and all kinds of mischief ensues. Mihail Sarbusca’s glowing camerawork
captures the stark and the sublime delights of this land of flat-bottomed boats,
storks and starry, starry nights. The film moves from comedy to romance to drama
and back effortlessly, culminating in an exhilarating ending with all the spirit and
verve of Ridley Scott's Thelma and Louise. Sheila Seacroft
Production company:
Artis Film
59 Romulus Street, Sector 3, Bucharest, Romania
Tel: 00 40 1 322 36 48
www.artisfilm.ro
Courtesy of Artis Film
A SUMMER DAY
(Un jour d’été aka One Day In Summer)
Saturday 17 March 5.45pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. Franck Guerin France 2006 91 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Baptiste Bertin, Catherine Mouchet, Jean-François Stevenin, Theo Frilet, Elise Caron,
Philippe Fretun, Yann Peira
A perfectly-judged tale of passions, guilt and suspicion in rural France, A Summer Day winner of the International Critics’ Prize at November’s Mannheim-Heidelberg Film
Festival - is the impressively intricate and thought-provoking feature debut by writerdirector Guerin. The jurors at the German festival praised “that delightful touch of an
energetic young director... but it runs in a quiet tempo and has deep understanding
for complex human emotions... A beautifully composed film, in close contact with
many of the early works of the nouvelle vague... but it has a genuine, fresh touch of its
own. Franck Guérin is a new director who should be watched very closely.”
UK PREMIERE
His focus is firmly on 17-year-old Sebastien (Bertin), who’s long been best friends with
Mickael (Frilet), a self-assured lad from a rather wealthier background. The pair are
intermittently pally with Francis (Hillairet), son of local mayor Maurice (Stevenin). All
three boys are clearly still in the transition between youth and adulthood: dealing
with issues of identity and sexuality as they consider their futures. But when tragedy
strikes - in what initially seems like a freak accident - the repercussions extend beyond
the bereaved family, and far into the community...
A novelist consumed with guilt over his
previous relationship has increasing
nightmares which distort the line
between fantasy and reality. A well
written, performed and accomplished
drama.
Guerin’s script, co-written with Agnes Feuvre, skilfully plays with viewer expectations,
incorporating just enough elements from the thriller genre that, as the police
investigation begins we instinctively start looking for ‘clues’: examining motive,
opportunity, lines of possible cause and effect, manifestations of guilty conscience.
In the end, no conclusive answers are given - and part of the pleasure of A Summer
Day is that Guerin leaves so much to subjective interpretation, his slow-burning
atmospherics, aided by the strong performances, camerawork and eclectic score,
carrying us deftly along. The film is executed with likeable, low-key skill, reminding us
that, as a football coach remarks in the film’s very first scene, “good players don’t need
flashy gear”. Neil Young
THE NEW LIFE
Dir. Daniel Giambruno Australia 2006
10 mins (adv 15)
Oliver Yacoubian, Kaja Trøa
Jury’s Honourable Mention (Fano
International Film Festival, Italy)
New Dark Ages
2/20 Furber Road, Centennial Park,
New South Wales, 2021, Australia
Tel: 00 11 2 837 46865
Production Company:
Arte France
8, rue Marceau, Issy les Moulineaux 92785, France
Tel: 00 33 (0)1 55 00 71 57
www.artefrance.fr
Courtesy of Arte France
BORDER POST
THE BOSS OF IT ALL
(Karaula)
(Direktøren for det hele)
Thursday 15 March 4pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Rajko Grlic GB/Serbia-Montenegro/Croatia/Slovenia/Macedonia/BosniaHerzegovina 2006 94 mins (adv 18) Subtitles
Toni Gojanovic, Sergei Trifunovic, Emir Hadzihafisbegovic, Verica Nedeska, Bogdan
Diklic, Miodrag Fisekovic, Franjo Dijak
THE WAY WE PLAYED
(Kako smo se igrali)
Dir. Samir Mehanovic GB 2005
13 mins 18 secs (adv PG) Subtitles
Almir Mehanovic, Eldar Zubcevic
Kosovo, 1992. Oblivious to the growing
conflict that will soon engulf their
country, two boys search for hidden
treasure in an abandoned hill fort.
Instead they unearth a gun. Their
country is about to be plunged into
civil war – and their lives will change
forever. A powerful, disturbing tale of
lost innocence.
Best First-Time Director (BAFTA
Scotland 2005)
Silver Remi (Houston WorldFest 2006)
Brazen Hussies Ltd
7 Bonnington Terrace, Edinburgh, EH6
4BP, Scotland
Tel: 00 44 (0)7951 226 152
Border Post is a co-production between Croatia, Serbia-Montenegro, BosniaHerzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia - and the UK. It’s the first time that the exYugoslav countries have collaborated on such a project, and as such is itself cause for
interest and celebration - especially as the film itself, a drama/romance/black
comedy set on the spectacular shores of Macedonia’s Lake Ohrid in 1987, takes place
just before Yugoslavia started its slide into civil war(s). But these background details,
while important, aren’t why we were so keen to select Border Post for the 13th
Bradford International Film Festival: this film, like all others in our programme, was
selected strictly on its considerable merits as a work of cinema.
Our hero is Sinisa (Gojanovic), a medical student from Split enduring his year of
compulsory military service. A happy-go-lucky sort, he makes the most of his posting
to a hilltop post near the Albanian border - under the command of booze-soaked
Bosnian veteran Pasic (Hadzihafizbegovic). Pasic is keen to be transferred, even
keener to visit his wife Mirjana (Nedeska) who lives in the nearest town. But when
Pasic contracts syphilis, he’s advised by Sinisa that the “cure” will mean three weeks
before tell-tale symptoms disappear. Pasic concocts an alert about Albanian troops
massing menacingly on the border - cancelling all leave ... for three weeks. Pasic
needs to get messages and money to Mirjana, enlisting the trusted Sinisa as gobetween - but the fresh-faced medic isn’t quite so innocent as he may appear...
Grlic impressively shifts his picture’s tone - from the M*A*S*H-style khaki-knockabout
of the early sections, through to more romantic and tragic moods in the middle and
later sections. This life’s-rich-tapestry approach is at once utterly ‘Balkan’ and yet,
thanks to the terrific performances across the board, utterly universal. And the
knowledge of the impending Yugoslav cataclysm adds an extra element of poignancy
and irony to even the breeziest and most carefree of moments. It’s a special film,
from a very special part of the world. Frank Mangus
Production company:
F&ME Ltd
25 Noel Street, London, W1F 8GK, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 434 6655
www.borderpostmovie.com
Courtesy of F&ME Ltd
Tuesday 20 March 6.30pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Lars von Trier Denmark 2006 98 mins (adv 12A) Subtitles
Jens Albinus, Peter Gantzler, Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, Benedikt Erlingsson, Iben Hjejle,
Jean-Marc Barr, Sofie Grabol
With the low-budget comedy The Boss of It All Danish director Lars von Trier takes a
break from the international casts, bare-stage aesthetic and the self-described
“sermonising” of his past two features, Manderlay and Dogville. The plot, about an
actor hired to impersonate a fictional company owner to help the real proprietor sell
the firm, shares thematic DNA with much of von Trier’s earlier work...
For years, company director Ravn (Gantzler) has let his staff think the firm has a
perpetually absent “boss of it all” named Svend E., who makes all the unpopular
decisions. He communicates his desires, and sometimes conducts whole longdistance relationships with the staff, via email. Ravn now wants to sell the company
to temperamental Icelander Finnur (Fridriksson), but Finnur will only do business
with Svend. To nail the deal, Ravn hires small-time stage actor Kristoffer (Albinus) to
incarnate Svend for just one meeting with Finnur and his interpreter (Erlingsson).
However, Kristoffer’s overacting, and announcement that he’s given Ravn power of
attorney, annoys Finnur so much he walks out. Finnur insists Kristoffer/Svend must
be the one who signs the papers in a week’s time. Caught up in his role, Kristoffer
introduces himself as the boss to some of the company staff - which means he’ll
have to go through with the charade for the next week...
On the surface, The Boss of It All looks different from the highly stylised films that
von Trier is best known for. English-speaking audiences will see some similarities
with the TV series The Office, although von Trier claims never to have seen the show.
The film showcases his liking for tech-tinkering, here by using a new camera system,
‘Automavision’. The result is a lot of off-kilter compositions - and this just about fits
the material, creating a comic, world-out-of-joint atmosphere. The overall result is
von Trier’s least pretentious and most sheerly film enjoyable for years. Leslie Felperin,
Variety
Production company:
Zentropa Productions
6 APS, Filmbyen 22, 2650 Hvidovre, Denmark
Tel: 00 45 36 868 788
www.zentropa.dk
EUROPEAN PREMIERE
BYE BYE BENJAMIN
Dir. Charlie McDowell USA 2006
20 mins (adv 12A)
Benjamin Bryan, Lolita Davidovich, Kali
Majors, Seymour Cassel, Ted Danson,
Malcolm McDowell
Benjamin Osgood is sharp, savvy and
at the top of his profession as an
executive with Coleman Industries.
He’s also just ten years old. When he
meets an employee’s eight-year-old
daughter, Benjamin quickly realises he
is losing his childhood. He is forced to
make a decision: will he chose multimillion dollar business deals or funfilled birthday parties!
Contact:
[email protected]
Cloudbreak Productions
7095 Hollywood Boulevard, # 435, Los
Angeles, California, 90028, USA
Tel: 00 1 310 422 7873
www.byebyebenjamin.com
Courtesy of the Danish Film Institute
THE CAIMAN
CATCH A FIRE
(Il Caimano)
Dir. Philip Noyce Fra/GB/South Africa/USA 2006 101 mins (12A) Some subtitles
Tim Robbins, Derek Luke, Bonnie Henna, Mncedisi Shabangu, Tumisho K. Masha
Sunday 11 March 8.15pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. Nanni Moretti Italy/France 2006 112 mins (12A) Subtitles
Silvio Orlando, Margherita Buy, Jasmine Trinca, Michele Placido, Giuliano Montaldo
UK PREMIERE
SNIP CRUNCH
Dir. Matt Heimbecker USA 2006
1 min 46 secs (adv PG)
Animation
On a newspaper landscape dotted with
tall black columns, a pack of scissor
wolves hunt and slay paper sheep.
Being cornered by the pack, one
frightened sheep mumbles a prayer
that proves to be very effective.
Shannon Farney
Georgia, 31405, USA
Tel: 00 1 912 525 8502
Nanni Moretti has established a reputation as a leading Italian film director through
Dear Diary, April and The Son’s Room. His films have dealt with very human issues
often with himself at the centre. Mixing politics and comedy they are very Italian but
have had international success with both critics and audiences. Making movies from
a left-wing perspective in Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy has clearly been a major frustration
for Moretti and his campaigns against the premier in 2002 led to the making of The
Caiman (aka Il Caimano), a ferocious attack on the Italian Prime Minister that was
released in 2006 just before the elections that saw Berlusconi defeated.
Set in the world of filmmaking, Moretti focuses on low budget producer, Bruno
Bonomo, who had achieved fame in the 1970s but is now struggling to get a film
made. As his latest project for Italian TV stumbles then falls, he quickly picks up a
new project, Il Caimano by a young director and sets about casting and getting the
production underway. Against this tight schedule to get rolling and keep his business
afloat, his marriage has fallen apart and he is attempting to be a good father to his
young son.
With its fast paced and chaotic style, a knowledge of modern Italian politics is not
essential but is useful in getting more out of The Caiman. Moretti maintains a strong
central theme around Bruno, a man with dreams but not much chance of delivering
them. He is trying to be a good director and a successful filmmaker, but the world
conspires against him. As the production gather pace so he loses control of his life.
A metaphor for Italy and Berlusconi? At the very least it is an entertaining film about
filmmaking and families, both the personal and the movie family. Bill Lawrence
Print source:
Optimum Releasing
22 Newman Street, London, W1T 1PH, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 637 5408
www.optimumreleasing.com
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Depending on whose side you
were on in apartheid era 1980s South Africa, Patrick Chamusso was both. An oil
refinery foreman with a steady job, settled home life, wife and kids, Patrick (Luke)
tended to look the other way. He spent his life deftly straddling both sides of the
political divide – shying away from ANC activists fighting white supremacist
oppression while avoiding conflict with the authorities.
In Philip Noyce’s underrated political thriller we see Chamusso’s transformation from
an Everyman with his head in the sand to a gung-ho guerrilla fighter desperate to
make a mark. How he embarks on that journey is shown with unflinching realism as
he is first arrested, then tortured and finally betrayed. His nemesis is security officer
Nick Vos (Robbins), an Afrikaner, family man and dedicated pursuer of the criminal
classes. That’s blacks to you and me.
Thus it is Chamusso’s unwarranted treatment at the hands of thuggish security
forces that prompts his decision to join a band of rebels and attack his former place
of work. Noyce manages to avoid presenting Chamusso and Co (who have been
thoroughly indoctrinated by Communist instructors in Mozambique) as potential
suicide bombers, but he treads a narrow line. The radicalisation of ordinary men and
women is what feeds this particular true-life morality tale (written by Shawn – A
World Apart – Slovo from Chamusso’s true-life story) and transports modern-day
audiences into the heart of Eighties apartheid darkness.
THE ULTIMATUM
Dirs. Sebastien Lafarge, Rafael Schneider
France 2006 6 mins (adv 12A) Subtitles
Alice Taglioni, Jocelyn Quivrin
Thomas is a layabout. He has neither
job nor prospects and girlfriend
Camille has just about had enough. “If
you don’t change, I’m outta here,” she
utters before leaving for the day.
Thomas is left with the ultimatum –
but is it enough to change him?
72 rue de Dunkerque, Paris, 75009,
France
Tel: 00 33 1 71 18 10 81
Luke, seen to good effect in Antwone Fisher (and actually an American), personalises
the violence, thuggery and casual murder that marked South Africa as a world apart
for decades. Catch a Fire is one man’s story, but it resonates simply because
Chamusso’s individual situation echoed those of thousands of others. Viewers
familiar with Noyce’s films will see parallels with the themes of Rabbit-Proof Fence
but may come to accept that this frank re-telling of torture, repression and racism
comes with the knowledge that, in South Africa, it was much more than just a way
of life. The film’s quasi-documentary style only adds to its uncomfortable realism.
Tony Earnshaw
Print source:
Universal Pictures UK
76 Oxford Street, London, W1D 1BS, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 307 1300
www.universalpictures.co.uk <http://www.universalpictures.co.uk>
Courtesy of Universal Pictures UK
CHEEKY
Saturday 10 March 2pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. David Thewlis GB/France 2003 95 mins (15)
David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp, Ian Hart, Trudie Styler, Johnny Vegas, Sean Ward, Ruth
Sheen, Lisa Gorman, Eddie Marsan, Mark Benton
UK PREMIERE
CANDY AND BRANDY
(Sugus y Brandy)
Dir. Ander Duque Spain 2006
7 mins 21 secs (adv PG)
Marina Anduix Parladé,
Marc Anduix Parladé
A look at the complexities of love and
romance that we all encounter at some
stage and the fallible nature of
humans. In a twist on the usual lovers’
tiff scenario, it offers an insight into
the childish manner in which adults
often act and which in turn allows
these problems to manifest
themselves.
Arteautor Productions
Leiva, 48. 3° 1st. 08014. BCN., Barcelona,
08014, Spain
Tel: 00 34 6 66 465 026
Already familiar to cinemagoers for his work in front of the camera, in Cheeky David
Thewlis takes on the triple roles of writer, director and lead in a feature which charts
the surreal grieving process of Harry, a quiet Northern toyshop owner whose wife
dies in a tragic house fire. Left to bring up his alienated teenage son, Sam, Harry
flounders badly and, convinced that it was his dead wife’s last wish he signs up a
contestant in the eponymous game show which combines general knowledge
rounds with opportunities for contestants to insult one another - hence the
catchphrase, ‘Don’t be cheeky.’
Harry, who is a decent chap, does brilliantly in the quick-fire rounds but performs
terribly when it comes to insulting his opponents. He’s just too nice to be nasty. His
nemesis on the show is Nancy (Trudie Styler, also the film’s producer), a foulmouthed floozy who berates and then tries to bed him. As Sam watches his dad
make a fool of himself on prime time television their already precarious relationship
gets worse and worse.
With its quirky northern characters and heartfelt plot Cheeky manages to get its mix
of black humour and seriousness just right. Thewlis’ performance is crucial in
achieving this balance and he is touching in the role of a man struggling to make
sense of losing the love of his life while having to deal with endless ridicule for his
frankly bizarre behaviour. With Thewlis taking care of the emotional core of the film
much of the out-and-out comedy comes from the very strong cast of British
favourites including Johnny Vegas whose quiz show host, Alf Price, is a truly
monstrous creation. Arkady Insarov
Print source:
Guerilla Films Ltd.,
35 Thornbury Road, Isleworth, Middlesex, TW7 4LQ, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 208 758 1716
www.guerilla-films.com
Courtesy of Guerilla Films Ltd
We hope actor/producer Trudie Styler will be present to introduce the BIFF2007
presentation of Cheeky and take part in a post-screening Q&A.
CLOSE TO HOME
(Karov La Bayit)
Thursday 15 March 5.45pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dirs. Vardit Bilu, Dalia Hagar Israel 2005 90 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Neama Shendar, Smadar Sayar, Lana Ettinger, Irit Suki, Ami Weinberg, Katia Zimbris
Two teenage girls on military duty in Jerusalem find friendship, men and going on the
lam are just as important as policing the Arab community in Close to Home. Highly
accessible pic, which mixes humour, tragedy, tenderness and political acumen into a
well-observed coming-of-age format, represents a very impressive feature bow by
writer/directors Bilu and Hager.
The film partly draws on the experiences of one of the distaff directors, who was
assigned to police patrolling duty during her military service. But aside from script’s
mass of small details, the movie’s special quality is that it deals with issues that arise
from Israelis policing a divided city in a way that puts characters first and political
grandstanding second.
Smadar (Sayar), 18, is first seen being watched by her superior, Dubek (Suki), as she
minutely goes through an Arab woman’s possessions in a border inspection booth.
Smadar is clearly as uncomfortable about the whole process, but the film soon signals
it’s not going to be a regular drama. When another girl refuses to do the job any
longer, a girly mutiny takes place that’s only quelled when Dubek cracks the whip. The
film gets a lot of enjoyable mileage out of the whole teenage squad’s solidarity
(warning each other by cell phone when Dubek is coming), as well as their
hopelessness at doing the job.
At the 40-minute mark, the real world intervenes as a bomb rocks the neighbourhood,
with tragic results. But instead of turning into a more politicised drama, Close to Home
holds to its course, turning the event into the start of the girls’ long path to real
friendship. Even down to supporting roles, there’s hardly a weakly drawn character,
and by the movie’s end there’s a feeling of having gotten to know everyone involved.
Sayar and Schendar show a natural chemistry together, and Suki, in perhaps the
hardest role, manages to bring a discreet humour to Dubek that makes it pretty clear
where the filmmakers stand on the situation depicted. Derek Elley, Variety
UK PREMIERE
DEAR BELOVED…
Dir. Terence Chu USA 2006
Drew Duhig, Rachel Liu,
Daniel L. Staniszewski
A young soldier, embroiled in the thick
of battle, anticipates a fateful end to
the conflict in which he finds himself
and writes a farewell letter to his wife.
A polished production with very high
standards.
5027 Colfax Ave. # 3, Los Angeles,
California, 91601, USA
Tel: 00 1 323 371 7664
Print source:
Soda Pictures
11-13 Broad Court, London, WC2B 5PY, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 240 6060
www.sodapictures.com
Courtesy of Soda Pictures
UK PREMIERE
DARK WATER RISING
Dir. Mike Shiley USA 2006 72 mins (adv 12A)
Documentary
SCENE
Dirs. Alec Boehm, Stephanie Argy GB
2006 15 mins 36 secs (adv 12A)
Bryan Larkin, Marc Twynholm, Hamish
Menzies, Richard Saade
Gary, a TV actor, gets his big break in a
feature film. He’s playing the part of
Nathan, a gangster with a conscience,
but can’t find the right emotions to
nail the scene. Director Frank Swann’s
unconventional methods and the cold
hearted crew increase his anxiety. But
nothing is as it seems…
Dabhand Films
10 Waters End, Carronshore, Falkirk, FK2
8PY, Scotland
Tel: 00 44 1324 552 353
When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005 it represented perhaps the
greatest natural disaster to strike the United States since the San Francisco earthquake of
1906. Hundreds died. Thousands were made homeless. An entire city was submerged
beneath toxic floodwaters. Disease was rampant. As the people of New Orleans fled their
homes for the relative safety of evacuation centres, they abandoned their pets on the
orders of the authorities. Left behind to fend for themselves were more than 50,000 dogs
and cats, often locked in houses or chained to fences without food or water for up to six
weeks. In the devastation that followed, they were forgotten.
Enter the rescuers. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) worked alongside the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) to locate and rescue animals
deserted in the mandatory evacuation to escape the storm. But an array of independent
volunteers descended on Louisiana from across the country, bringing with them a far
more aggressive work ethic. Mike Shiley’s film is a blunt, no-holds-barred account of what
happens when catastrophe occurs and survival instincts kick in. Dark Water Rising
emerges as a companion piece to the myriad news reports that focused on the
widespread tragedy that surrounded the arrival (and aftermath) of Katrina, the accepted
failure of the government to do enough and the all-consuming blame culture that ensued.
Shiley follows ‘gonzo’ rescuers into shattered, deserted districts of New Orleans to save
animals driven half mad by hunger and thirst. The conditions he captures on camera
would appal any self-respecting animal lover, while the gradual transformation of the
rescuers from earnest saviours to gung-ho crusaders, is captured with rare candour. Their
epiphany comes partly through the realisation that pets, far from being left to fend for
themselves, have been used as live target practice – not by the public, but by rogue law
enforcement officers seeking sadistic fun amidst the carnage. It is a moment that
crystallises what their mission is all about, and reinforces the need for such hardy souls to
give up their jobs, lives and relationships to devote themselves to the cause of dumb
creatures that Mankind calls its best friends.
Part disaster log, part compassionate social commentary, Dark Water Rising is a
memorably hard-hitting piece of reportage by a photojournalist with a real eye for a story
and an ability to tell it with panache. Tony Earnshaw
Tel: 001 503 231 7658
www.shidogfilms.com
www.DarkWaterRising.com
DAYS OF GLORY
(Indigènes)
Thursday 22 March 8.15pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Rachid Bouchareb Fra/Mor/Alg/Bel 2006 120 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila, Bernard Blancan, Mathieu
Simonet, Benoît Giros, Mélanie Laurent, Antoine Chappey, Aurélie Eltvedt
In war, even second-class citizens are welcome when the going gets tough. And in
Days of Glory (aka Indigènes) it is the turn of North African men to prove their loyalty
to their Motherland – France – while simultaneously demonstrating that they have
some more to offer than merely parading as potential cannon fodder.
Just as America’s overt prejudice against negro troops was explored in Edward
Zwick’s Glory, so Rachid Bouchareb’s Days of Glory (perhaps the English language
title is a hint to non-French audiences) concentrates on the discriminatory nature of
France’s relationship with its African colonies. Bouchareb depicts the onslaught of
conflict through the eyes of four Algerian conscripts who vacillate between believing
in the cause and fighting blindly for France in a war they know little about, and
scrabbling for recognition from a nation that considers them disposable - illiterate
Arab peasants to be mown down in place of Frenchmen. These are men who have
known nothing else than their second-class status; inevitably, their experiences in
combat will open their eyes.
Messaoud (Zem) is a romantic with naïve notions of equality. Abdelkader (Bouajila)
sees success in battle as a method of proving worth and identity. Yassir (Naceri)
wants nothing more than survival for himself and his brother. Saïd (Debbouze), a
cripple with a useless arm, seeks only comradeship. Bouchareb pitches this tight
ensemble (which collectively won the Best Actor award at last year’s Cannes Film
Festival) into a variety of life-or-death situations, embracing and breaking
stereotypes in turn. Their journey takes them from Africa via Italy to France where, in
a lengthy sequence that echoes the final scenes of Saving Private Ryan, they come
face-to-face with the reality of what their loyalty and sacrifice truly means.
UK PREMIERE
SOLOMON GRUNDY
Dirs. Chris Myers, Ken Seward USA
2006 1 min 30 secs (adv PG)
Animation
Using the aesthetic of Victorian
theatre, clockwork stage plays and the
18th century nursery rhyme Solomon
Grundy, the fleeting life of the titular
character is marked by a series of basic
milestone rituals and ceremonies and
ends as abruptly as it begins.
Shannon Farney
Georgia, 31405, USA
Tel: 00 1 912 525 8502
This is the war movie as intelligent, impactful, incisive social drama. Based on fact,
written and directed from the heart, and boasting some truly magnificent
performances, it ranks among the first of the 21st Century’s epic war movies.
Tony Earnshaw
Print source:
Metrodome Group Plc.
33 Charlotte Street, London, W1T 1RR, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 22 (0) 207 153 4400
www.metrodomegroup.com
Courtesy of Metrodome Group Plc
DRY SEASON
(DARATT)
Sunday 11 March 4pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun Chad/Fr/Bel/Aus 2006 96 mins (tba) Subtitles
Ali Barkai, Khayar Oumar Defallah, Youssouf Djaoro, Aziza Hisseine
THE SPELL
(El Conjuro)
Dir. Pablo Millán Spain 2006
6 mins 28 secs (adv 12A)
Animation
An artist, in preparation for a day of
painting, turns to that faithful old
muse: alcohol. Wanting to embrace its
inspirational qualities, he drinks
excessive amounts. However, as he
drinks more and more, the alcohol
takes on a more sinister and dangerous
form, one which is definitely not
included on the government health
warnings…
Award for Creativity and Originality
(Curtas na rede Festival, Spain)
Special Commendation (Festival of
Fantastic Films, UK)
Award Liceo Casino (Festival Liceo
Casino de Vilagarcía, Spain)
Urb. Os Tilos, 31 Rua Vidueiro, Teo, Prov.
A Coruña, 15886, Spain
Tel: 00 34 981 801 188
Using a simple storytelling style that grows stronger with each passing scene, Dry
Season draws the viewer into its small two-character drama set in post-war Chad,
while it offers a deep reflection on injustice and frustrated revenge. Writer/director
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Bye Bye Africa, Abouna) almost dispenses with words in this
fable-like tale, told through moody glares and askance glances.
Set in the aftermath of Chad’s 40-year civil war, the film probes the very topical
problem of how former enemies can live together, given the latent hatred that is
waiting to burst out. In the wake of a government amnesty in Chad, war criminals
were let off scot-free. Unwilling to accept this lack of justice, the grandfather of 16year-old Atim (Ali Bacha Barkai) sends him to the city to kill Nassara (Youssouf
Djaoro), the man who murdered Atim’s father before he was even born.
Arriving in the big city with his father’s gun, Atim finds his way to Nassara’s dusty
bakery with almost magical ease. But he postpones his grim mission when he comes
face to face with the gruff, scarred baker. Unexpectedly Nassara takes the boy under
his wing as the son he doesn’t have and offers to teach his profession. Telling himself
he’ll shoot the baker later, Atim is drawn into Nassara’s life and that of his pregnant
young wife Aicha (Aziza Hisseine).
Using moments of quiet humour and social exchange, Haroun makes the viewer
participate in Atim’s mixed emotions. His rock-like determination not to soften
toward the older man is sorely tested as Nassara assumes the role of a father figure
in his life. The finale is sharp, fast and unexpected. It takes some time to find the
conscience behind young Bacha Barkai’s furrowed brow and hate-filled stares;
paradoxically, Djaoro’s open-faced, self-confident performance as the villain is far
more likeable and easy to relate to. This confusion between good and bad helps
create shifting ethical sands under these sharply drawn characters.
Deborah Young, Variety
Print source:
Soda Pictures
Tel: 00 44 207 240 6060
UK PREMIERE
DESTINED FOR BLUES
(Skazany na bluesa aka Born for the Blues)
Saturday 24 March 4pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Jan Kidawa-Blonski Poland 2005 101 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Tomasz Kot, Jolanta Fraszynska, Maciej Balcar, Adam Baumann, Anna Dymna, Joanna
Bartel, Przemyslaw Bluszcz
One of the most acclaimed - and financially successful - Polish films of the current
decade, Destined for Blues presents an Eastern European version of the “living fast,
die young” ethos followed by so many musicians, from Jim Morrison to Janis Joplin
to Dennis Wilson to… Ryszard Riedel, lead singer of the cult rock band Dzem. Riedel
(very credibly played by debutant Kot) was addicted to two things: music and drugs.
His many fans described him asvery year there’s a music festival dedicated to him.
People congregate at his graveside to sing his hits: his tombstone bears the
inscription “In life only moments are beautiful” – perhaps the best-known line he
ever wrote.
The film is mostly set in industrial Silesia, Riedel’s own home region. Silesians are in
some ways ‘a breed apart’: many believe themselves to be a separate ethnicity,
while others consider themselves ethnically Polish. Riedel himself had German roots
and his parents moved to Germany in search of a better life. Riedel’s complicated,
love-hate relationship with his father (Baumann) forms one of the most important
aspects of the film - and has a direct bearing on how Riedel was to get along with
his own son (Balcar).
BAD DAY
Dir. Matthew Vaughan GB 2005
4 mins (adv 12A)
When Emma’s car breaks down on the
way to a date, she finds her day
suddenly goes from bad to worse.
Tel: 00 44 1422 246 007
But this isn’t just the story of one man, or even of one family. In the background we
glimpse the reality of Poland in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s: decades where many things
changed but some things remained constant. Even when the whole political system
of the country shifted, life in many parts of Poland didn’t suddenly become better,
as some expected - indeed, for many Poles life got worse, and some just couldn’t
come to terms with their new situation. Others such as Riedel, as grittily chronicled
in this admirably hard-hitting film, found themselves unable to deal with life in
general. Destined for the blues, indeed... Anna Draniewicz
Production company:
Telewizja Polska S.A.
00-999 Warszawa ul, J.P. Woronicza 17, Poland
Tel: 00 48 22 547 85 01
Courtesy of Telewizja Polska S.A.
PRIVATE LIFE
Dir. Abbé Robinson GB 2006
Lucy Lieman, Jana Carpenter,
Toby Sawyer, Andy Henderson,
David Westbrook
One Friday afternoon, a single
twentysomething woman leaves her
mundane job in a 1950s textile mill
and takes the train to Manchester to
meet up with a man. But all is not
what it appears…
Yorkshire Film Award (Leeds
International Film Festival 2006)
Grand Prize, PlanetOut Short Movie
Awards (Sundance Film Festival 2007)
Maria Pavlou
Mad Cat Films Ltd
37-39 Milton Road, Branton, Doncaster,
South Yorkshire, DN3 3NX, United
Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7733 223 439
DIXIE CHICKS: SHUT UP AND SING
EDMOND
Dir. Barbara Kopple, Cecilia Pec USA 2006 93 mins (adv 12A)
Natalie Maines, Emily Robison, Martie Maguire
Monday 19 March 8pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. Stuart Gordon USA 2005 110 mins (18)
William H. Macy, Julia Stiles, Mena Suvari, Denise Richards, Joe Mantegna, Debi Mazar,
George Wendt, Jeffrey Combs, Ling Bai, Dulé Hill, Bokeem Woodbine, Rebecca Pidgeon
Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck have crafted an insightful and heartfelt look at the
experiences of the Dixie Chicks over the last three years, chronicling the often bizarre
consequences of singer Natalie Maines’ anti-Bush wisecrack on a London stage. Maines’
statement is captured in Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing, as are the meetings where they
plot how to circumvent the core country audience and, eventually, how to reroute a tour
and cancel shows due to poor ticket sales. It’s the rare thorough documentary on a
musical act whose dilemmas are faced in the here and now, one that should win over
fans of the Chicks on the fence and of music docus and perhaps create a little cultural
stir as well.
The filmmakers have created a non-chronological story to emphasise the Greek tragedy
behind the Dixie Chicks’ spiral into country music’s public enemy No. 1. The Chicks vs.
President Bush, the Chicks vs. Toby Keith, the Chicks vs. country radio - every
antagonistic angle is covered, and yet Maines, Emily Robison and Martie McGuire
persevere, with their chroniclers providing a sympathetic tone to their every struggle.
Maines is seen backstage at Shepherds Bush Empire asking for an update on the justlaunched war in Iraq; within hours - with cameras rolling - she offhandedly says, “We’re
ashamed the president is from Texas,” the home state of both Bush and the Chicks. She
makes the statement, turns to a bandmate and laughs. The Press makes hay of her
comment, and the Chicks and management go into damage-control mode, which will
last nearly three years. The Chicks are shown, at every turn, getting on with their lives
mostly by focusing on their children and husbands.
Maines is the spunkiest, the one whose initial instinct is to fight back. Even when her
call is the wrong one — she objects to starting the 2006 tour with smaller showcases
before hitting arenas - her defence is admirable and much more than a selfish whim.
Phil Gallo, Variety
Print source:
Momentum Pictures
2nd Floor, 184-192 Drummond Street, London, NW1 3HP, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 388 1100
www.momentumpictures.co.uk
Courtesy of Momentum Pictures
On his way home from work one day mild-mannered businessman Edmond Burke
(William H. Macy) visits a tarot card reader. The reading does not go well: every card
she turns seems to signify bad luck. The reality appears to be etched into Edmond’s
face as she warns, “You are not where you belong”. On arriving home, Edmond calmly
informs his wife that he is leaving and will not return.
Edmond finds himself wandering the streets, meandering from strip clubs to peep
shows to brothels. He seeks emotionless sex with a stranger but finds himself
unable to agree a price with the various girls he meets. “That’s too much” he
complains bitterly, out of his depth and unsure of his position with these hard-edged
ladies of the night.
But this odyssey into a hitherto unexplored nocturnal world is about to take a
sinister turn. Edmond unaccountably buys a knife – a wicked-looking weapon that
combines a blade and a knuckle-duster. And as his attitude towards the world begins
to seep through his weedy exterior, so his pent-up sexual tensions, latent prejudices
and innate capacity for explosive violence begin to boil over…
David Mamet’s play is a thoroughly nasty journey through the human psyche. Like
Howard Beale in Network, Edmond Burke is mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it
anymore. His problem is that he doesn’t really know or understand why he’s angry;
nonetheless, someone, somewhere, is going to pay. Rationality rapidly disappears as
Edmond transforms from a pathetic Everyman into a raging inferno of frustration
and dissatisfaction.
This is an uncomfortable, brutal and deeply politically incorrect story. Macy powers
through audience preconceptions, shattering any illusion that this is just another
sorry tale of a worm that turned. There is genuine madness in his performance, and
the escalating nature of his fury is genuinely shocking to behold: from upstanding
citizen to blood-drenched sociopath in one long night. Tony Earnshaw
TALK TO ME
Dir. Mark Craig GB 2006
A beautiful, poignant and
tremendously affecting
autobiographical documentary in
words and pictures based on 20 years
of answer machine messages. The
voices of old friends, former loves and
relatives combine to create a moving
memento mori as filmmaker Mark
Craig revisits his past with the
assistance of Ken Morse, the doyen of
British rostrum cameramen.
Stopwatch Productions
39 Lushington Road, Kensall Green,
London, NW10 5UX, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7973 327 026
www.talktome.org.uk
Print source:
Tartan Films,
72-74 Dean Street, London, W1D 3SG, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 204 494 1400
www.tartanvideo.com
Courtesy of Tartan Films
UK PREMIERE
FANTASMA
SCREENING WITH: LOS MUERTOS
Dir. Lisandro Alonso Arg/Fra/Neth 2006 63 mins (adv PG) Subtitles
Argentino Vargas, Misael Saavedra, Carlos Landini, Jorge Francheschelli, Rosa Martinez
TAKE ME BACK TO DEAR OLD
BLIGHTY
Dir. James Debenham GB 2006
James Thornton
Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty taps
into the MTV generation’s perceptions
of modern television to deliver a
message. At first it appears to be a rant
against consumerism, but on closer
inspection is in fact one man’s view of
the modern British culture he sees
around him – where possessions and
vanity are all-conquering. His message
is simple – all the rubbish we surround
ourselves with won’t make us happy.
It’ll stave off the boredom and distract
us for a while, but ultimately it can’t
replace the things that are really
important – like love and the
fulfilment of your life.
Arch Stanton Productions
6 Bushby Avenue, Broxbourne,
Hertfordshire, EN10 6QE, United
Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7957 163156
Writer/director/producer/editor Alonso quickly established himself as one of the
most original, poetic, challenging and uncompromising of the current bumper crop
of Argentinian filmmakers with La Libertad (2001) and Los Muertos (2004). Both of
them are meditative, near-wordless affairs, half-fictional and half-documentary; the
former chronicling a day in the life of logger Misael Saavedra; the latter (also
showing in the 13th Bradford International Film Festival) following ex-convict
Argentino Vargas as he journeyed downriver.
Though set in the city rather than the country, Fantasma is in some ways more of the
same: for an hour, we observe the two “stars” of Alonso’s previous films wandering
(separately) around a near-deserted, multi-level, labyrinthine Buenos Aires theatre
complex where Los Muertos is being shown. Alonso’s achievement is to take dullsounding material - almost nothing ‘happens’ over the course of these 63 minutes and turn it into something powerfully hypnotic. His smooth-gliding camera is
constantly finding compositions loaded with significance and mystery: the way he
choreographs the movement of his ‘performers, placing them in a variety of interiors,
is consistently intriguing, forcing the viewer to fully engage with this seemingly
unremarkable location’s various public, semi-public and ‘private’ spaces; their decor
and lighting; their relationships with each other; the glimpses they offer of the world
beyond.
But the element which elevates Fantasma to masterpiece level is Alonso’s
astonishing use of sound: if there’s a “story” to be divined here, it’s to be found in the
subtle symphony of human, mechanical and even animal noises - which are so
diverting that we never for a moment notice that there’s hardly any dialogue in the
movie. Alonso’s coup de grace is to bookend the “action” with two blasts of loud
electric guitar music which provide mood-magnifying punctuation. The cumulative
effect is stunning and spellbinding: a spooky, darkly witty journey around a “cinema”
that’s also a bold journey around, into - and perhaps even beyond - cinema itself.
Neil Young
Production company:
4L
Juramento 4940, Capital Federal, 1413 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Tel: 00 54 11 4253 7694
Courtesy of 4L
FAST FOOD NATION
Dir. Richard Linklater GB/USA 2006 112 mins (15)
Greg Kinnear, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Kris Kristofferson, Patricia Arquette, Bruce Willis
Anyone who has read Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation can tell you that the big
burger-related question of the day is not “where’s the beef,” but what, in the name of
all that is good and pure, is in the beef. Apparently, not much that is good and pure.
According to an industry website that’s probably just coincidentally called “Best Food
Nation,” there’s no basis to critics’ claims that fast food companies knowingly hire
illegal workers, that cattle farming harms the environment, that fast food restaurant
jobs lead nowhere, that dangerous meat-processing jobs are given to untrained
workers and that beef pattiescontain a surprise ingredient in common.
These, of course, are the major plot points of Richard Linklater’s fictionalised adaptation
of the book, which not surprisingly refrains from naming names, especially litigious
ones. Instead, Fast Food Nation invents a global burger mill with a friendly corporate
identity and a little bit of a PR problem. An activist group has smuggled a frozen patty
out of a secured location and had it tested in a lab. The beef contained high levels of
fecal coliform - or, as Mickey’s chief executive explains to his new marketing manager,
Don Anderson (Greg Kinnear), who recently hit a home run with the launch of “The Big
One,” “There’s sh*t in the meat.” So, Don is dispatched to Cody, Colorado, to see what he
can find out about the Uniglobe Meat Packing plant.
For Linklater, the term Fast Food Nation applies to more than just burger and taco
chains. It represents a gradual, complicit shift from reality to permanent reality
displacement - small-town/rural landscapes are transformed into chain-store dystopias.
If Linklater regards the fake culture that has replaced real places with horror, he has
nothing but respect and affection for his characters, and the movie is rescued from
nihilism by his humanistic view. From the illegal workers to the executives whose
success requires serious moral compartmentalization, to every fry cook, cashier, hotel
concierge, chain-restaurant waitress and client in the film, every character exists within
an increasingly homogenous, inorganic system.
JULIE – A LOVE STORY
Dir. David Cave GB 2006 4 mins
17 secs (adv PG)
Christopher Turner, Rebekah Taplin,
Andrew Beattie
On an isolated farm, deep in the
Northumberland countryside, love is in
the air. Christy’s fallen for Julie and this
time he knows what he feels is real.
Finding the right words and time to tell
his older brother, Pete, is another
matter. But this is a love like no other
and nothing can stop the course of
true love.
Yellow Fever Films
15 Woodland Terrace, New Penshaw,
Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear DH4
7JD, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 191 385 8347
Linklater makes [his] points skillfully, and with a light touch, without resorting to
bombast, melodrama or false polemic. The situation he describes is nobody’s plight, but
it is everyone’s seemingly unsolvable problem. Carina Chocano, LA Times
Print source: Tartan Films
72-74 Dean Street, London, W1D 3SG, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 204 494 1400
Courtesy of Tartan Films
UK PREMIERE
UK PREMIERE
(Barbórka aka St. Barbara’s Day)
Tuesday 20 March 6pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. David Ray Canada 2005 89 mins (adv 15)
Jay Baruchel, Sarah Lind, Jim Byrnes, Lucas Blaney, Neil Denis, Liam McGuigab
THE FEAST OF ST. BARBARA
Wednesday 21 March 4pm Pictureville
Dir. Maciej Pieprzyca Poland 2005 76 mins (adv 12A) Subtitles
Iwo Sitkowska, Marcin Dorocinski, Robert Talarczyk, Tadeusz Madeja, Grazyna Zielinska,
Artur Swies, Barbara Lubos-Swies
RUN AND LOOK
(Dammi il La)
Dir. Matteo Servente Italy 2006
21 mins (adv U) Subtitles
Tatiana Lepore, Marco Toloni, Lorenzo
Bartoli, Pietro Tosetto
Marguerite, a young composer, has hit a
block in her work. For inspiration, she
talks to the local priest about his
experiences on an epic walk and meeting
a young man at a crossroads. Matteo
Servente’s short film is a contemplation
on guardian angels, those people who
guide and help us. Beautifully shot in the
Italian hills around Turin with spectacular
landscape and a story that unfolds with
subtlety and impending sorrow.
Best Narrative Short (Fargo Film Festival)
Best Short Film (Memphis International
Film Festival)
Best Short Film (Sarasota Film Festival)
Audience Award - Best Short (WorldFest
Houston)
Best Drama (HollyShorts)
Best International Short (Napa Sonoma
Wine Country Festival)
Contact:
[email protected]
Via Galliari 31, Torino, 10125, Italy
Tel: 00 39 347 489 2849
From one of Poland’s most promising writer/directors comes his award-winning
second film. The Feast of St. Barbara is a romantic comedy with a dark, socioeconomic twist - and a bittersweet ending. It’s “boy meets girl”, where the boy and
girl come from very different worlds. “He” is Jakub (Dorocinski, also to be seen in the
selection Pitbull), a famous soap opera star and an idol for millions of female viewers
who tune in to watch him every night. “She” is Basia (Sitkowska), a collier in a coal
mine that represents one of the very few employment options in her region of
Silesia.
The odds against them meeting, never mind falling in love, are remote - unless it
was somehow “meant to be”. But there’s more than ‘just’ romance in the air:
meeting Basia reminds Jakub of his own roots, while the rollercoaster experience will
show Basia the true meaning of devotion and affection...
In Poland, the Feast of St. Barbara (on December 4) is called “Barbórka” and is also
known as “Miners’ Day”. In Polish tradition St. Barbara is the patron saint of
coalminers, because she protects against lightning and other forms of sudden death.
On this day miners don traditional dress and organise festivities, some of which take
place in the coal mines themselves. It’s the usual practice in such circumstances to
invite a local or national celebrity to be the Master of Ceremonies during such an
event, which is how Basia and Jakub get together. In The Feast of St. Barbara we see
the size of the divide between an increasingly secular Warsaw and the remainder of
Poland. As with many European countries, Warsaw is very much a country inside a
country where life goes at a faster pace and money rules the day. But in places like
Silesia, tradition and religion can still play a vital role in the everyday lives of the
people - as we see so vividly illustrated here. Anna Draniewicz
Production company:
Telewizja Polska S.A.
00-999 Warszawa ul, J.P. Woronicza 17, Poland
Tel: 00 48 22 547 85 01
www.tvp.pl
FETCHING CODY
What would happen if you could go back and change some things in the past? Not
killing-Hitler things, but relatively little stuff, like saving someone from bullies, or
themselves. That’s the idea behind young writer/director Ray’s Fetching Cody [ ‘Best
Feature Film’, Sedona International Film Festival], which starts out as a gritty look at
life on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside then turns into a fantasy involving time
travel and grisly black comedy.
Things centre on a young couple living rough. By street standards, they’re a
happening duo. Okay, Art (Baruchel) sells (and pops) pills all day and Cody (Lind)
turns tricks for drug money and to pay for her day-to-day room at the Balmoral
[hotel]. But they’re in love and actually have plans for the future -plans that get
shunted aside when she suddenly gets sick, leaving Art to ponder what went wrong.
He gets a chance to trace that process back pretty far, thanks to the ministrations of
his gruff guardian angel, an eccentric street veteran (played with characteristic verve
by Jim Byrnes) who finds an old reclining-chair covered in Christmas lights. He tells
the lad it’s a bona fide time machine, which of course turns out to be true, or true
enough to catapult Art back to key points in Cody’s life.
The film raises interesting philosophical questions about our importance in other
people’s lives - think Groundhog Day with hints of It’s a Wonderful Life and Blow [and
The Butterfly Effect.] Mainly, though, Fetching Cody is an impressive vehicle for
Baruchel, who comes across as a young, more soulful Jon Cryer, and TV veteran Lind,
whose transformative powers are arresting. It’s also worth some shout-outs to
cinematographer Paul Mitchnick, who makes Vancouver’s crummiest postal code
look attractively gritty, and editor Karen Porter, who handles the time-leaping stuff
with seemingly effortless finesse. Ken Eisner, The Georgia Straight
UK PREMIERE
FOR A FEW MARBLES MORE
(Voor een paar knikkers meer)
Dir. Jelmar Hufen The Netherlands 2006
11mins 3 secs (PG) Subtitles
Tom Schield, Pauline Winckel, Ruben van
den Besselaar, Aidan Vernee, Merijn van
Heiningen
Failing to get interest from their
parents after being bullied off their
playground by two drunks, four ten
year olds turn to the neighbourhood
bad boy and seek his help in exchange
for their precious marbles.
Kairos Films
Prof. Ritzema Boslaan 55-1, Utrecht, 3571
CM, The Netherlands
Tel: 00 31 30 628 522 107
Production company:
Cheap and Dirty Productions, Inc.
Vancouver, Canada
Tel: 001 604 872 7006
www.cheapanddirty.ca
Courtesy of Cheap and Dirty Productions, Inc.
Courtesy of TVP
UK PREMIERE
FOR BREAD ALONE
(Il pane nudo aka El Khoubz el hafi)
Sunday 18 March 10.30am Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. Rachid Benhadj Italy/Morocco 2005 100 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Saïd Taghmaoui, Marzia Tedeschi, Giovanna Spuria, Faycal Zeghadi, Sanaa Alaoui,
Karim Benhadj, Ahmed Elkourachi
OUT OF MILK
Dir. Nicola Morris GB 2006
Liberty Burnett, Jamie Foskin, Sarah
Guyler, Mark Down, Jonathan Barnham
An eight-year-old girl and the boy next
door spend their days walking their
substitute dogs. Returning early from
her daily errand to buy milk, she
discovers that the TV repairman has
been servicing more than just the
television…
Nicola Morris
29 Love Walk, London, SE5 8AD, United
Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7890 486 096
“A true document of human desperation, shattering in its impact,” wrote Tennessee
Williams of the autobiographical novel on which For Bread Alone is based. Mohamed
Choukri, its author, Nobel nominee and considered by many to be Morocco’s finest
writer, was enthusiastically involved in the planning of the film, though he died
before it was made. The book, translated into English by his friend Paul Bowles, broke
many taboos of Arabian literature with its harsh and unblinking account of the
ultimate degradations of street life among the very poor in the French colonial North
Africa of the 1940s and ‘50s.
Director Rachid Benhadj spares no detail of squalor depicting the boy Mohamed’s
nightmarish childhood. Horrific beatings from his brutal father and the casual
cruelties of the colonial regime make for a pitifully miserable life, but this is also an
intrinsically poetic view which finds a terrible beauty even in the harshest and
most painful of scenes. A succession of excellent boy actors portray Mohamed as he
grows up, until that fine actor Taghmaoui takes on the role of the adult character.
Powerless, Illiterate, a petty street criminal, and quite unaware of the politics of the
fast advancing freedom movement, he is arrested and while in prison comes into
contact with a nationalist leader and - in an exhilarating sequence - begins to learn
to read and write, which becomes his salvation.
At once specifically of its time and place, it’s also a universal portrait of the horror of
deep poverty. Breathtaking cinematography, a fine score and, despite everything,
considerable humour and optimism humanise what is basically a serious and stark
tale. Self-expression is the beginning of freedom, and the young Choukri who rides
away to an uncertain future on the back of a truck is to become the revered writer
whom we see in a moving coda to the film, shot in 2003 just before his death.
Sheila Seacroft
Production company:
A.E. Media Corporation s.r.l.
viale Carso 63, 00195 Rome, Italy
Tel: 00 39 06 454 28 060
www.forbreadalone.com
FRESH AIR
(Friss Levego)
Dir. Kocsis Agnes Hungary 2006 109 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Hegyi Izabella, Nkayo Julia, Turoczi Anita, Kiss Zoltan, Nagy Miklos, Bereczy Peter
“The toast of Cannes” - this was how 25-year-old Hungarian writer/director Agnes
Kocsis (or, as the Hungarians would themselves put it, Kocsis Agnes) was described
last year when she hit the fabled Croisette with a well-timed ‘double whammy’. On
the back of a prize-winning premiere at Budapest’s Hungarian Film Week, Kocsis’
debut feature Fresh Air (co-written with Roberti Andrea) was included in Cannes’
prestigious International Critics’ Week, while her short A Virus popped up as part of
the no-less-esteemed ‘Cinefondation programme’ where it also picked up a muchsought-after gong.
Later Fresh Air was the joint winner at Brussels’ European Film Festival - sharing the
honours with Taxidermia, by Kocsis’ countryman Palfi Gyorgi. But while Taxidermia provisionally set for a UK release later this year - is a riot of colourful excess and
stomach-churning phantasmagoria, the delicately-observed mother-and-daughter
comedy-drama Fresh Air couldn’t be much more different. “A deep breath of
Kaurismakian deadpan” is how Variety magazine’s Eddie Cockrell summed it up:
“Fresh Air measures the deceptively wide emotional chasm between a neat-freak
workaholic who cleans subway toilets and her quietly defiant daughter - with
ambitions to design clothing - who’s more like her than either of them can imagine.”
Jim Jarmusch has also been cited as an influence - not that the “quietly defiant”
Kocsis accepts such comparisons: “I didn’t have references when I made the film.
Actually I never had any references in my life. It is a bit strange, because they have
compared it to Almodovar, Loach, Akerman... They are all so far from each other,
which I think is a good thing, because that means that my film in the end is not
similar to anything.” Kocsis is half-right: Fresh Air is the work of a confident new
filmmaker who has clearly learned much from her elders - and who looks certain to
be the ‘toast’ of many more audiences to come. Frank Mangus
MERCURY INSPECTION
Dir. Lesley Wisley USA 2006
1 min 30 secs (adv PG)
Animation
To ensure that every thermometer
functions correctly before being
packaged and shipped, they are tested
to ensure their mercury rises. With
great apprehension, the thermometers
await their fate in the testing room.
Shannon Farney
Georgia, 31405, USA
Tel: 00 1 912 525 8502
Production company:
KMH
c/o Hungarian Film Union (Magyar Filmunio)
Városligeti fasor 38. Budapest, Hungary-1068
Tel: 00 36 1 351 7760
www.frisslevego.hu
Courtesy of Hungarian Film Union
Courtesy A.E. Media Corporation s.r.l.
UK PREMIERE (NEW DIGITAL PRINT)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Terence Young GB 1963 110 mins (PG)
Sean Connery, Daniela Bianchi, Lotte Lenya, Pedro Armendáriz, Robert Shaw, Bernard Lee,
(Yamim Kfuim)
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
Eunice Gayson, Desmond Llewellyn
Widely regarded (by fans and Sean Connery alike) as one of the finest of the 21 official
Bond films, From Russia with Love was the second in the series and has been re-released
on a new digital print.
THE RED BALLOON
Dir. Michael Olesen USA 2005
3 mins 14 secs (adv U)
Aidan Gould, Pedro Miguel Arce
Enlisting the assistance of a balloon
vendor, a young boy sends a birthday
wish to his Mom – in the only way he
knows how. A pocket-sized poignant
poem.
Contact:
[email protected]
99 Porchester Drive, Toronto, Ontario,
M1J 2R4, Canada
Tel: 00 1 323 620 0891
www.MichaelOlesen.com
This is Connery’s finest hour as 007. He is at home with the character and allows the
audience to feel the frustration, desire and pain that James Bond endures. This is
especially apparent as Bond comes face to face with his closest adversary yet: Red Grant
(Robert Shaw), who provides the requisite amount of intimidation to make 007
genuinely worried. Arguably the most memorable sequence features Connery and Shaw
battling in a tiny compartment on the Orient Express, where Bond is obviously in trouble.
It is only thanks to ever-helpful ‘Q’ and his gadgets that 007 foils his nemesis.
Interestingly, this was the first of the Bond series to feature Desmond Llewellyn, the
actor who continued to portray ‘Q’, (real name Major Boothroyd) in another 16 outings.
This also marks the first official appearance from another Bond regular – John Barry, who
has composed for ten films thus far.
The supporting cast is strong with Daniela Bianchi, Lotte Lenya and Pedro Armendáriz,
who plays Bond’s Istanbul contact Kerim Bey. Tragically, Armendáriz was terminally ill
throughout the filming, so much so that his scenes had to be filmed first; towards the
end of filming director Terence Young himself doubled for the ailing actor.
The plot of From Russia with Love is centred on 007’s mission to Istanbul to collect the
Russian ‘Lektor’ cipher machine from defecting Russian agent Tatiana Romanova, soon to
become one of Bond’s many bed-notches. Bond soon finds he is being lured into a trap
and has to confront the deadly Grant and of course, KGB renegade Rosa Klebb, the
wearer of the poison-tipped shoes! Ben Eagle
We hope Bond series producer Michael G. Wilson will be present to introduce the
BIFF2007 UK Premiere of the new digital print of From Russia with Love.
Print source:
Park Circus Limited
22-24 Woodlands Terrace, Glasgow, G3 6DF, Scotland
Tel: 00 44 141 332 2175
www.parkcircus.com
Courtesy of Park Circus Limited
With special thanks to EON Productions
FROZEN DAYS
Friday 23 March 12.15pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. Danny Lerner Israel 2005 90 mins (tbc) Subtitles b/w
Anat Klausner, Sandra Sade, Uli Sternberg, Pini Tavger, Maor Cohen
Meow, a small-time drug dealer, prowls night-time Tel-Aviv in Danny Lerner’s striking
psychological drama. Shot entirely in black and white Lerner’s film is an uneasy
journey into a world of paranoia and intrigue as Meow struggles with profound
questions of identity after an online meeting with the mysterious Alex Caplan.
After stalking Alex through internet chat-rooms and carrying on a mobile phone
flirtation Meow arranges to meet him in a nightclub. Before she can meet him the
club is targeted by a suicide bomber. Rushing to the hospital Meow eventually finds
Alex swathed in bandages, lying in a coma. Her phone number on his mobile phone
confirms his identity. Meow moves into Alex’s flat and starts to assume his character,
collecting his laundry, even being invited to resident’s association meetings. As time
passes Meow becomes increasingly disorientated and concerned for her sanity.
Frozen Days started life as a short student film but, in an accomplished piece of
filmmaking, Lerner managed to stretch his ambitions to feature length. Visually
striking with its stark black and white photography and numerous location shots
Frozen Days shows a side of Tel-Aviv that never appears in the holiday brochures. The
alleyways, stairwells and deserted streets are classic staples of film noir and
contribute to a tense atmosphere and a deep sense of unease.
Considering the small budget (around $25,000) Lerner has managed to create a
rounded film which, through clever editing and visual design, feels like a far larger
production. Performance is the other key to the film’s appeal and after auditioning
many professional actresses Lerner finally chose newcomer Anat Klausner for the key
role of Meow. It proved a shrewd choice: she is a mesmerising screen presence and
confidently shoulders the responsibility of appearing in virtually every scene in the
film. Simon Barnett
BLIND MAN’S ALLEY
Dir. Tony Kelly GB 2006
Sam Clarke, John Hoare, Matt O’Shea,
Aisling Loftus, Mirza Mujic, Joe Sentance
Five teenagers strip to their underwear
and select numbers from a bag.
Moments later their hands are tied and
hoods are placed over their heads.
Standing silently in the harsh light of a
tunnel, they take their places. They are
ready to take part in the ninth annual
game of Blind Man’s Alley.
305 Marco Island, Huntingdon Street,
Nottingham, NG1 1AP, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7707 157 729
International sales:
Bleiberg Entertainment
9454 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 200, Beverly Hills, CA 90212, USA
Tel: 001 310 273 0003
www.bleibergent.com
www.frozendays.com
Courtesy of Bleiberg Entertainment
TOMMY THE KID
Dir. Stuart Clegg Australia 2006
Isaac Harrison, Rodney Lester
When Tom’s pushbike is stolen by Rob,
the owner of the local bric-a-brac store,
he feels powerless to do anything
about it. But an encounter with Rob’s
dog gives Tom an idea. Will kidnapping
the pooch help Tom reclaim his bike?
Contact:
[email protected]
SCPT
4/52 Livingstone Road, Petersham,
Sydney, 2049, Australia
Tel: 2 (0)422 696 097
GHOSTS OF CITÉ SOLEIL
UK PREMIERE
Wednesday 14 March 8.15pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dirs. Asger Leth, Milos Loncarevic Denmark/USA 2006 88 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
With: Winson ‘2Pac’ Jean, Wyclef Jean, James ‘Bily’ Petit Frère
(Chuan bing)
Few documentaries could be as different as March of the Penguins and Ghosts of Cité
Soleil, a scary, fascinating documentary about gang life in Haiti’s worst slum. The
comparison comes to mind because it is difficult to decide which film would have
been the more challenging and profoundly discomforting to make. If only due to the
access achieved, there has never been anything quite like Asger Leth’s film; it’s
amazing it even exists and that the director is still alive. Rough as can be in both
content and style, Ghosts will be welcome everywhere tough, provocative docus are
shown.
The United Nations has declared Cité Soleil “the most dangerous place on Earth”; this
slum of Port au Prince, populated by up to 500,000 people, makes the townships of
South Africa look like Beverly Hills. As shown in the film, which was lensed in 2004,
it’s an entirely lawless place presided over by sinister chimeres, or ghosts, violent
young men allegedly employed and armed by then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
and so named because, in a sense, they’re already dead, given their typically brief life
spans.
Leth is the son of Danish filmmaker and longtime Haiti resident Jorgen Leth, who
collaborated with Lars von Trier on the 2003 release The Five Obstructions. While it is
sometimes difficult to believe that the self-described “thugsters” are letting him film
what we’re seeing, Leth evidently appealed to the criminals’ desire for selfglorification, and they allowed him cover their lives for several months in 2004, a
pivotal year that marked Aristide’s flight from office and the country.
What’s on view in the film is appalling and startling, but intimate enough to be a
human story rather than just a sociological snapshot. Todd McCarthy, Variety
Print source:
Revolver Entertainment
10 Lambton Place, London, W11 2SH, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 243 4300
www.revolvergroup.com
ICE GAMES
Sunday 18 March 6pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. Zhang Hui Lin China 2006 75 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Tai Ying Li, Long Kuan, Yu Bo, Wang Lan
According to director Zhang Hui Lin, “The initial idea of Ice Games goes back to 2004,
when SARS was in the air in Beijing, and the streets were empty. The whole city was
in panic. Friends gathered at my place because all work has been suspended. The
idea of making a film was actually to pass time and not be too bored. Ice Games is a
story about loneliness and independency, about two women, walking the streets at
night, telling irrelevant stories, playing irrelevant games; and two men: The one is
lost in dreams; the other lost his love due to indecisiveness. Some parts of the film
are close to reality, and most people were playing just themselves, or rather, the way
I see them. Half of the scenes were shot in a place called Wanghe Bridge. Our luck
was that even though the shooting covered two seasons, the bridge was still under
construction and never fully operational. The whole film took two years to finish;
part of the reason was the change of seasons, but for the most part it was due to my
laziness. Because there was no pressure.”
As these comments suggest, Ice Games certainly doesn’t have the air of a film made
by people in much of a hurry - though that isn’t to say that proceedings move in a
slow or torpid fashion. Indeed, the very opening frames are infused with an
audacious kineticism that captures the pace of a society accelerating into the future
at a head-spinning rate. But, Zhang reminds us, we must never lose sight of the most
fundamental human connections: the real subject is the friendship between his
heroines, who drift through their nocturnal cityscapes like refugees from those
rambling Jacques Rivette pictures from the ‘70s and ‘80s (or their closest Hollywood
equivalent, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive). Unlike Rivette and Lynch, however,
Zhang prizes brevity: at just 75 minutes, this is an absorbing and economical
dispatch from the passionate heart of modern China. Frank Mangus
UK PREMIERE
MORTEM COMPANY
Dir. Stéfan Le Lay France 2006
21 mins (adv PG) Subtitles
Loïc Fourniaud, Artus de Penguern,
Mathilde Mottier, Guillaume de
Tonquédec
Narrating the story, Bruno is proud of
his father’s unusual job and becomes
very excited when he is finally taken to
visit his place of work. But an incident
on the way precipitates a series of
events that begin to affect their
lifestyle and eventually Bruno’s life.
Stéfan Le Lay
21 rue de Pont-Menou, Ploueragtguerrand, 29620, France
Tel: 00 33 6 616 109 73
Production company:
Zhang Hui Lin
F-1405, Jiao Da Jia Yuan No. 1., (Jiao Tong Da Xue Lu), Beijing 100044, China
Tel: 001 391 001 8645
Courtesy of Revolver Entertainment
Courtesy of Zhang Hui Lin
INFINITE JUSTICE
ISOLATED
Tuesday 20 March 8.45pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. Jamil Dehlavi GB 2006 93 mins (adv 15) Some subtitles
Kevin Collins, Jennifer Calvert, Constantine Gregory, Raza Jaffrey, Irvine Iqbal, Jeff Mirza
(Aislados)
In the wake of the impressive, multi-layered yet near-impenetrable Syriana comes Infinite
Justice. This is a bold, confrontational and far more accessible consideration of the ‘war
on terror’ and the mechanics of the political world that pulls the strings of the opposing
elements at the heart of the fray.
DIRECTOR’S CUT
Dir. Joshua Kerr GB 2006
Andrew Turnbull, Gary Cordingley,
Sally Yendall, Julia Mugnai
A director’s film premiere becomes ever
more fraught, as the lines between fact
and fiction become increasingly
blurred. An effective short that’s very
slick, utilising a stylish editing
technique.
Blacksuit Films
616 Welbeck Road, Walker, Newcastle
upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, NE6 3AB,
United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 191 262 2436
An edgy and unsettling thriller, it is loosely based on months leading to the death of the
American Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl, who was investigating links between Pakistan, Al
Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks on America when he was kidnapped by Islamic
fundamentalists in 2002. He was later beheaded with the hideous act caught on camera.
Kevin Collins plays Jewish reporter Arnold Silverman, a bullish young man with a touch of
the crusader about him who sets out to unravel the Gordian knot of intrigue and
conspiracy that led to the destruction of the World Trade Center and the deaths of
thousands of people. One of them was his sister. His terrier-like digging unearths several
links – between radicalised young British Muslims and firebrand speakers in the States,
between the 9/11 terrorists and Pakistan, and between enigmatic homeland security
personnel and other, sinister, freelance agents. One of them is Abe Kautsky (Constantine
Gregory), a mystery man who seems to know all the answers to all Silverman’s questions.
His journey eventually leads to Karachi and to a far more complex web of relationships
and understandings than even he suspected.
Jamil Dehlavi’s uncompromising film strikes at the very heart of the international standoff between West and East and postulates whether professional observers such as Pearl
are merely puppets in a wider conspiracy controlled not by governments or idealists but
by shadowy middle-men with their own murky agendas. This is a potent brew. At no
point does Dehlavi allow himself to take sides, instead presenting his tale from multiple
viewpoints and suggesting a very different scenario to the ‘official’ version of Pearl’s
death. Always challenging and occasionally shocking, its closing moments deliver a
sledgehammer punch unequalled by recent political dramas and hints at the inner
strength of a filmmaker unencumbered by the concept of fear. Chris Flanders
We hope director/co-writer Jamil Dehlavi will be present to introduce
the BIFF2007 screening of Infinite Justice.
Print source:
Dehlavi Films
St. Martin's Chapel, 108 Bayham Street, London, NW1 OBD, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 482 3433
Courtesy of Dehlavi Films
Friday 23 March 2pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. David Marques Spain 2005 80 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Adria Collado, Eric Frances, Jean-Luc Ducasse
One of the more enjoyable, relaxed and amiable of recent European films - and
definitely one of the absolute cheapest to make - Isolated came to our programmers’
attention at December’s Black Nights Film Festival in wintry Tallinn, Estonia. BNFF is
an event whose packed schedule easily justifies bracing the Baltic coast’s frequently
sub-zero climes.
And what a contrast such surroundings provided to the film itself, which so lazily
unspools in the sun-kissed surroundings of the Mediterranean’s hedonism-capital
Ibiza. But this isn’t remotely recognisable as the nocturnal-frenzy Ibiza of Balearic
beats, spaced-out Brits and Pete Tong’s live Radio 1 broadcasts. Instead, we’re in a
rather quieter, more upscale corner of the “white island”, - several parts of which, it
may surprise ravers to discover, are protected as World Heritage Sites.
In the admiring words of Variety magazine’s reviewer Leslie Felperin, “Isolated is a
delightfully laid-back comedy in which two buddies shoot the breeze at a hilltop
villa. Reminiscent of Kevin Smith’s debut Clerks - but done on an even lower budget
and with even less plot - the film hangs with the twosome as they sink beers and
discuss sex, movies, politics, whatever. And that’s it. Adria (Collado), a journalist in his
twenties, comes to visit his slacker pal Kike (Frances), who is house-sitting for an
absent Frenchman named Pierre. Jean (Ducasse, also the film’s producer), Pierre’s
taciturn cousin, drifts in and out, making food, while the two friends loll around the
garden, play with children’s toys, and talk constantly. Well-timed edits and an
unadorned shooting style sustain the deadpan comic tone throughout.”
SCHATTENKIND
(Shadow Child)
Dir. Hans Hege Germany 2006
16 mins (adv 15)
Nadine Schwitter, Julius Bornmann
How do you cope with the death of
your child? Haunted by increasingly
painful memories, young parents
struggle to come to terms with their
loss as they face the reality of being
just two instead of three.
Rossmarkt 8, 80331 Munich, Germany
Tel: 00 49 89 269 035
Marques and Ducasse’s achievement is even more impressive and astonishing given
the production’s sub-shoestring funding: a total sum of €600 has been mentioned,
the project’s economy aided by the fact that all participants had to pay their own
airfare to the island. Such a hard life, film-making... Que viva Ibiza, indeed!
Neil Young
Production company:
Alta Produccion
Cuesta de San Vicen
MDC Int. GmbH, Schillerstr. 7a, 10625 Berlin, Germany
Tel: 00 49 30 264 979 00
www.mdc-int.de
Courtesy of Alta Produccion
UK PREMIERE
JANUARY 2ND
Dir. Matt Winn GB 2006 106 mins (adv 18)
Simon Kunz, Ruth Gemmell, Rachel Fielding
Using the familiar but effective device of reuniting a group of old friends, Matt
Winn’s film offers a contemporary British take on the territory staked out in movies
such as The Big Chill and Texasville.
UK PREMIERE
A PLASTIC TOY DINOSAUR
Dir. Benjamin Stevens GB 2006
9 mins 50 secs (adv 15)
Dan Mersh, Clem Tibber, Penny
Granycombe, Ainsley Mitchell, Ben Bee
Dark humour is rife in this short film
about a father and son relationship. It
takes us through a series of incidents
where the nonplussed father
dramatically fails in his parenting and
shies away from true interaction with
his child. The father seems oblivious to
his actions, but the son is continually
dismayed. Despite it being humorous,
you get a sense that the father’s
actions are shaping his son’s future,
and that his personality as an adult
may come from days like these.
Best International Film
(YoungCuts 2006, Canada)
Dead on Impact
97 Rothwell Road, Gosforth, Newcastle,
Tyne and Wear, NE3 1UA, United
Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 191 285 5912
Adam and Claire live in a remote farmhouse in the Brecon Beacons. Adam struggles
to complete an album that never sounds like it will amount to much while Claire
wonders what happened to their once shared dreams after they left London. Their
marriage is already imploding when five old friends turn up for a New Year’s Eve
party. The usual types are represented. Neville is a wildly unsuccessful actor always
one step away from moving to L.A. Beth burns her way through her inheritance while
mistaking sex for love. Frank pines for Beth while shoving as much coke up his nose
as will fit. Suzanne is the sanest; and bitterest. Finally there is Sean who refuses to
settle down or grow up and brings his latest girlfriend, a lap dancer. Through a
couple of boozy nights of rows, stolen kisses and vituperative banter the friends lay
bare two decades of bad judgement, bed-hopping, wilted careers and varying
degrees of disappointment.
Winn’s film shows a keen ear for the lazy shorthand dialogue of old friends and his
ensemble cast hangs together well, offering a convincing portrayal of a group whose
memories of their formative years in the carefree days of early rave culture have
given way to more sober assessments of what the future might hold. January 2nd
certainly doesn’t make middle age look attractive but it rings true and seems to
define friends not as the people you might want to hang out with if you met them
today but the people you still hang out with despite having known them for 20-odd
years. Simon Barnett
Print source:
Tel: 00 44 208 758 1716
We hope director Matt Winn and producer Ivan Clements will be present to
introduce the BIFF2007 presentation of January 2nd.
JINDABYNE
Dir. Ray Lawrence Australia 2006 123 mins (adv 15)
Laura Linney, Gabriel Byrne, Chris Haywood, John Howard, Deborra-lee Furness, Eva
Lazzaro, Leah Purcell, Stelios Yiakmis, Sean Rees-Wemyss, Alice Garner
Four friends - Stewart, Carl, Rocco and Billy - are on their annual fishing trip into the
isolated lakes of New South Wales. Stewart (Byrne) leaves the other three for some
solitude and stumbles across the body of a girl, floating face-down in the water. The
four have a decision to make: do they sacrifice their sacred fishing trip to report the
death, or do they continue and tell the authorities on their return to town? They
choose the latter but on returning home their lives are utterly disrupted.
Understandably, the women in their lives are mortified and cannot understand how
they could be so cold as to ignore the dead girl. The authorities are equally baffled as
to the men’s reluctance to report their gruesome find. The town’s people begin to
doubt the four men’s integrity. Why did they abandon their moral responsibilities?
Was it because the dead girl was black…?
Claire, Stewart’s wife, is the last to be told and as the details begin to leak out she
begins to doubt her husband. Why won’t he talk about it? What is he hiding?
Meanwhile the men, caught in a web of hatred, distrust and racism, continue to
reassure themselves that they have done nothing wrong. After all, they didn’t kill the
girl.
Jindabyne marks the third feature film from Australian director Ray Lawrence,
following from the success of the adaptation of Peter Carey’s Bliss, which received
rave reviews and played in the Official Selection at Cannes in 1985. After 17 years of
inactivity, Lawrence returned with the powerful and impressive Lantana, which is in
some ways similar to Jindabyne. Both are very relationship-driven pieces, set in
Australia and thought-provoking thrillers.
UK PREMIERE
FELICITY’S FIXATION
Dir. Tom Hickmore GB 2005
1 min 56 secs (adv 12A)
Poppy Rowe
Sending a series of sexy mobile phone
video messages to her recent onenight stand, an obsessed Felicity tries
to stimulate another encounter.
Nice Media Ltd
4 Trinity Street, Brighton, BN2 3HN,
United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)1273 672 030
www.nicemedialimited.com
Jindabyne is a complex ensemble piece that deals with some powerful subjects. A
cinema-goer’s treat, it also marks a very welcome return to the screen for Ray
Lawrence. Ben Eagle
Tel: 0044 207 243 4300
www.revolvergroup.com <http://www.revolvergroup.com>
JOE STRUMMER:
THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN
Dir. Julien Temple Ireland/GB 2006 125 mins (adv 15)
With: Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Nick Headon, Terry Chimes, Iain Gillies, Alasdair Gillies,
Gaby Holford, Bono, Damien Hirst, Joe Ely, John Cusack, Johnny Depp, Matt Dillon, Jim
Jarmusch, Martin Scorsese, Flea, Courtney Love Cobain, Steve Buscemi
CHRISTMAS IN HUDDERSFIELD
Dir. Peter Spence GB 2006
10 mins (adv PG)
With: Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious,
Steve Jones, Paul Cook
Christmas, 1977. Against significant
local opposition notorious punk rockers
the Sex Pistols play a benefit gig for
the children of striking firefighters – in
Huddersfield. It will be the last live
performance they will ever give in the
UK. Three decades later filmmaker
Peter Spence reunites some of those
children – now adults with families of
their own – to reminisce about a truly
unique (and intrinsically human)
moment in Punk Rock history. Boasting
archive footage of the concert courtesy
of Julien (The Filth and the Fury)
Temple, Christmas in Huddersfield is a
remarkable little curio.
Natural Cinema
32 Newton Garth, Leeds, West Yorkshire,
LS7 4JZ, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0) 7951 364 559
The late punk rock legend Joe Strummer is rendered fully human in Julien Temple’s
engrossing and all-encompassing portrait Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten.
Strummer’s strange career, from his sudden burst onto the punk rock scene of the
mid-’70s with The Clash to his post-Clash burnout, exile and gradual re-emergence,
provides Temple with unusually dramatic and complex elements to explore a
brilliant, if mercurial, creative musical life.
The general biographical outline is told in straightforward, chronological terms, but
the details, archival clips and dynamic staging of guests interviewed by Temple are
what give the film its throbbing vitality. To viewers of Temple’s previous rock doc
Glastonbury, several familiar links are apparent - particularly Strummer’s late-life
love for making spontaneous communities and groups around outdoor bonfires
during such music events as the Glastonbury festival.
Temple actually began documenting Strummer as early as 1976, the Clash’s first
year, and he uses several audio interviews with the singer-songwriter to fill in the
personal details. Bassist Paul Simonon is the only bandmate who demurred being
involved with the pic, but co-writer/singer/guitarist Mick Jones, drummers Nicky
Headon and Terry Chimes are terrific and voluble commentators for Temple’s camera.
Temple’s images of an aging, slightly pudgier Strummer (happy dad of two
daughters) touchingly conveys how life catches up with even the wildest rebels, and
a bright denouement tracing Strummer’s musical rebirth with the Mescaleros is sure
to make the shock of his death at age 50 of a heart attack startling even to fans who
think they’re experts on the rocker. Robert Koehler, Variety
We hope director Julien Temple will be present to introduce
the BIFF2007 screening of Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten.
Print source:
Vertigo Films
The Big Room Studios, 77 Fortress Road, London, NW5 1AG, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 428 7555
www.vertigofilms.com
Courtesy of Vertigo Films
KLIMT
Tuesday 13 March 6pm Cubby Boccoli Cinema
Dir. Raul Ruiz Austria/France/Germany/GB 2006 97 mins (TBC) Some subtitles
John Malkovich, Veronica Ferres, Saffron Burrows, Stephen Dillane, Paul Hilton
The hothouse world of Vienna circa 1900, and especially the febrile beauty of Gustav
Klimt’s art, are unsurprising subjects for Raul Ruiz’s fertile imagination. Transferring
that fascination to the screen, however, proves an unwieldy task, and neither the
producer’s version nor the longer director’s cut manage to make sense of the
material gathered, alternately ponderous and evanescent. Billed as a
phantasmagoria rather than a biopic, Klimt falls into the philosophical conundrum it
attempts to resurrect - whether portrait and allegory can co-exist. Notwithstanding
moments of great beauty, in this case the answer is clearly “no”.
Still smarting from the wholesale butchery of Time Regained in some regions, Ruiz
agreed with the producers to release a shorter, 96 minute version of his latest
picture, which may stay the independent editor’s hand. It’s an odd compromise, since
130 minutes isn’t an unusual time for an arthouse film, surely its targeted audience.
The director’s cut is undoubtedly the richer version, making clearer the repeated
motifs — Ruiz claims Schnitzler as an inspiration. A bizarre gilded cage sequence in a
brothel feels even more peculiar without the earlier parallel sequence, just as
anachronistic Chinese kids have no point in the 96-minute prints without the fuller
context of the artist’s introduction to Chinese painting in the longer version.
Generally superb art direction is beautifully captured by DoP Ricardo Aronovich’s rich,
fluid lensing, and lighting is especially magical in several snow sequences. Birgit
Hutter’s costumes would have made Cecil Beaton smile. Sound quality is a major
problem in the producer’s cut, which muffles actors already having difficulty finding
the rhythm of the English. The director’s cut is clearer, although the few lines in
German, subtitled in the shorter version, are left untranslated in the longer print. -
UK PREMIERE
ME HEAD’S A SHED
Dir. Marco van Belle GB 2007 8 mins
30 secs (adv 12A)
Holly Kenny, Gail Burland, Jim Millea,
Rachel Cholerton, Chloe Pycock
Struggling to maintain a normal life,
the relationship between a
schizophrenic mother and her teenage
daughter is threatened as they are
faced by the insensitive handling of the
authorities.
69 The Mill, Baxter Mews, Wadsley
Bridge, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United
Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0) 7792 081 865
Jay Weissberg, Variety
Print source:
Soda Pictures
Tel: 00 44 207 240 6060
LIGHTS IN THE DUSK
THE LIVES OF OTHERS
(Laitakaupungin Valot)
(Das Leben der Anderen)
Dir. Aki Kaurismäki Finland 2006 78 mins (tbc) Subtitles
Janne Hyytiäinen, Maria Heiskanen, Maria Järvenhelmi, Ilkka Koivula
UK PREMIERE
RASPBERRY RIPPLE
Dir. Patrick Whittaker GB 2006
18 mins (adv 12A)
Mick Green, Jon McKenna, Brian
Gwaspari
After spending 40 years in NHS nursing
homes since suffering a stroke, former
rock star Des Gilroy (Green) is expelled
for his constant misdemeanours.
Wheelchair bound and forced to live
with his brother, a confrontation with
the neighbouring squatters develops
into an amusing conflict.
Split Second Films
149 Carlton Road, Gidea Park,
Essex, RM2 5AX, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 1708 703 309
A full decade after Drifting Clouds (1996), Scandinavia’s most celebrated active
director now finally completes his ‘Finland Trilogy’ with Lights in the Dusk - having
won no less an accolade than the Palme d’Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival for the
middle section, The Man Without A Past. Don’t worry if you haven’t seen either of the
first two ‘episodes’, however: the three films are connected by atmosphere
(detached, offbeat), style (bald, direct), setting (modern-day city centre Helsinki) and
tone (black-comic deadpan) rather than plot.
This time around our hero is a thirtysomething security guard named Koistinen
(Hyytiainen): a rather morose chap who lives alone, has no friends, is unpopular at
work. His warmest relationship is with Aila (Heiskanen), the woman who operates
his favourite hot-dog stand. But while he doesn’t pick up on the tentative signs of
romantic interest Aila occasionally sends his way, he responds more strongly to the
more aggressive approach taken by Mirja (Jarvenhelmi), a shapely blonde who makes
his acquaintance in a cafe. Koistinen is happy to reciprocate Mirja’s chummy
attentions - but his new “girlfriend” isn’t all she seems...
Among the many delights on offer here, perhaps the most immediately obvious is
Kaurismaki’s unerringly expert ear for music: classical extracts sit in surprisingly cosy
fashion alongside raucous rockabilly tracks - and we get a full performance from
local retro-stompers ‘Melrose’ when Koistinen and Mirja share a rather awkward date
at a club. Here, as elsewhere, the droll humour has a powerful undercurrent of
sadness, as we observe how the hapless Koistinen so stoically reacts to fate’s cruel
caprices. It’s a modus vivendi which, Kaurismaki suggests, is guaranteed to cause
problems in the short and medium term but which, in the end, might just be the
only sane way to react to an increasingly helter-skelter world: the very final shot
delivers a hard-earned touch of warmth and optimism in a tale of otherwise
bracingly sardonic, irresistibly fatalistic gloom. Frank Mangus
Print source:
Artificial Eye Film Company Ltd
20-22 Stukeley Street, London, WC2B 5LR, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 240 5353
www.artificial-eye.com
Tuesday 13 March 8pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Germany 2006 137 mins (15) Subtitles
Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur, Thomas Thieme
Anna Funder’s fascinating book Stasiland was a surprising insight into the lives of
ordinary people in East Germany under the strict control of the secret police, the Stasi.
In many ways, The Lives of Others is a companion piece highlighting at the effects both
the spy and the spied in a stunningly absorbing drama from first time director Florian
Henckel von Donnersmarck.
The Lives of Others opens in a lecture theatre that seems normal until it becomes clear
that the subject is interrogation and how to extract information from your victim. In
this world, everything seems normal until you scrape away the surface. The lecturer is
the monk-like Gerd Wiesler, a man who clearly knows his subject in great depth. Georg
Dreyman is the leading playwright in East Germany, a man who is a good statesperson
and does not put a foot wrong. But is he too good? Wiesler is put on the case to find
incriminating evidence.
The film makes it clear that politics and the world around him have never infected
Dreyman’s ability to write uncontroversial plays that the State applauds. Even his
mentor, the elderly director Albert Jerska who hasn’t worked for years because he has
been blacklisted, can’t shake his faith. However, when Jerska cannot cope without
work anymore and commits suicide, Dreyman starts to wonder.
The Lives of Others is a classic piece of filmmaking - a compelling drama that centres
on the lives and challenges of ordinary people in an extraordinary world. It even
manages to create some sympathy for East German ideals but shows on the looking
glass logic leads to the very thing that the State was trying to prevent. At the core is a
wonderful performance from Ulrich Muehe as the master spy who says little but hears
everything. Bill Lawrence
WORLD PREMIERE
ODE TO JOY
Dir. Costas Chrysanthou GB 2006
3 mins (adv PG) b/w
James Walker
In bleak, apocalyptic, industrial
England, surreal faceless guards
tyrannise zombified factory workers as
a maverick violinist serenades
relentlessly.
Human Film
4 Lincoln Court, Farsley, Leeds, West
Yorkshire, LS28 5DD, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7835 378 454
Print source:
Lionsgate (UK) Limited
Ariel House, 74a Charlotte Street, London, W1T 4QT, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 299 8800
www.lionsgatefilms.co.uk
Courtesy of Lionsgate (UK) Limited
Courtesy of Artificial Eye Film Company Ltd
TAKE ME BACK
TO DEAR OLD BLIGHTY
Dir. James Debenham GB 2006
James Thornton
Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty taps
into the MTV generation’s perceptions
of modern television to deliver a
message. At first it appears to be a rant
against consumerism, but on closer
inspection is in fact one man’s view of
the modern British culture he sees
around him – where possessions and
vanity are all-conquering. His message
is simple – all the rubbish we surround
ourselves with won’t make us happy.
It’ll stave off the boredom and distract
us for a while, but ultimately it can’t
replace the things that are really
important – like love and the
fulfilment of your life.
Arch Stanton Productions
6 Bushby Avenue, Broxbourne,
Hertfordshire, EN10 6QE, United
Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7957 163156
LOS MUERTOS
UK PREMIERE
(The Dead)
SCREENING WITH: FANTASMA
(Tokyo Shikkaku)
Dir. Lisandro Alonso Argentina 2004 78 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Argentino Vargas
Dir. Ikawa Kotaro Japan 2006 91 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Takuya Fukushima, Iwasaki Takahiro, Tomomi, Nao Saito, Aya Kanai, Mari Kobayashi
Having secured the UK premiere of Argentinian auteur Lisandro Alonso’s new
masterpiece Fantasma (see Premieres & Previews), we immediately requested a print
of Alonso’s previous, multi-award winning film Los Muertos - which, back in 2004,
led film-bible Variety magazine to proclaim that “the new Argentine cinema has
found its poet and master”. The two films work perfectly well on their own - but
anyone considering seeing Fantasma (and it’s such a remarkable work that you’d be
well advised to do so) will benefit from also seeing Los Muertos: the central
character in both films is the same, namely a taciturn, distinguished-looking
gentleman named Argentino Vargas.
One-man-band filmmaker Kotaro Ikawa makes a fine entry into features with Lost in
Tokyo - a fluid, loose and tender look at two young men quietly mourning the loss of
their buddy. Colour-saturated prelude plays nostalgically, as twentysomething
buddies Takkun (Fukushima), Takachan (Iwasaki) and Eiji (Kamikura) recall their
college years when they formed a rock band. Now, Eiji is in law school while Takkun
flounders as a singer in a lowly band. In an extremely elliptical cut to two of the guys
dressed in black suits, it becomes clear that Eiji has suddenly died, and that the other
two have just returned from his funeral. To good friend Nao’s (Saito) dismay,
Takachan’s response is to get drunk with Takkun. The pair is soon off gallivanting
through Tokyo doing everything and anything to avoid talking about the scariest
thing of all: their futures.
Fantasma takes place in a Buenos Aires theatre complex which happens to be
screening Los Muertos. The number of customers is minimal - but includes Vargas
himself. He’s thus able to watch himself on the screen, “playing” a “character” named
Argentino Vargas. After a lengthy prologue in which the camera swoops around a
forest before finally stumbling across the bodies of two murdered children
(presumably “the dead” of the title) we observe Vargas’s last hours of confinement in
a prison so open it takes some time before we realise that he’s in jail at all. Vargas
then carries out an errand for one of his ex-jail mates that involves visiting a far-off
village. He then makes his way to visit his own grandchildren in another remote rural
spot.
Along the way we eventually discover the nature of Vargas’s crime: but this
revelation poses more questions than it offers answers... Ruminative and challenging
in its measured capturing of rural rhythms, Los Muertos may frustrate audiences
accustomed to the MTV-frenzy of Hollywood editing techniques. For everyone else,
however, it’s the chance to enter another world: mysterious, quiet, ominous,
guaranteed to reverberate in your memory long after the credits have rolled. Neil
With his shock of blonde hair, Takkun still attempts a rebel stance, but as the evening
drifts into the wee hours and then into dawn, this pose appears uncertain. Helmer
Ikawa captures this perfectly in an extended scene where Takachan drags Takkun to a
recording studio, where they have been waiting for him to record some tracks with
his band...
Lost in Tokyo is composed of small sequences that speak volumes about the dreams
and limitations of basically decent young men who have neither bought into the
corporate rat-race nor determined an independent course for themselves... The time
and space that Ikawa allows his actors gives Fukushima and Iwasaki room to create
vividly real characterizations of men who aren’t quite fully formed. There’s a sense in
Ikawa’s shaky, even unstable camerawork that he’s trying to get a handle on these
guys as well. By the knockout finale, the film extends less a feeling of understanding
than one of empathy. Jun Sekiguchi’s lonely guitar music ushers in a slightly
mournful note that the characters can’t bring themselves to express. Robert Koehler,
Young
Variety
Production company:
4L
Juramento 4940, Capital Federal, 1413 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Tel: 0054 11 4253 7694
[email protected]
Production company:
P-Kraft
165-0026 5.20.7.401 Arai, Nakano-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Tel : 00 81 70 5518 8917
http://film.m78.com/lostintokyo/english.html
Courtesy of 4L
LOST IN TOKYO
50 CENTS
Dir. Mathijs Geijskes The Netherlands
2006 5 mins 10 secs (adv PG) Subtitles
Marloes te Riele, Eric de Reijer, Kathinka
Wendelaar and Tommy the dog
This is a movie that deals with
possibilities, perceptions and
stereotypes. When a young woman
encounters a scruffy, unkempt middleaged man, her mind races and she goes
through a whole range of emotions.
Brilliantly directed and brilliantly acted,
50 Cents will make you think and
question. Reality isn’t always as it
seems; sometimes it is much more.
First Place
Fiction (Novidad Film Festival, Portugal)
Silver Bear
(Festival der Nationen, Austria)
Silver Medal
(Würzburg Festival, Germany)
Platinum Award
(Worldfest, Houston, USA)
Ridderschapstr. 27,
3512 CN Utrecht, The Netherlands
Tel: 00 31 30 236 71 02
Courtesy of Ikawa Kotaro/P-Kraft
MINOR REVELATIONS
MY BEST FRIEND
(Petites revelations)
Friday 23 March 8.30pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Patrice Leconte France 2006 94 mins (12A) Subtitles
Daniel Auteuil, Dany Boon, Julie Gayet, Julie Durand, Henri Garcin
Dir. Marie Vermillard France 2006 55 mins (adv 12A) Subtitles
Genevieve Tenne, Alexis Armengol-Humbert, Myriam Aziza, Marilyne Canto,
Renee Le Calm, Claude Massot, Denis Falgoux
ONE LAST DRINK
BEFORE MORNING
Dir. J.D. Kelleher GB 2006
Lesley McGuire, Garvan McGrath,
Gareth Keiran Jones
It’s a rainy night in the city and Victor
and Sweeney, workers at the printing
press, go into a run-down late-night
bar for a drink before heading for
home. Almost broke, they buy each
other a drink and pass the time with
idle chat. When a down and out
wanders in and gets a free drink from
the world-weary barmaid, they try to
find out what they have to do to get a
free one for themselves. If they can tell
the most tragic story, worse than hers,
then the free whisky is theirs. A simple
tale that moves deeper into tragedy
delivered through a fascinating and
compelling performance by Lesley
McGuire.
Penthouse 11 Productions
Penthouse 11 Bickenhall Mans,
Bickenhall Street, London, W1U 6BR,
United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7818 061 308
With the average age of debutant filmmakers seemingly dropping every year thanks to the proliferation of film schools, youth-oriented film festivals, and readily
accessible technology - the story of French writer/director Marie Vermillard provides
a refreshing and salutary reminder that cinema isn’t merely a “young man’s game”.
This former architecture student and social worker was 33 before she notched her
first big screen credit, working on thriller Public Security (1987) as what’s still known
across the channel as a “script-girl” (i.e. continuity monitor). She made her first short
at 38 with Reste (1992), worked on various films with the likes of Arnaud Desplechin,
Cedric Klapisch and Olivier Assayas, before - at 43 - making her feature debut with
1997’s Eau Douce. Pregnancy drama Lala Lili followed in 1999, earning Vermillard the
accolade “un espoir du cinema hexagonal” (‘a hope of hexagonal cinema’) - not a
reference to any geometric ingenuity, but rather to France’s roughly six-sided shape.
Acclaimed at festivals around the world, Minor Revelations marks Vermillard’s
breakthrough onto the international stage - at 53. Why the emphasis on age? Well,
Minor Revelations is, among many other things, a film about time - moments in
time, the passage of time, how life takes place in the interstices between major
events. The form is quirkily radical and impossible to synopsise in conventional film
catalogue terms: 19 unconnected episodes of various lengths (though they’re all
pretty short!), in which people experience those “minor revelations” of the title.
It’s not an entirely original concept - the film could be perhaps be summed up as a
cross between Otar Ioseliani’s freewheeling Parisian fable Favourites of the Moon
(1984) and Jane Campion’s indelible, 13-minute Passionless Moments (1983). But
Vermillard - a curious, observant, patiently bemused kind of humanist - brings her
own, distinctive sensibility to the project. The result is, we confidently guarantee,
something quite unlike anything else you’ll see this year. Frank Mangus
Production company:
Stella Films
31, place Jeanne d’Arc, Paris 75013, France
Tel: 00 33 1 75 50 41 82
Patrice Leconte is in a light but thoughtful mood in My Best Friend, a buddy movie
that actually ponders the nature of what it is to be a buddy. Deriving a compact tale
from Olivier Dazat’s story with his regular screenwriting pal Jerome Tonnerre,
Leconte finds substance in the formulaic premise of a man who bets he can prove he
has a best friend — even though he has none.
François (Daniel Auteuil) runs a Paris antique dealer biz with partner Catherine (Julie
Gayet), who’s concerned about their mounting debts. Francois appears to be all
business, first seen attending the funeral of a competitor for the sole purpose of
making a deal on some furniture. Noted for his haughty attitude, stealing clients
from other dealers and a tendency to value things over people, François is chided by
associates at his birthday party for having no friends. Catherine challenges him to
serve up his best friend in person in the remaining 10 days of the month, or he must
give her a pricey Greek vase he’s just purchased.
Auteuil, in a role that can be considered a significant stretch for an actor who’s so
naturally ingratiating, plays François as a man outwardly assured but inwardly in a
fog. Personal matters escape him; his stabs at seeking out a best pal are nearly
satiric. François meets loquacious taxi driver Bruno (Dany Boon), whom he recruits to
help in the fine art of making friends.
For all its clever plotting (including a terrific bit involving the real Greek vase and a
fake), My Best Friend is certain to make amused audiences consider their own lives
and friends. The effect of casting Auteuil as François allows the viewer to accept his
character flaws as he strains to find a friend. Boon suggests a bright man with a life
unfulfilled, who emerges as one of the most touching Everyman characters in recent
French cinema. Robert Koehler, Variety
UK PREMIERE
MIRAMAR ST.
Dir. Jon Garaño Spain 2006
8 mins (adv PG) Some subtitles
Fele Tunaya, Ana Martinez,
Adam Sanjurjo
San Diego, California. A Spanish taxi
driver in picks up a passenger who asks
to be taken to an address in Miramar
Street. In an instant the driver’s world
is changed forever. A delicious little
passion play with a sting in the tail.
Best Local Work
(San Diego Latino Film Festival)
Kale Nagusia, 41, 2-EZK, Astigarraga,
Spain, 20115
Tel: 00 34 65 77 32 888
Print source:
Optimum Releasing
22 Newman Street, London, W1T 1PH, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 637 5408
www.optimumreleasing.com
Courtesy of Stella Films
UK PREMIERE
THE OTHER HALF
(Ling Yi Ban)
Dir. Ying Liang China 2006 111 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Zeng Xiaofei, Deng Gang, Zhao Ke, Liu Lan, Chen Xigui, Liu Huibin, Peng Shan
UK PREMIERE
THE POTTER
Dir. Josh Burton USA 2005
Animation
An award-winning animation focusing
on an eager young apprentice who
wishes to learn the skills of the Potter,
an ancient creature that gives life to
the clay that he is working. But the
apprentice must first learn the basics
before he can work clay like the Potter.
1st place Non-traditional Animation
(College TV Awards 2006)
Animation Stills Prize (Animex 2006)
Shannon Farney
Georgia, 31405, USA
Tel: 00 1 912 525 8502
Bradford International Film Festival is particularly delighted to host the UK premiere
of The Other Half, the second feature by a young man who’s quickly established
himself as one of the most promising in a particularly talented crop of rising Chinese
directors. Ying Liang first served notice of his prodigious talent when his debut
Taking Father Home (also showing at this year’s BFF) premiered at Tokyo’s prestigious
‘FilmEx’ film festival in late 2005. It was awarded the Special Jury Prize – and, 12
months later, Ying repeated the feat with his follow-up The Other Half.
The jury praised the film’s “exceptional strictness of form and composition, the
subtlety of its storytelling, and the freshness with which the director expresses his
point of view toward society and communication. We are looking forward to seeing
his future work.” Jury member Chris Fujiwara, writing for GreenCine magazine,
summed the film up thus: “The Other Half intersperses scenes in a law office - where
a succession of complainants in domestic-dispute cases address their woes to the
camera - with a story about a young woman’s ill-fated relationship with a shiftless
young man. An oblique, even tricky film (despite the directness of the shooting style
in the scenes in the law office), The Other Half is impressive for the restraint and
compassion with which the director surveys his large cast of characters and for the
amount of sociological detail he accumulates about their difficulties.”
The Other Half continues Ying’s commitment to Sichuan province - which, in the
words of the Tokyo International Film Festival catalogue, “has now become the hot
spot for location shooting for some of China’s most talked-about films – including Jia
Zhangke’s [Venice Golden Lion winner] Still Life. But before so many other
filmmakers rushed in to capture that spiky Sichuan accent, Ying Liang and Peng
Shan, a locally-based maverick filmmaking duo, have been exploring the sharp
changes and intense human dramas taking place in this historic province.” Neil Young
Production company:
90 Minutes Film Studio
Room 201, No.200 Tianmu Mid-Street, 200071 Shanghai, China
PARIS JE T’AIME
Sunday 11 March 6pm Pictureville
Dirs. [18 directors*] Liechtenstein/Switzerland/Germany/France 2006 116 mins (TBC)
Some subtitles
Bruno Podalydès, Leïla Bekhti, Steve Buscemi, Marianne Faithfull, Fanny Ardant, Bob
Hoskins, Gena Rowlands, Nick Nolte, Juliette Binoche, Natalie Portman
Being in Paris is to be inside a work of art, and it is no surprise that in the charming
collection of vignettes that make up Paris je t’aime, the art is love. This is a Paris
where Oscar Wilde can reappear beside his grave at Père Lachaise to give squabbling
lovers a sense of humour. A vampire may pounce on an unsuspecting backpacker in
the Madeleine. A cowboy on horseback can bring a grieving mother back to her
family. A paramedic may fall in love with her bleeding patient.
Love in all its weird and wonderful forms is the subject of 18 short films made by an
assortment of international directors who bring individual vision to a collective love
letter to the French capital. Most of the directors have written their own pieces, and
they range from whimsical to romantic, to dramatic and tragic.
With many familiar faces including Juliette Binoche, Fanny Ardant, Natalie Portman,
Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi, Bob Hoskins and Gena Rowlands, the film is necessarily
uneven but has an overall winning charm and can expect a warm reception in art
houses around the world.
Buscemi and Coen Brothers completists will not want to miss their hilarious tale of
an American tourist on the Metro stop at the Tuileries learning firsthand how
accurate his guidebook is. Forget The Da Vinci Code - anyone who sees this film will
never look at Mona Lisa’s smile again without thinking of the matchless Buscemi.
Ray Bennett, Hollywood Reporter
* The 18 directors are:
Olivier Assayas, Frédéric Auburtin, Emmanuel Benbihy, Gurinder Chadha, Sylvain
Chomet, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Isabel Coixet, Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuarón, Gérard
Depardieu, Christopher Doyle, Richard LaGravenese, Vincenzo Natali, Alexander
Payne, Bruno Podalydès, Walter Salles, Oliver Schmitz, Nobuhiro Suwa, Daniela
Thomas, Tom Tykwer, Gus Van Sant
Courtesy of 90 Minutes Film Studio
Print source:
The Works UK Distribution Ltd.,
4th Floor, Portland House, 4 Great Portland Street, London, W1W 8QJ, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 612 0090
* Taking Father Home is also showing at the 13th Bradford Film Festival
Courtesy of The Works UK Distribution Ltd
UK PREMIERE
41 SECONDS
(41 Sekunden)
Dirs. Rodney Sewell, Tobias Martin
Germany 2006 3 mins 46 secs (adv 12A)
Subtitles Alexander Kaffl, Amir Arul
In a world where love and relationships
are almost everything, it is easy to get
lost in your emotions and remain
undecided on which path to tread. In
41 Seconds a young man finds himself
bored with his girlfriend but unable to
bring himself to talk to her about it.
Instead, he turns to his friend - who
turns out to be more help than either
of them could have realised…
St. Paul’s Platz 5, Munich, 80336,
Germany
Tel: 00 49 89 2 32 259 90
UK PREMIERE
TO DIE IS TO LIVE
Dir. David Sarkissian Armenia 2006
8 mins (adv 12) Subtitles
Experimental
A rapid montage mix of performance
art, action painting, construction and
destruction, set to hard rock and death
metal. Sarkissian finds art in chaos,
and chaos in the universe. Life is
special.
Os & Dav
Aygestan 11st. 1tup. 3/4 House, Yerevan,
Armenia, 3750025
Tel: 00 374 91 539 105
PITBULL
REGARDING BUENOS AIRES
(Pitbul)
(A proposito de Buenos Aires)
Dir. Patryk Vega Poland 2005 100 mins (adv 18) Subtitles
Marcin Dorocinski, Weronika Rosati, Rafal Mohr, Janusz Gajos, Andrzej Grabowski,
Malgorzata Foremniak
Wednesday 14 March 4pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dirs. [a collective of 11 directors*] Argentina 2006 81 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Maria Abadi, Ines Efron, Guillermo Garcia Faure, Gonzalo Martinez, Clara Miglioli,
Romina Paula, Ignacio Rogers
We’re proud to present no fewer than four Polish films at this year’s Bradford
International Film Festival - the others being the Kieslowski documentary Still Alive, plus
Destined for Blues and The Feast of St. Barbara. If we’d wanted, however, we could have
filled our whole programme with Polish fare, so prolific and prodigious is the nation’s
current film output. Sorting the wheat from the chaff - or rather oddziela? ziarna od
plew - is therefore a more-than-usually daunting exercise, but (to mix a metaphor)
we’re confident we’ve unearthed a bit of a diamond-in-the-rough here.
The title is, of course, a reference to Jean Vigo’s provocative travelogue A propos de
Nice (1930). And the idea of a “city-film”, an attempt to chronicle quotidian life in a
particular urban metropolis? Well, that stretches back at least as far as Dziga Vertov’s
Man with a Movie Camera (1929). The concept of a film being made by a “collective”
of directors, however - that’s rather redolent of more recent eras, the headily radical
co-op, agit-prop days of the ‘60s and ‘70s, with Newcastle’s gallant Amber films (Like
Father; Seacoal; Dream On) perhaps the most notable current standard bearer of the
tradition. The quizzically enigmatic Regarding Buenos Aires, however, can’t be easily
summed up in terms of its references and its historical precedents.
In crime thriller Pitbull, Feast of St. Barbara’s romantic lead Marcin Dorocinski essays a
very different kind of role: he exudes the laid-back swagger of a young Matt Dillon as
Slawomir Desperski (“Despero”) one of five Warsaw cops on the trail of a master
criminal responsible for a string of murders and kidnappings. His colleagues are a
mismatched gang of alcoholics, misanthropes and ordinary Joes, whose tactics are
often at odds with the letter of the law they’re supposedly upholding. Crunchingly
brutal one minute, disarmingly (and blackly) comic the next, Pitbull is a bravely
unblinking look at some of the more unseemly aspects of modern-day Poland and, by
extension, Europe as a whole.
Refreshingly, Pitbull was clearly made with both eyes on domestic audiences, rather
than being the result (all too prevalent among younger filmmakers these days) of trying
to impress international film festivals. In commercial terms, debutant writer/director
Vega hit a near bullseye with his very first dart: Pitbull was one of only three homegrown movies of its year to notch more than 100,000 admissions at the Polish box
office (Destined for Blues being one of the others). But that’s not to say this film is for
Polish eyes only: it announces an exciting new talent who’s able to inject familiar
“genre” material with freshness, wit and a visual sense that promises a long and
successful career... but is the world ready for a Polish Michael Mann.
Frank Mangus
Production company:
Dziki Film - sp. z o.o.
ul. Raclawicka 127 lok.12, 02-117, Warsaw, Poland
Tel: 00 22 824 68 48
Courtesy of Dziki Film
Appropriately enough given Argentina’s World Cup-laden sporting prowess, it’s the
work of no fewer than 11 young talents. All are or were students at Buenos Aires’
esteemed “Universidad del Cine” - also alma mater of Lisandro Alonso (whose
Fantasma and Los Muertos are also showing in the Premieres & Previews section of
this year’s 13th Bradford International Film Festival). It’s an ironic paradox that,
despite suffering dire economic fortunes in recent years, Argentina has
simultaneously emerged as one of the world’s real powerhouses of new cinematic
talent: a fact even recognised by Melvyn Bragg, whose The South Bank Show last
year devoted a programme to profiling three of the area’s up-and-coming directors.
And it would take a foolish observer to bet against three or four of Regarding Buenos
Aires’ ‘first XI’ making the grade. But what is the film about? Best let the makers
speak for themselves: “There are several scenes with only the city in common, and
more as a conceptual presence at that than as a precise geography. None of those
scenes contains a single ‘story’: Each one of them is part of a larger situation that we
cannot see, as though the beginning and end of each ‘story’ had to be filled in by the
audience.” Frank Mangus
WORLD PREMIERE
THE ADMIRER
Dir. Petros Silvestros GB 2006
15 mins (adv 12A)
James Burton, Catherine Steadman,
Will Tosh
An unknown admirer is spying on the
flat of mute Anna and her carer
brother. What are his intentions
towards the siblings? And just what
has he captured on videotape? Dark
secrets unravel in this engaging thriller.
20a Loveridge Road, London NW6 2DT
Tel: 00 44 (0)7981 825 503
Production company:
A propósito de Buenos Aires
Defensa 966 2oN, 1065 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Tel: 00 54 11 4307 8248
www.ucine.edu.ar
Courtesy of the 11 directors
* Manuel Ferrari, Alejo Franzetti, Martin Kalina, Cecilia Libster, Francisco Pedemonte, Clara
Picasso, Matias Pineiro, Juan Ronco, Andrea Santamaria, Malena Solarz, Nicolas Zukerfeld
RIVER QUEEN
Thursday 22 March 5.45pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Vincent Ward NZ/GB 2005 114 mins (adv 12A) Some subtitles
Samantha Morton, Kiefer Sutherland, Cliff Curtis, Temuera Morrison, Anton Lesser,
David Rawiri Pene, Stephen Rea
Set during the British colonisation of New Zealand in the 1850s, the indigenous
population is divided as some Maoris embrace and side with the European settlers,
others are engaged in a desperate war to preserve their way of life.
UK PREMIERE
STEPS
Dir. Matthew Heimbecker USA 2006
Animation
A beautifully animated short from the
Savannah College of Art and Design,
with an effective music score that
supports the sole character’s aim to
escape the endless castle of steps in
his domain.
Shannon Farney
Georgia, 31405, USA
Tel: 00 1 912 525 8502
Narrating the story, Sarah (Morton) and her family are stationed at an Irish garrison
located on the banks of a rural river. The daughter of the resident surgeon (Rea), she
falls in love with Tommy Boy, the son of a powerful tribal chief and becomes
pregnant. Before the birth of the baby, Tommy Boy dies leaving Sarah to bring up her
son, Boy and making the best of home life at the garrison. When Boy turns six, he is
kidnapped by his paternal grandfather, who wishes him to be raised according to
Maori tradition. Caught in the middle of the ongoing skirmishes, Sarah’s father and
sister depart for a safer haven downriver leaving Sarah to continue her search for
Boy, assisted by Private Doyle (Sutherland), an Irish soldier who harbours an
unrequited love for her.
Seven years later, a Maori warrior, Wiremu (Curtis) promises to take her to her son if
she heals the ailing chief of the Maori tribe, Te Kai Po (Morrison). But when she is
finally reunited with her son, she finds that he is torn between the two differing
cultures. As the clashes intensify, Sarah realises what her son has become and finds
herself having to decide to stay with him or give him up and return to safer shores.
A lush setting highlighting the plight of the Maori tribes at the onset of colonial
expansion, the story spans the generations to tell this intimate story. Filming was
beset with many problems with Samantha Morton suffering a prolonged illness and
director Ward being fired during the course of filming, then returning for post
production. Adeni Rutter
Print source:
Tel: 00 44 207 612 0090
Courtesy of The Works UK Distribution LTD
UK PREMIERE
ROOMS FOR TOURISTS
(Habitaciones para turistas)
Dir. Adrián García Bogliano Argentina 2004 93 mins (adv 18) Subtitles b/w
Jimena Krouco, Elena Siritto, Mariela Mujica, Brenda Vera, Victoria Witemburg, Eliana
Polonara, Alejandro Lise, Trajano Leydet, Rolf Garcia, Oscar Ponce
This relentlessly nasty slasher is a throwback to a genre long thought forgotten – the
‘women in peril’ movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s in which a variety of nubile young things
wandered into dark rooms to be stabbed, chopped and generally rendered limb from
limb by an obliging maniac. Long considered passé, and now the subject of cinematic
scorn, the overtly gratuitous nature and content of such flicks make them something
akin to celluloid pariahs.
Done well, however, such films prove that the concept of the no-holds-barred
shocker is still valid and that audiences starved of genuine fear and fright may well
warm to the notion of a film that offers carnage sans humour. The resurgence of
such content in Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses (and the even more gruelling
sequel The Devil’s Rejects) and Eli Roth’s Hostel appears to suggest that the industry
is once again looking to the past for inspiration.
Thus Rooms for Tourists (aka Habitaciones para turistas) emerges as a bonafide
compadre to such fare – a conveyor belt of gruesomeness in which a group of young
women falls prey to mysterious killers in a labyrinthine old house. En-route to
Buenos Aires, the five miss their rail connection and find themselves stranded in San
Ramón, a remote and somewhat creepy backwater. Offered accommodation by two
brothers in their old boarding house – a room for the night plus a meal – the five
strangers accept, naively believing in the concept of safety in numbers. Cue much
screaming in the dark…
This is an audacious and grisly chiller based on a solid foundation of
dismemberment, decapitation and evisceration. Shot on video, in black-and-white
and with a largely amateur cast, it enjoys more than a nodding acquaintance with
the likes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Suspiria, The Hills Have Eyes and Race with
the Devil.
MY LAST CONFESSION
Dir. David Finley Canada 2006
21 mins 27 secs (adv 12A )
Maria Del Mar, David Ferry,
Graham Kartna
In a 1960s Catholic church a young boy
dreads confessing the most grievous of
all sins – “impure thoughts and deeds”.
But is his confession all he should be
afraid of…? Funny and quirky with a
decidedly dark twist.
First Place Honourable Mention
(ReelHeart International Film Festival)
FinWorks
98 Victoria Park Avenue, Toronto, Ontario,
M4E 3R9, Canada
Tel: 00 1 416 693 5862
www.finworks.ca
An exhilarating, pulse-pounding addition to the revitalised genre of the 21st century
slasher, Rooms for Tourists proves to be a blood-spattered journey down Memory
Lane and a quality calling card for twentysomething director/co-writer Bogliano.
Pure, undiluted horror from the old school, it combines crisp camerawork with
disciplined direction and some fine performances. A final sting-in-the-tale makes the
denouement all the more memorable. Tony Earnshaw
SALVATORE
SCOTT WALKER: 30 CENTURY MAN
(Salvatore - Questa è la vita)
Dir. Stephen Kijak USA/GB 2006 95 mins (adv 12A)
With: David Bowie, Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker, Alison Goldfrapp, Brian Eno, Sting,
Lulu, Marc Almond, Al Clark, Johnny Marr, Ute Lemper and the voice of Sara Kestelman
Dir. Gian Paula Cugno Italy 2006 90 mins ( adv PG ) Subtitles
Alessandro Mallia, Enrico Lo Verso, Lucia Sardo, Gabriele Lavia, Giancarlo Giannini
FINDERS KEEPERS
Dir. David Procter GB 2006
9 mins (adv 12A)
Duncan Hepburn, Lawrence Davey,
Danny Thornton, Alan Harrison, Jayne
Lindgren
Instead of getting a newspaper round
like any other 12-year-olds, two boys
find their own way of making money
which involves breaking a few rules…
until a confrontation with an elderly
man acts as an ethical turning point in
their lives.
Agenda Collective
6 Callcott Court, Callcott Road, Kilburn,
London, NW6 7ED, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7821 450 336
www.ontheagenda.co.uk
Marco Brioni, a young schoolteacher who works and lives in Rome, is offered a oneyear contract to teach in a small village school in Sicily. Here he meets a child called
Salvatore, who, due to family problems, cannot attend school as often as he should.
Since both his parents are dead, Salvatore lives in a small house close to the sea with
his grandmother and the little sister. He has to work in a nearby tomato greenhouse
and as a fisherman to earn a living for all of them. Marco gets quite concerned about
Salvatore’s difficult situation and tries to help, giving him private lessons. Gradually,
the child and the teacher become very close. A gentle and moving story with a great
performance from the young Alessandro Mallia.
‘It’s fascinating that philosophers such as Gorgias and Pythagoras grew up in Sicily. In
fact, the pre-Socratic philosophers’ discourses on the four elements – air, water, earth
and fire – were often in my mind during filming. In Porto Palo, the elements are so
intense that they almost have a physical presence, not to mention a spiritual one.
Everything I perceived about being there – feeling the wind on my face, seeing the
sea and sun, inhaling the scent of tomatoes, being able to touch the sand –
strengthened the concept that this is life in the here and now.’ – Gino Sgreva,
Cinematographer on Salvatore
After writing two novels, Passi nel buoi (1994) and La donna di nessuno (1997), Gian
Paolo Cugno moved on to filmmaking and directed several documentaries on Italian
art cities. He has worked as second-unit director for several movies shot in Sicily. He
directed the short film Il volto di mia madre, in 2003. Bill Lawrence
Print source:
Buena Vista International (UK)
3 Queen Caroline Street, London, W6 9PE, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0) 208 222 1000
www.thefilmfactory.co.uk
Courtesy of Buena Vista International (UK)
He was the man who walked away from rock stardom for a new life among music’s
avant-garde. Now, 40 years after ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore‘, Walker is one
of the world’s leading exponents of ultra-modern music, with the likes of David
Bowie (who also executive produced the film) queuing up to heap praise on one of
the enduring cult figures of the last five decades.
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man charts the rise, fall and resurrection of an existential
star who wanted to do it his way. Like Bobby Darin, who ditched the hits to pursue a
less commercial but much more personal path, Walker did the same. A melancholy
genius who arrived in the UK steeped in art films by Carl Dreyer and Ingmar
Bergman, and influenced by Sibelius and Delius, Walker was a very different animal
to the average Sixties pop star. The bizarre imagery and spaced-out lyrics that
dominated his doomy ballads eventually caused his supporters to turn their backs,
leaving the one-time sensation resolutely out in the cold.
Notoriously camera-shy and openly reclusive, Walker has for years ploughed his own
unique musical furrow. Stephen Kijak’s film catches up with him in the recording
studio as Walker labours on The Drift, his first album in more than ten years. One
particularly memorable sequence features a man punching a side of meat as Walker
directs. He has come full circle. All these years later, aged 64, Walker is producing an
evolved version of the misunderstood modernist music that first enthralled him in
the 1960s.
UK PREMIERE
THE HEADLESS SAILOR
(Le Marin acéphalé)
Dir. Lorenzo Recio France 2005 20 mins
(adv 15) Subtitles
Laurent Ledoyen, Céline Bodis, Harold
Girard
A sailor in love with two women
refuses to die, as he is unable to
extricate himself from this obsession.
Pure fantasy depicted with a charming
dreamlike quality and dark undertones.
Local Films
45 rue des Orteaux, Paris, 75020, France
Tel: 00 33 1 44 93 70 33
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man delves deep into the damaged psyche of a man who
found himself thrust into the spotlight and hated every moment. Since The Walkers
Brothers split up in 1967 Walker has been seeking a form of peace and equilibrium.
This absorbing documentary shows how this highly unusual and reserved man has
finally exorcised some rather large personal demons and come to terms with his pop
idol past while embracing the opportunities of his new life. Absolutely compelling.
Tony Earnshaw
Print source:
Verve Pictures
Kenilworth House, 79-80 Margaret Street, London, W1W 8TA, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 436 8002
www.vervepics.com
Courtesy of Verve Pictures
UK PREMIERE
SIX FIGURES
Thursday 22 March 4pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. David Christensen Canada 2005 108 mins (adv 15)
J.R. Bourne, Caroline Cave, Deborah Grover, Frank Adamson, Joyce Gordon, Brooklynn
Proulx, Marty Antonini
Canadian director Christensen’s debut feature (adapted from a novel by Fred G.
Leebron) is suffused with plausible anxieties from the very first frame: indeed, the
film has some of the elegant malevolence associated with Michael Haneke.
TINY DANCER
Dir. Stefan Georgiou GB 2005
4 mins 54 secs (adv U) Subtitles
With: Christopher Doyle
Our hero walks through London’s
Tower Hamlets to an underpass. As he
tap-dances in the debris, the world
begins to change... A vigorous
performance is sharply edited, and
inner life banishes reality.
Low Fat Films
10 Whitehouse Way,
Southgate, London, N14 7LT
Tel: 00 44 (0)7786 035 821
Warner (Bourne) and Claire (Cave) are a young professional couple who have moved
to Calgary with their two children. Their plan is to buy a house. Warner suspects that
they don’t have the money – he’s on probation at his job – and suggests that they
continue to rent. Claire, whose fortunes are on the rise, is adamant about their
family taking a major step forward. And then something terrible happens: Claire is
attacked at work. The assault puts her in a coma, and her ever-meddlesome mother
Louise (Grover), suspects Warner...
It’s a whodunit with only one real suspect, and yet it’s clear that Christensen is less
interested in resolving the mystery than examining its fallout. Louise’s obsessive
antipathy towards her daughter’s husband is borne from her own bad experiences;
Warner’s relationships with his own parents - who are decidedly less than supportive
once they arrive on the scene - are fraught with tension. The prevalence of these
older characters cues us that this is not so much a film about a man who may have
assaulted his wife than an examination of warped intimacy and inherited
behaviours: an alternate title might perhaps have been A History of Violence...
Christensen’s command is total: the creeping long takes and judiciously deployed
jump-cuts foster a sense of dread, as does Bourne’s perfectly modulated
performance. Warner is a compelling blank, his every sullen, fretful glance
suggesting monstrousness and innocence, savagery and grief. Six Figures is a
terrifically precise film about unknowable things, a rigorous exercise in ambiguity
that is one of the most striking and promising debuts in recent memory. Adam
Nayman
SUMMER IN BERLIN
(Sommer vorm Balkon)
Dir. Andreas Dresen Germany 2005 105 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Inka Friedrich, Nadja Uhl, Andreas Schmidt, Stefanie Schonfeld, Vincent Redetzki,
Christel Peters, Kurt Radeke
Despite a somewhat bland English language title, and a seemingly unpromising
choice of subject matter, Summer in Berlin is a delight - going some considerable
way to justifying the lofty expectations held in many quarters for its director. While
hailed in some quarters as “the great hope of German cinema”, Dresen remains
bafflingly underexposed in Britain.
It’s the story of two best friends who live on adjoining floors in the same apartment
block. Brunette Katrin (Friedrich) is a 39-year-old single mother who’s finding it hard
to find a job and simultaneously look after her pre-pubescent son, Max. Nike (Uhl) is
younger, blonder and more conventionally attractive. She works as a ‘home help’ for
the elderly, her clients including frail, accordion-playing Helene (scene-stealer Peters).
Katrin and Nike have been close for many years, and most evenings can be found
enjoying a bottle of wine - or two – while watching the world go by from Nike’s
balcony. But over the course of one hot summer, they find their bonds of friendship
wearing thin - most of the frictions caused by the arrival on the scene of truck driver
Ronald (Schmidt), a rough-and-ready charmer whose torrid romantic history doesn’t
dissuade the smitten Nike one little bit...
Summer in Berlin - the German title is something like Summer from the Balcony was written by 74-year-old Wolfgang Kohlhaase, whose long career stretches back
more than five decades. But it’s so fresh, complex and, above all, true, that you’d put
money on it emanating from the pen of a woman roughly similar to Katrin in terms
of age. Kohlhaase and Dresen manage the tricky task of giving both women equal
attention - Katrin the showier role, Nike the tougher one - and Friedrich and Uhl are
utterly convincing in their three-dimensional, evolving roles. This is a small,
absorbing tale which, as it gradually unfolds, yields surprisingly rich rewards. Neil
THE HOLOCAUST TOURIST
Dir. Jes Benstock Scotland 2006
10 mins (adv PG) Some subtitles
Jonathan Webber, Miroslaw Obstarczyk,
Emmanuel Elbinger
A wry but deceptively hard-hitting
consideration of modern attitudes to
the Holocaust. As camera-clutching
tourists traipse around the Nazi death
camp at Auschwitz, peddlers try to
temp them with kitsch Jewish
souvenirs. Says one survivor: “I do it to
remember the lost generation”.
Technobabble/Skyline Productions
110-116 Elmore Street, London, N1 3AH,
United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 288 1116
www.holocausttourist.eu
Young, Jigsaw Lounge
Production company:
Agitprop Films Inc.,
58 River Rock Green SE, Calgary, Alberta, T2C 4C2, Canada
Tel: 001 403 720 2811
Production company:
X-Filme Creative Pool GmbH
Kurfurstenstrasse 57, 10785 Berlin, Germany
Tel: 00 49 30 230 83311
www.x-filme.de
Courtesy of Agitprop Films Inc.
Courtesy of X-Filme
TAKING FATHER HOME
(Bei ya zi de nan hai)
UK PREMIERE
THE WRONG GLASSES
(Las Gafas Equivocadas)
Dir. Alberto Rodríguez Spain 2006
Animation
In the early hours, a trip to the toilet
combined with using the wrong
glasses results in the disruption of the
harmonious, daily routine of an elderly
couple and their pets.
TALES OF THE RAT FINK
Dir. Ying Liang China 2005 101 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Xu Yun, Liu Xiaopei, Wang Jie, Song Cijun, Chen Xikun, Liu Ying, Deng Siwei
Dir. Ron Mann Canada 2006 78 mins (adv 12A)
With: John Goodman, Ed Roth, Tom Wolfe, Matt Groening, Ann-Margret, Steve Austin
Taking Father Home is the sensational debut of twentysomething Chinese
writer/director Ying Liang - also responsible for another of BFF’s Previews and
Premieres selections this year, The Other Half. Taking Father Home was acclaimed as
one of the most remarkable features shown at last year’s prestigious Rotterdam Film
Festival. Veteran critic - and former Edinburgh Film Festival supremo - David
Robinson, writing in Film Intelligence magazine, was effusive in his praise: “Without
doubt the outstanding film of the festival, introducing a new director for whom one
can with total confidence predict a major future career, was Taking Father Home.
This largely-animated, typically turbo-charged documentary charts the life of
American hot-rod car impresario Ed “Big Daddy” Roth – an iconoclastic artist who
bent a cast-iron, mass-produced medium to his weirdo whims, and was
immortalised in Tom Wolfe’s Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.
This perfectly composed feature is said to have been made on a minimal budget,
with a borrowed camera and unpaid friends as actors. If so, it is proof that money is
irrelevant when there is talent, a natural genius for expression through film, and an
inspired eye. The hero of the story is a stubborn, unsmiling village lad of 17 (Xu),
who determines to go to the city to bring back the father who has left the family
home, though he has sent back 1000 yuan to help them out.
“A pair of ducks in a basket on his back as his only capital, he cannot be diverted
from his purpose either by the unexpected friends or the unwished enemies he
meets on the way. Ying has the great filmmaker’s gift of being able to establish a
character or a mood through a glance or gesture; to convey all the content of an
altercation unheard but merely viewed from far off. Every shot, through its
composition or its dynamism, is compelling. This is filmmaking at its best.” Variety
magazine’s Jay Weissberg concurred: “A triumph of vision and talent... Ying weaves
devastatingly strong critiques of the new China throughout the narrative.” There
aren’t many young directors who have attracted this kind of reception in recent years
- and we’re proud to say that Ying more than justifies the hype. Neil Young
Production company:
90 Minutes Film Studio
Room 201, No.200 Tianmu Mid-Street, 200071 Shanghai. China
Courtesy of 90 Minutes Film Studio
UK PREMIERE
Hulking and avuncular, Roth was a self-styled visionary whose outlandish yet
prescient automotive designs (he pioneered the use of fibreglass to re-shape staid
assembly-line models) mirrored his gonzo comic-book creations (bulbous, bug-eyed
monsters etched onto t-shirts or rendered in vivid plastic miniature). He energetically
marketed his own canny carnivalesque persona alongside his products: his impact
on the mainstream was a direct hit along the same spiky trajectory as rock ‘n’ roll or
Mad Magazine (Roth arguably invented the concept of the printed, design-sporting tshirt.) And the more parents disapproved of Roth’s proudly dubious wares the more
rabidly their offspring endeavoured to collect them...
A major word-of-mouth hit at the Toronto International Film Festival, this is perhaps
the Canadian director Ron Mann’s (Comic Book Confidential, etc) sharpest
counterculture snapshot to date. Tales of the Rat Fink features what is easily the
most eclectic voice-over work of the year: Matt Groening, Beach Boy Brian Wilson,
Jay Leno, Ann-Margret, Tom Wolfe and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin (among others)
provide the “pipes” for the custom cars Roth produced in the 1950s and ‘60s. It’s a
lovely conceit that allows Roth’s souped-up creations to literally speak for themselves
(with the help of screenwriter Solomon Vesta). Meanwhile, John Goodman does the
talking for Roth, and it’s a great choice.
“Big Daddy” may have passed away in 2001, but Goodman’s rich tones approximate
his good-natured bravado and ameliorate the potential unpleasantness of
autobiographical dish served from beyond the grave. Fleet, rascally and frequently
hilarious – the cartoon vignettes featuring Roth’s titular, Mickey Mouse-baiting
rodent mascot have a sprung comic sensibility – Tales of the Rat Fink shares with its
subject the brash irresistibility of pure old-school showmanship. Adam Nayman
UK PREMIERE
ANONYMOUS
Dir. Cristian Pozo Spain 2006
20 mins (adv PG)
Alvaro Ramos, Luz Altamira
A writer struggling to start his latest
manuscript becomes confused when he
wakes to find that all his thoughts and
dreams - everything from his actions and
his infatuation with Laura, the neighbour
to whom he seldom speaks - have been
mysteriously typed up.
First Prize Sonorama
(Aranda de Duero, Spain)
Special Mention Where is the Love
(Bucarest, Romania)
Special Mention Underground(s) Pictures
(Ozoir-le-Breuil, France)
Contact:
[email protected]
Feng Shui Films
Academia 8, 28014, Spain
Tel: 00 34 915 273 344
www.fengshuifilms.com
Production company:
Sphinx Productions, 24 Mercer Street, Toronto, Canada, M5V 1H3
Tel: 001 416 971 9131
www.talesoftheratfink.com
Courtesy of Sphinx Productions
LA FORET
(The Forest)
Dir. Daniel Graham Fr/GB 2007
13 min 18 secs Subtitles
Bruno Begon, Chloe Begon,
Francis Casals
La Foret (The Forest) is the story of a
man and his young daughter who are
forced to leave the safety of their home
as the Father searches for work. In a
time of desperation, the shadow of
poverty is ever present.
Contact:
20-22 Stukeley Street, London, WC2B 5LR,
United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 438 5353
www.ionproductions.co.uk
TANGSHAN TANGSHAN
TELL NO ONE
(Dan Yuan Ren Chang Jiu)
(Ne le dis à personne)
Thursday 15 March 2pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir: Kevin Chu Hong Kong 2006 148 mins (adv 12A) Subtitles
Ma Su, Hou Xiang Ling, Li Chong Xiao, Zhang Jing, Liu Xiu Meng, Zhang Feng
Dir. Guillaume Canet France 2006 125 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
François Cluzet, Marie-Josée Croze, André Dussollier, Kristin Scott Thomas, François
Berléand, Nathalie Baye, Jean Rochefort
Set over a period of more than 20 years, Tangshan Tangshan follows a dysfunctional
family’s emotional journey as they struggle to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of a
massive earthquake that rocks their city and leaves 250,000 people dead. Surviving
the quake and rescued from the rubble, Han Wei (Ma Su) gives birth to a baby girl,
Xiao Yu, in the refugee camp. Struggling to cope with the loss of her husband Liu Zi
Gang, she begins to salvage the remnants of her life from the rubble and takes in
two orphaned boys.
Guilt-ridden by the death of his friend and colleague, Ding Yi (Hou Xiang Ling) feels
obligated to support her and the family. In due course, the group is disbanded as one
orphan is reunited with his Japanese relatives and the other is required to study at a
state run facility set up to receive Tangshan orphans. Knowing that he can never
replace her dead husband in Han Wei’s life, Ding Yi finally departs to assist his
brother in another town leaving Han Wei and Xiao Yu (Zhang Jing) to continue with
their lives.
Years later the scattered family is reunited, but the initial elation they all feel soon
dissipates as they recognise how feelings and emotions have changed. All are forced
to make decisions that will inevitably alter their lives forever. Focusing on family
values (highly regarded in Chinese society) and interwoven with archive footage of
the real-life devastation, Tangshan Tangshan shines a harsh spotlight on the reality
of the catastrophe. Adeni Rutter
Production company:
Ignite Productions Limited
Room 2203, 22/F, 135 Bonham Strand Trade Centre Ce, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Tel: 00 852 28 963 890
Courtesy of Ignite Productions Limited
A mild-mannered pediatrician, whose beloved wife was murdered and cremated
eight years ago, finds himself suspected of compound foul play in the suspenseful
Tell No One. Though almost laughably intricate in its plotting, this thoroughly Gallic
adaptation of Harlan Coben’s novel - six million copies sold in 27 languages represents an entertaining sophomore outing for thesp-turned-director Guillaume
Canet that looks like a candidate for offshore playdates. Featuring a hearty chunk of
the French-speaking talent pool, with thesps all doing their bit to keep things
moving, this release is doing just dandy in Gaul.
UK PREMIERE
Margot (Croze), the dead wife of Dr. Alex Beck (Cluzet), appears to be waiting for him.
Her murder at the secluded lake where she and Alex had bathed as kids was
attributed to a serial killer, whose M.O. included draping female cadavers with dead
animals. To all appearances, Alex is a nice guy who is great with children, not bad
with adults and misses his late wife terribly. Then, on the eighth anniversary of
Margot’s murder, two unexpected events intrude on his orderly existence. Two
bodies are dug up, along with the key to a safe containing incriminating photos and
a baseball bat with what may be Alex’s blood on it.
Having only received a grade ‘F’ for his
coursework, Paul decides to work a
little harder. He sets his work out tidily
on the floor of his bedroom and really
starts to prepare to work. Will this
improve his grades?
Cluzet makes Alex’s unasked-for adventures seem plausible, François Berléand does
honor to the gumshoe slot, and André Dussollier fills the bill as Margot’s gruffly
grieving dad. Gilles Lellouche shines as a shrewd toughie on the wrong side of the
law, Jean Rochefort is suitably imperious as a local pol with an interest in
equestrianism, and Canet casts himself as a patrician creep. Femmes are all strong,
independent, attractive and know more than they’ll willingly let on.
F
Dir. Tom McNally GB 2006
3 mins (adv PG)
Ben Cosgrove
Contact: Thomas McNally
Tel: 00 44 7738 306126
Canet shows a fondness for tracking shots, dollies in and out, and location work in
and around Paris - all of which confirm the directorial assurance he showed in
Whatever You Say (2002). Clockwork pacing flags a bit at the end, but in no way
detracts from a sharp, efficient package. Lisa Nesselson, Variety.com
Print source:
Revolver Entertainment
Tel: 0044 207 243 4300
www.revolvergroup.com
TEN CANOES
TOMORROW MORNING
Sunday 11 March 12.00pm Pictureville Cinema
Dirs. Rolf de Heer, Peter Djigirr Australia 2006 90 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Crusoe Kurddal, Jamie Gulpilil, Richard Birrinbirrin, Frances Djulibing, Peter Djigirr and
David Gulpilil as the storyteller
(Sutra ujutru)
Taking in resplendent aerial shots of Arnhem Land and highlighting the spiritual
connection that the Australian Aboriginals have with their surroundings, Ten Canoes
gives the impression it has been shot in the format of a documentary for National
Geographic.
UK PREMIERE
AIR
Dir. Andrew Leckonby GB 2006
John McMahon, John Raine
An asthmatic lover of the great
outdoors stumbles upon an indecent
act and attempts to flee from the
perpetrator. Air combines an edge of
suspense with humour.
The Lost Weekend
20 Longstone Court, Killingworth,
Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside,
NE12 6SU, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 191 268 8209
In this stunning feature, where the characters are using an Australian Aboriginal
language, David Gulpilil narrates an advisory tale by means of the elaborate style of
the Aboriginal spoken history. While out on a hunting expedition in the swamps,
Minygululu (Peter Minygululu) discovers that his younger brother Dayindi (Jamie
Gulpilil) has designs on the youngest of his three wives. In an effort to counsel his
sibling, Minygululu recounts a story about their ancestors, Ridjimiraril (Crusoe
Kurddal) and Yeeralparil (Jamie Gulpilil) being in similar circumstances. With humour
and references to bodily functions and sexual performance the narrative digresses
into a series of yarns with aspects of sorcery, kidnapping and revenge that help to
flesh out the characters.
Yeeralparil lives in the single men’s camp and is attracted to Munandjarra,
Ridjimiraril’s youngest wife, often visiting his brother’s camp in the hope of catching
a glimpse of her. Following an unsettling encounter with a stranger claiming to want
to trade magical objects, the frightened men seek guidance from their local sorcerer
who warns them of the many dangers involving bad magic. Life proceeds normally
until one of the wives disappears following an argument which initiates a chain of
events leading to the eventual confrontation with the stranger. The purpose of the
story becomes clearer as the events unfold, helping to explain the development of
the laws which assist in governing the behaviour of the people and their community
values.
To distinguish between the present and the ancestral story being told by Minygululu,
the film switches from black and white for the modern hunt and colour for the
setting of the ancient landscape. With a cast consisting of indigenous residents of
the Arafura region, Ten Canoes generates a greater awareness and understanding of
the indigenous Australian culture. Adeni Rutter
Print source:
Tel: 00 44 207 612 0090
Courtesy of The Works UK Distribution Ltd
Dir. Oleg Novkovic Serbia 2006 84 mins (adv 18) Subtitles
Uliks Fehmiu, Nebojsa Glogovac, Nada Sargin, Lazar Ristovski, Ljubomir Bandovic,
Radmila Tomovic, Danica Ristovski
Denizens of the European film festival scene recognise the annual event at Cottbus,
half an hour south of Berlin, as an invaluable survey of work from the former Eastern
Bloc: a five-day jamboree from countries as diverse as Russia, Macedonia, Estonia,
Georgia, the former East Germany and Slovakia. But despite these riches, the most
recent renewal was utterly - and perhaps unprecedently - dominated by a single film:
Tomorrow Morning, from a country (Serbia-Montenegro) which, since its two
constituent parts split in June last year, no longer exists.
Oleg Novkovic’s powerfully, intimately observed strikingly well-acted drama - about
Belgrade-born Nele (Fehmiu) returning to his home town after 12 years in Canada
and coping with the changes which have occurred in his absence - was awarded the
three biggest prizes at the festival. These included the main competition award and
also the FIPRESCI prize decided by a hard-to-please international jury. Among the
latter was Lithuanian critic Ingeborg Bratoeva who described the film as “a
combination of local colour and Western references, a mix of romance and anecdote,
a fusion of expressive acting and hand-held camera. Pour a lot of hard alcohol on this
blend, animate it musically, and mix the ingredients together to attain the
unmistakable sense of post-Yugoslav cinema...”
The ‘post-Yugoslav cinema’ mentioned by Bratoeva finds a flowering elsewhere in
our 2007 Bradford International Film Festival, via Rajko Grlic’s comic/tragic/romantic
Border Post - and this is a vibrant, productive area of current European movie-making
which no film festival worth its salt could even consider overlooking. Compared to
Grlic’s mini-epic, Tomorrrow Morning is much quieter, calmer, intimate in its aims
and achievements. It’s the story of old friends, their lives formed as much by their
own hopes and expectations as by the seismic backdrop of their historical situation.
The specifics of its geography are thus effortlessly transcended: this is the kind of
adult, mature film which speaks - clearly, articulately, poignantly - to us all. Frank
UK PREMIERE
SERENADE
Dir. Kyle Blanshard Australia 2006
14 mins 36 secs (adv 15)
Davini Malcolm, Flexis Nobis,
Thom Wright
During a seemingly innocent night on
the town Marie and Julian are violently
pushed into confronting the nature of
their relationship, and each other. In
order for some relationships to survive,
the truth must be forgotten and
replaced with desire. ‘I want you, you
want me … that’s all we need.’
Best Director (ACMI Festival)
Contact:
[email protected]
VCA
234 St Kilda Road, Southbank,
Melbourne, Victoria 3006, Australia
Tel: 00 61 3 9685 9000
Mangus
Production company:
Zillion film
Gundulicev Venac 42, 11 000 Beograd (Belgrade), Serbia
Tel: 00 381 11 303 4761
Courtesy of Zillion film
WATER
WHOLE TRAIN
Dir. Deepa Mehta Canada/India 2005 117 mins (adv 12A) Subtitles
Lisa Ray, Seema Biswas, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Waheeda Rehman, Raghubir Yadav,
Sarala, John Abraham, Manorama
Monday 12 March 8.15pn Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Florian Gaag Germany/Poland 2006 85 mins (adv 12A) Subtitles
Mike Adler, Florian Renner, Elyas M´Barek, Jacob Matschenz
After years of delay, controversy and death threats, Deepa Mehta’s film has
eventually made it to festival screens and is now due for release in the UK.
UK PREMIERE
THE WORLD OUTSIDE
Dirs. Josh Lind, Kevin Phillips USA 2005
28 mins (adv PG)
Ben Collins, Martha Allen and the voice
of Lew Tate
Two rival toy factories, with outrageous
machinery and uniforms that belong
more in a child’s toy box, are separated
by a line that no-one is permitted to
cross. At break time the workers
engage in a daily ritual of namecalling. One day a young man, in
pursuit of romance, is tempted to
break the rules… Narrated as a
fairytale.
Shannon Farney
Georgia, 31405, USA
Tel: 00 1 912 525 8502
Deepa Mehta’s brave exploration of India’s storied past continues in her perfectly
pitched, finely judged tale of a young Hindu girl whose life is suddenly changed by
the traditions of her religion. Delving into Indian society of the ‘30s, Mehta has made
a remarkably inspirational film about a girl who refuses to accept her fate and
struggles against powerful religious customs that turn her into a prisoner without a
future.
The third film in her ‘Elemental Trilogy’ - Fire and Earth precede it - Water is set
against the epic backdrop of the River Ganges during Gandhi’s rise to prominence.
Chuyia is an eight-year-old child bride whose husband suddenly passes away.
According to custom, her head is shaved and she is taken to an ashram for Hindu
widows where she is expected to atone for the sins of her past that resulted in the
death of her husband.
Water is Mehta’s richest and most complex film to date. It is the work of a humanist,
made with incredible tenderness and true concern for the plight of all her characters.
Her finely characterised portraits of the coterie of women who people the film are
textured and moving, from the elderly Madhumati, who runs the ashram, to the
deeply conflicted Kalyani, who seeks solace across the river under cover of darkness.
But the film is centred by the extraordinary performance of Sarala as the young
Chuyia, a girl whose spirit remains unbroken. Her refusal to bend to her plight carries
considerable emotive power and elevates Water from a harsh tale of deprivation into
one of hope and the possibility of overcoming. Mehta has made a film for the ages.
Toronto Film Festival, 2005
Print source:
Metrodome Group Plc.
33 Charlotte Street, London, W1T 1RR, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 22 (0) 207 153 4400
www.metrodomegroup.com
Set in the gritty underworld of subway graffiti with a soundtrack heavily laced with
hip-hop tunes and intersected by the vibrantly defaced commuter trains, Florian
Gaag’s debut feature Whole Train gives the impression it was filmed in one of the
inner cities of the USA rather than in Munich and Warsaw. Mainly focusing on the
exploits of a gang of four graffiti artists struggling to maintain its number one status
when it becomes threatened by the artistic emergence of a rival crew, as well as
dealing with their own personal issues.
Tino (Renner) is a young father who can’t seem to face his responsibilities. Achim
(Matschenz), David’s trainee, is rebelling against his middle-class existence and
constantly doubted by Elyas (M’Barek). David (Adler), on probation for malicious
property damage, is dragged back into the scene by loyalty to his friends and the
gang regularly set out at night, catching the last train to express their colourful
vandalism, but Tino’s constant recklessness and close brushes with the law causes
David to consider the options offered by his probation officer. Amidst the creative
conflict, a heated confrontation convinces the crew to re-establish their supremacy
and apply their characteristic designs to an entire train, leading to a series of
unforeseen events changing the lives of the gang.
Shot on a shoestring budget and filmed mainly on handheld cameras, director
Florian Gaag has managed to capture an authentic look and feel he himself was a
member of Munich’s graffiti scene for many years and also produced the original
soundtrack. The graffiti clad commuter trains and walls appear as lively, eye-catching
backdrops in a dreary cityscape, the result of the collaborative efforts of an
international crew of genuine graffiti artists giving a different perspective to this
audacious art form. Adeni Rutter
UK PREMIERE
LLOYD ORMEROD
WANTS HIS FACE BACK
Dir. Jonathan Kable Australia 2006
14 mins (adv 12A)
Mark Bishop
Reality and hallucination blur as Lloyd
Ormerod wastes away his days with
bad habits and fantasising about
righting wrongs that have long since
left their mark. Engagingly
photographed with a powerful score.
Kable/Blackman Productions
37 Park Street, Northcote, Victoria,
Australia, 3070
Tel: 00 61 405 348 887
Production company:
Florian Gaag
Sedan Str. 39, Munich, Bavaria, 81667, Germany
Tel: 00 49 17 351 81 46
Courtesy of Florian Gaag
Courtesy of Metrodome Group Plc
WINDOWS ON MONDAY
(Montag Kommen die Fenster)
Friday 23 March 4pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Ulrich Köehler Germany 2006 91 mins (adv 12A) Subtitles
Isabelle Menke, Hans-Jochen Wagner, Amber Bongard, Trystan Wyn Puetter,
Elisa Seydel, Ilie Nastase, Ursula Renneke, Ingo Haeb
UK PREMIERE
DETRAS
(Behind)
Dir. David Marquez Spain 2006
9 mins 56 secs (adv PG) Subtitles
Maria Jose Alfonso, Ferran Carvajal,
Jordi Costa, Maria Jimenez
An anonymous letter finally reaches its
destination 30 years after posting,
forcing the recipient to seek out the
truth for herself and ultimately
question the last three decades of her
marriage.
Artificio Films
C/Pau Claris 119 Ppal 1a, Barcelona
08009, Spain
Tel: 00 34 932 150 942
The renaissance in German cinema over the past half decade has been one of the
stories of European filmmaking - and it’s largely thanks to young directors such as
Ulrich Koehler, whose quietly intense, youth-oriented three-hander Bungalow
heralded his arrival on the scene back in 2002. Four years later, Koehler returns with
the enigmatically-titled Windows on Monday (a phrase which turns out to have a
rather more prosaic meaning than it might first appear). The drama was one of the
sleeper hits of last autumn’s Vienna Film Festival, where local critic Dominik
Kamalzadeh hailed it as “another strong sign of a new, self-assured German cinema”.
Writing in Variety, the magazine’s European editor Derek Elley was impressed: “A
young German wife simply ups and leaves her hubby and young daughter for a spell
of existential wandering in helmer Ulrich Koehler’s sophomore feature. Nina
(Menke), a doctor, has recently relocated with househusband Frieder (Wagner) and
their kid, Charlotte (Bongard), from Berlin to another city. She takes a few days off
work to help Frieder organise the new place, but underneath the placid exterior of
her life one senses a vague dissatisfaction.
She’s also late with her period and may be pregnant again. Small details, and
Menke’s finely calibrated performance, sketch her growing ennui and need to be
alone. One evening, after saying she’s going to pick up Charlotte, she just keeps on
driving into the country. On her cell phone, she calmly tells Frieder, “I’m not coming
back”. ... Writer/director Koehler - along with cinematographer Patrick Orth manages to maintain a cleanly-lensed, restrained tone, with a metaphysical
undertow. Windows on Monday is a largely successful continuation of themes in
Koehler’s Bungalow, though here ... the dramatic dividends are greater, thanks to a
more adult cast led by the fine Menke.” It will clearly be fascinating to see where
Koehler goes next - but he’s already very much a name to know and watch.
Neil Young
Production company:
Ö Filmproduktion
Katrin Schlösser & Frank Löprich GmbH, In der alten Möbelfabrik,
Langhansstraße 86, D-13086 Berlin
Tel: 00 49 30 446 726 18
www.oefilm.de
Courtesy of Ö Filmproduktion
UK PREMIERE
ZERO
Dir. Emilis Welyvis Lithuania 2006 82 mins (adv 18) Subtitles
Andrius Paulavicius, Adomas Stancikas, Ramunas Rudokas, Mihailas Sakuto,
The theme of violence is explored as we follow a plethora of characters going
through their personal predicaments and desperately trying to find a way of
overcoming them. A conscript who has absconded, some desperate thieves funding
their drug addiction and a crooked owner of a funeral home who is in debt to all
manner of unscrupulous individuals are just some of the protagonists. Their
seemingly unrelated lives become interwoven in the style of a Lithuanian Quentin
Tarantino gangster flick not dissimilar to Pulp Fiction .
The action begins as each of the hapless individuals has to face up to the quandaries
that they have brought upon themselves. The deserter on the run from the army to
be with his girl discovers that she hasn’t been faithful, causing him to over react. The
funeral director, in serious debt to a gang of thugs who threaten to take his life after
maiming him, desperately seeks to find a way of raising the cash. Already owing
money to the acquaintances that ensure that his business has a regular supply of
recently deceased, finds every possibility leading to a dead end. The thieves, getting
one of their girlfriends to lure a male driver into the forest so that they can rob him,
find that their latest sting doesn’t quite go to plan. As each of their stories unfold it
sets in motion a series of bizarre episodes that ultimately bring all the characters
together and an unexpected, yet ironic climax.
Zero came about as a co-production with David Nicholas Wilkinson of Guerilla Films
as a direct result of his involvement with the 2005 Bradford Film Festival that hosted
a Lithuanian film season. Tony Earnshaw invited David, patron of BFF to meet the
filmmakers resulting in the premiere screening in Bradford.
Following this, he was invited to be on the judging panel of the AXX Festival
competition where he was impressed by the quality of Lithuanian films and
filmmaking, he became executive producer to the film resulting in the premiere
screening in Bradford. Adeni Rutter
UK PREMIERE
NOIR TOTAL
Dir. Francois Jamin France 2006
Sacha Petronijevic, Sylvain
Charbonneau, Mathilde Arnaud
A man wakes up in his flat with a
monumental hangover and finds the
dead body of a girl in his bathtub. Not
remembering anything from the night
before, he calls a friend to help him to
get rid of the body. But things don’t go
as planned, and soon his troubles get
much, much worse...
9 rue JG Labarbe, Nogent sur Marne,
94130, France
Tel: 00 33 6 630 330 27
We hope executive producer David Nicholas Wilkinson will be present to introduce the
BIFF2007 UK Premiere of Zero.
Print source:
Tel: 00 44 208 758 1716
Uncharted States
of America
“I reject this term underground. I don’t live
underground. What am I, a gopher? These labels!
Avant-garde - do you know what that is? It’s a military
term for soldiers who are sacrificed, who die for the
risks they take going first. Basically what I am is
independent. I have never worked for another
company, never had a boss my whole life. I am not
beholden to anybody. Call me independent.”
Kenneth Anger
Uncharted States
of America
You’d be perhaps be forgiven for thinking that independent American cinema
began with sex, lies and videotape in 1990, and has since that date consisted
entirely of quirky comedy/dramas, offbeat romances, and deadpan crime romps
- preferably starring Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey, Patricia Clarkson and/or
William H. Macy. The “American Indie” has now become a genre of its own:
viable at the box office, the darling of critics, a magnet for prestigious awards.
Too often, however, on closer inspection these “independent” films turn out to
be nothing of the sort: funded by speciality wings of major studios, they feature
a plethora of well-known actors, and are intended as calling cards for writers
and directors set on lucrative Hollywood careers. But genuinely independent
American cinema - in the experimental, transgressive, genuinely low budget,
wildly eclectic traditions of, say, Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Herschell
Gordon Lewis, Maya Deren, John Sayles, Marie Menken, John Cassavetes and
Russ Meyer (see also our CineFile documentary Edge of Outside) - is as vibrant
today as it’s ever been, even though these days it can be all too easily
overlooked.
As Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival and its imitators become
increasingly (and unashamedly) corporate, a rowdy network of underground
events have emerged across the country - created and sustained purely by the
passion and commitment of their participants and organisers. It’s this strain of
challenging, rough-edged, beholden-to-nobody cinema that Uncharted States
of America seeks to showcase and celebrate. Some of these 12 films are slick
productions which wouldn’t look out of place in your local arthouse - others are
proudly confrontational, even disreputable affairs that reject compromise,
commercialism and safety at every turn.
74 UNCHARTED STATES
This is a journey around some unexposed corners of this dizzyingly vast and diverse nation from rural idyll to urban wasteland. We take in the Pacific northwest (Police Beat; Apart From
That; Dance Party, USA), via southern California (Analog Days; Dangerous Men); across to the
post-industrial hinterlands (Who Killed Cock Robin?; One Way Boogie Woogie / 27 Years Later),
and over to the east coast (Hamilton; Loren Cass.) Any areas not already mentioned will surely
be have been visited at some point during our continent-hopping, 16mm double-bill (Who Is
Bozo Texino?; Lay Down Tracks) more sedate travelogue. And then there’s the most alluring,
bizarre and terrifying landscape of all: the mysterious inner-spaces of a Darkness Swallowed.
A Darkness Swallowed’s creator Betzy Bromberg is a “name” already well-known among
devotees of avant-garde cinema; One Way Boogie Woogie’s James Benning is, to say the least, a
living legend in that sphere. Robinson Devor and Travis Wilkerson have quickly established
themselves on the “respectable” film festival circuit. But nine of the other ten directors
represented here are, we’re proud to say, unfamiliar to most: youthful, energetic, articulate,
politically-savvy representatives of a wealthy and educated land where filmmaking equipment
and know-how is, relatively speaking, easily accessible (the tenth: Dangerous Men’s
sexagenarian, Iranian auteur - the walking enigma that is Mr. John S. Rad.)
The on-screen participants will be even ‘fresher’ faces: only Loren Cass’s Jacob Reynolds is
remotely likely to ring any bells - though his indelible central role in Harmony Korine’s Gummo
doesn’t exactly make him what you could call a movie star. Nevertheless, we defy you to find a
single weak link in any of the ensembles assembled here. Indeed, the work by (to name but
two) Dance Party, USA’s Anna Kavan and Apart From That’s Alice Ellingson represents screen
acting of the highest calibre. Extremely good things in (mostly) small, seemingly unlikely
packages: that’s what we aim to deliver with these 12 glimpses into the artistic soul of a nation
at a fascinating juncture in its turbulent history. Neil Young
UNCHARTED STATES 75
UK PREMIERE
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Betzy Bromberg USA 2006 78 mins (adv PG)
With the voice of Betzy Bromberg
Friday 23 March 12.00pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Mike Ott USA 2006 80 mins (adv 15)
Ivy Khan, Ryan E. Johnsen, Chad Cunningham, Granger Green,
Brett L. Tinnes, Jake Buscarino, Shaughn Buccholz
A DARKNESS SWALLOWED
THE FATHER, UNBLINKING
Dir. Ziggy Attias USA 2006
23 mins (adv PG)
James Vidos, Lesley McBurney,
Brian Anthony Wilson, Emily Kirst
In rural America, a father discovers his
young daughter dead of fever. Knowing
her death was inevitable, he is at first
devastated but quickly realises that he
does not want his fragile wife to see
that the girl has died. While trying to
decide what to do, he hides the girl in
the barn so he may prepare his wife for
dire news. But after approaching his
wife in the kitchen he is unable to tell
her. A surprisingly subtle film about a
man’s inability to cope with tragedy.
Ziggy Films
4 Peconic View Court,
Southampton, New York, 11968, USA
Tel: 00 1 516 901 7928
www.ZIGGYFILMS.com
Our Uncharted States of America selection presents films whose directors aren’t
(yet) anyone’s idea of ‘household names’. But the chances are that, if you’re reading
this catalogue, you’ll already have seen many examples of Betzy Bromberg’s work
over the years. Currently Director of the Program in Film and Video at CalArts (whose
professors include fellow Uncharted director James Benning), she has provided
optical camerawork for many major Hollywood features such as The Terminator and
Cat People (BFF 2005), and was Optical Supervisor on Arlington Road, The Last Action
Hero, Tremors, The Virgin Suicides, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, True Lies, Terminator 2,
Strange Days and The Abyss, among many others.
Bromberg has also been making her own, experimental, films, since 1976 - and a
Darkness Swallowed is her first feature: hailed as “an instant classic of contemporary
American non-narrative cinema” by trade bible Variety’s Robert Koehler. It’s not an
easy film to describe, but here’s how LA Weekly magazine’s Holly Willis summed it
up: “A 78-minute meditation on the evanescent traces of memory and loss, a
Darkness Swallowed opens on a pair of faded photographs showing an old dented
car, one with a child standing beside it and the other without. Speaking in voice-over,
Bromberg references a past event, one that will forever haunt her although it
occurred before her birth. The film then sinks downward, dipping below the surface
of the rational world to mine the seemingly infinite layers of the past stored within
the fleshy entrails, chalky bones, sinewy spider webs and gnarled ligaments of both
the body and the Earth.
“Noises – of clanging metal, bells, heartbeats and jazz music, to name only a few –
combine to create a dense sound environment, a seemingly immense, threedimensional space for contemplation. As with all of Bromberg’s films, there are
images that, once seen, will stay with you forever.” Neil Young
Production company:
Betzy Bromberg
c/o CalArts (California Institute of the Arts), 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia, 913552397, California, USA
Tel: 001 661 255 1050
http://calarts.com/schools/film/faculty/bromberg_betzy.html
ANALOG DAYS
Pretty cool, when you go to a film festival, to see a terrific movie from a top
emerging filmmaker, and walk away with a free mix tape of the catchy soundtrack.
First-time feature director Mike Ott brought his Analog Days to the Denver Film
Festival late Saturday night. Ott’s polished feature follows a handful of alienated
post-adolescents at a dreary community college in a dusty town north of Los
Angeles.
Ott acknowledges his influence from John Hughes, writing about growing up from
the young adult’s perspective, not from the perspective of a successful 40-year-old.
But, to paraphrase how he described Analog Days, it’s John Hughes on some serious
downers. Don’t look for happy endings a la 16 Candles, or even the minor optimism
of The Breakfast Club. Analog Days refers to a group whose end is numbered; these
students don’t like their schooling, don’t like their jobs, aren’t even sure how much
they like their friends.
They need to move on to something else, but have no idea how. Ott reinforces the
analog idea with a lot of turntables, cassette tapes and other rapidly-outdating
technology. How do you stay true to yourself without ending up on a scrap heap?
Ott’s film is one of the festival offerings nominated for the Emerging Filmmakers
Award, meaning it will be viewed by a jury with the chance to take home an honor
that could help Ott find distribution, and financing for his next film. A very humble
Ott appeared with his producer to talk about the film - festival programme director
Britt Withey introduced the movie as one that jumped out of his slush pile during a
marathon viewing session of festival entries. Go down to the Tivoli today for an
opportunity to meet someone whose films are likely to be playing much bigger
venues in the near future. Michael Booth, The Denver Post
CANDY VIOLA
(Viola fondente)
Dir. Fabio Simonelli Italy 2004
13 mins 33 secs (adv 12A) Subtitles
Ilaria Giorgino, Sergio Romano, Carla
Cassola, Erika Urban, Vania Lai,
Inna Hroz
Viola is beautiful, overweight and in
her mid-30s. Her frustrating life is
pivoted on a monotonous job and a
hateful husband. But she will take her
revenge soon thanks to the very
candies and chocolate she likes so
much. Then everyone will be
conquered by her new-found art…
Morgana production s.r.l.
Via Goffredo Mameli, 51, 00153, Rome,
Italy
Tel: 00 39 06 58 332 148
www.morganalab.com
Production company:
Sound Virus Productions
24819 Sand Wedge Lane, Valencia, CA 91355, USA
Tel: 001 661 312 6569
www.analogdaysmovie.com
Courtesy of Sound Virus Productions
Courtesy of Betzy Bromberg
76 UNCHARTED STATES
UNCHARTED STATES 77
APART FROM THAT
Dirs. Jennifer Shainin, Randy Walker USA 2006 120 mins (adv 15)
Kathleen McNearney, Alice Ellingson, Tony Cladoosby, Lawrence Cordier, Toan Le, Gary
Schoonveld, Kyle Conyers
GUY’S GUIDE TO ZOMBIES
Dir. Daniel Austin GB 2006 3 mins
26 secs (adv PG) b/w
With the voice of Matthew Austin
A terrific spoof of 1950s American
public information films, offering
practical advice on co-existing with the
living dead. From the makers of
Bloodline.
Commendation (Festival of Fantastic
Films, Manchester, UK)
Contact: dan.austin@counterclockwise
productions.net
CounterClockwise Productions
4 Lichfield Close, Farnworth, Bolton,
Lancashire, BL4 0NH, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7952 653 222
www.counterclockwiseproductions.net
78 UNCHARTED STATES
The everyday mysteries of ordinary folk in a rural Washington State town form the
substance of Apart From That, an original and resonant feature debut by codirectors/writers/editors Walker and Shainin. [It’s] an outstanding if demanding
work. The film’s ensemble cast of regional eccentrics and multiple narratives follow a
well-trod indie path. But just beneath the surface is something plainly new,
fashioned by young artists with a defiantly personal sense of visual design and pace,
along with considerable sympathy for their exceptionally human characters. The
result is a film that may easily draw comparisons (from Jarmusch and Cassavetes
films to Me and You and Everyone We Know and Old Joy.) But the film stands apart
in many ways.
Five major characters are first viewed incidentally at a party; they’re unsure what to
say or do with themselves. Sequence gently leads into the film proper as it patiently
tracks this quintet the following day, 24 hours prior to Halloween. Each story strand
carries added meaning, while visuals provide glimpses connecting these disparate
and lonely folk. Because of the film’s emphasis on improvisation (drawn from a
predominantly non-professional cast), some scenes may feel like throwaways. But
there are no disposable moments.
The film makes no big deal about its multicultural make-up, but it’s worth noting
this is one of few Yank films to depict Native Americans, Scandinavian Americans
and Vietnamese Americans as simply everyday Americans, but with their own ethnic
identities in place. As a tyro foray by co-directors, the film is a marvel, with a singular
vision in mood, editing, design and look. The shooting style smoothly blends wideangle shots with telephoto work. Locales in far northwest Washington State are seen
as only a local could depict them, from gritty back alleys to fecund pumpkin patches
and forest glens. Further magic comes from composers Christopher and Patrick
Shainin and Brian Olpin, who fuse a folkie touch with jangling atonal sounds. Robert
Koehler, Variety
EUROPEAN PREMIERE
DANCE PARTY, USA
Dir. Aaron Katz USA 2006 65 mins (adv 15)
Anna Kavan, Cole Pennsinger, Ryan White, Sarah Bing, Natia Buller, Brendan McFadden
To appreciate the full irony of the title of Dance Party, USA you really have to be
American. In fact, you have to be an American who was young (or young-ish) in the
years 1986-1992, which is when the cable TV show of the same name aired across
the States. A latter-day variant of the American Bandstand-type programmes so
lovingly spoofed in John Waters’ Hairspray, Dance Party USA was broadcast from
‘happening’ Pennsylvania and featured “regular people” gyrating to then-current pop
tunes with gleeful abandon.
The party around which writer/director Aaron Katz has structured his debut isn’t
quite such a terpsichorean extravaganza: it’s instead a Fourth of July bash in which
various teens and post-teens from suburban Portland (Oregon) drink, talk, argue and
engage in various sorts of fumbling intimacy. We gradually focus in on Gus
(Pennsinger) and Jessica (Kavan, brilliant) - the former a self-confessed ‘creep’, the
latter by contrast startlingly mature for her years - whose early exchanges are
anything but friendly or romantically promising. And when Gus blunderingly
confesses a dark deed from his past, Jessica’s instinct is to quickly withdraw. But that
isn’t the end of the story by any means…
Shot on video - for a reported budget of $3,000 - Dance Party, USA is a strikingly
fresh take on that old chestnut, young love. American critic David Lowery was
particularly impressed. “There’s a common instinct,” he wrote, “to allude to the
influence of Cassavetes in any film that features a handheld camera and any extent
of improvised, naturalistic dialogue. Katz certainly earns that comparison - up to a
point. But then, during a certain scene midway into the film (you’ll know it when you
see it), something happens. The camera stops moving, the characters keep talking
and, over the course of the 20 best minutes of cinema I’ve seen this year, Dance
Party, USA becomes positively, painfully Bergmanesque.”
High praise and, as you’ll discover for yourself, emphatically justified. Frank Mangus
Production company:
ForeignAmerican Pictures
13140 Josh Wilson Road, Mt Vernon, WA 98273, USA
www.foreignamericanpictures.com
Production company:
Dance Party, USA
133 17th Street, #3R, Brooklyn, NY 11215, USA
www.dancepartyusathemovie.com
Courtesy of ForeignAmerican Pictures
Courtesy of Aaron Katz
UK PREMIERE
IL LEGAL
Dir. Bernard Weber Switzerland 2006
Ona Lu Yenké, Nikola Koretzky, Jade
Phan-Gia, Dominique Mueller
Three friends return home from a night
out with Jade, Michael’s one-night
stand. In their apartment they find a
complete stranger. He has no papers.
Some want to kick him out, but others
don’t. What began as a nice party
slowly turns into a nightmare.
Zeitraum Film, Meinradstr. 5, Zurich, CH8006, Switzerland Tel: 00 41 787 402 927
UK PREMIERE
A SHORT FILM ABOUT A LONG FILM
Dir. Ales Blatnik Slovenia 2006 26 mins
(adv PG) Subtitles
Last May, Filipino auteur Lav Diaz’s 510
minute masterpiece, Jeremiah was
screened in Slovenia. Intrigued, a group
of cinephiles arrived to document the
event - and interview its hardy attendees.
Megaklik d.o.o.
Vilharjeva 3a, SI-1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Tel: 00 386 1 430 02 36 www.megaklik.si
Courtesy of Megaklik
UNCHARTED STATES 79
EUROPEAN PREMIERE
UK PREMIERE
Dir. John S. Rad USA 2005 80 mins (adv 15)
Melody Wiggins, Kelay Miller, Michael Gradilone, Annali Aeristos, Bryan Jenkins, Hunter
Person, Harold Pritchett
Dir. Matthew Porterfield USA 2006 65 mins (adv 12A)
Christopher H. Myers, Stephanie Vizzi, Sarah Seipp-Williams, Gina Christine Mooers,
Jasmine Bazinet-Phillips, Megan Clark
It would be possible to fill an entire catalogue with writings about Dangerous Men a film which has already inspired myriad devoted acolytes to express themselves
about it in a variety of media (print, web, crayon, etc.) All this despite almost nothing
about the movie being conclusively known. It was shown in five Los Angeles cinemas
for a fortnight in September 2005 (the first week’s total takings were a paltry $70;
the following week - once word had circulated - was a near-complete sell-out) and
then in 2006 at the Underground Film Festivals at Chicago and New York. Screenings
at the latter events - where the denizens are, shall we say, long-inured to all manner
of cinematic weirdness - provoked scenes of near-pandemonium as audiences
clamoured to see “the next midnight-movie cult legend”.
Home town of Edgar Allan Poe (and Hannibal Lecter), immortalised on film by local
heroes Barry Levinson and John Waters, the blue-collar Maryland port city of
Baltimore has long punched above its weight in cultural terms. And now it finds one
of the most acclaimed young American auteurs in its midst in the form of 28-yearold writer/director/editor Porterfield, whose piercingly delicate, hauntingly
accomplished debut feature Hamilton proved an unexpected success during its run
at Manhattan’s prestigious and selective Anthology Film Archives cinema.
DANGEROUS MEN
SIREN
Dir. Kurt Dudley GB 2006
Richard Massara, Ruby Myers
A car driver breaks down and, whilst
seeking help, becomes trapped in
nearby woods. However, he discovers
that assistance in any human form
does not exist... A neat horror film that
tips its hat to the zombie genre.
22a Lord Mayor’s Walk, York, North
Yorkshire, YO31 7HA, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7747 824 910
Worldwide cinephile curiosity was further piqued by Paul Cullum’s diligentlyresearched LA Weekly article headlined ‘The Passion of the Rad’ (still available
online.) “Consensus opinion seems to be,” asserts Cullum, “that Dangerous Men was
shot sometime in the late 1980s and completed in the mid-‘90s... The illustrious Mr.
Rad is credited as director, ‘screenplay writer,’ editor, executive producer and allround creator, as well as with ‘post-production,’ ‘location and stage design’, and
‘original music, song and lyrics’. Remarkably, this cannot be deemed overstatement,
for Dangerous Men evinces one of the most eccentric, hermetic, idiosyncratic
sensibilities to be found in the filmmaking canon.”
Cullum goes on to solemnly compare Dangerous Men - whose nominal “plot”
involves (or rather includes) a young woman taking bloody revenge on the biker gang
whose leader murdered her boyfriend - with the work of Spike Jonze, Luis Buñuel,
David Lynch, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrzej Zulawski and (ahem) Ed Wood. Astonishingly,
the film itself fully justifies Cullum’s implausible-sounding encomium - especially the
bit about Buñuel. Then again, it’s impossible to be sure just how serious Cullum - or
indeed Rad - are in their intent. Like the saying goes, sometimes it’s better not to
know... Neil Young
Production company:
Sima-Sim International Corp
PO Box 11344, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, CA 90213, USA
Tel: 001 213 700 6700
HAMILTON
It’s the simple story of a group of loosely connected young people, all around 20 or
so, who live in the suburban neighbourhood of the city that gives the film its title.
The central figures are 17-year-old Lena (Stephanie Vizzi) and 20-year-old Joe
(Christopher H. Myers), whose on/off relationship has been placed under
considerable strain by the arrival of their first child. But Porterfield is less interested
in plot than mood and ambience: “I was feeling limited by the emphasis on
traditional narrative filmmaking,” he says. “There is just great beauty in [Baltimore]
neighbourhoods during the summer months... The long days, the sun and the speed
of the heat, the way it hangs humid above the trees and pavement, the sounds of
birds and insects, of automobiles and lawn mowers… Summer here is a palpable
action. It’s detailed in the colour of night and the colours of skin and the
combination of water and sky that I wanted to see move on film.”
Critics have compared the results to the more contemplative works of Gus Van Sant
and Claire Denis. John Waters even included Hamilton in his Top Ten of 2006: “A tiny,
minimalist art film from Baltimore that made it to New York and is astonishing in its
simple beauty, amazing performances, and hypnotic pace. The real thing.” Neil Young
UK PREMIERE
AQUA AD LAVANDUM
Dirs. Florian Metzner, Helge Balzer
Germany 2006 26 mins
27 secs (adv 12A) Subtitles
Alexander Schubert, Mirko Hannemann
Outside a metaphorical door
representing society, a minor scuffle
turns sour resulting in violence. With
blood on his hands and clothes,
Debitus is unable to regain admittance
until a voice offers him a well to
cleanse himself. But operating the well
to draw the water also opens a gate
from which the diabolical voice
originates…
Ebersstrasse 71, Berlin, 10827, Germany
Tel: 00 49 172 151 3574
Production company:
The Hamilton Film Group LLC
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
www.hamiltonfilmgroup.org
Courtesy of Hamilton Film Group
Courtesy of Mr. John S. Rad
80 UNCHARTED STATES
UNCHARTED STATES 81
UK PREMIERE
EUROPEAN PREMIERE
Dirs. Brigid McCaffrey, Danielle Lombardi USA 2006 59 mins (adv 12A)
With: Bill Crowley, Tamara Beard, Larry McCaffrey, Joy Manthey, Eben Talmage
Dir. Chris Fuller USA 2006 83 mins (adv 15)
Lewis Brogan, Travis Maynard, Kayla Tabish, Jacob Reynolds, Keith Morris,
Matthew Bistok, Mike Glausier
LAY DOWN TRACKS
UK PREMIERE
WHO IS BOZO TEXINO?
Dir. Bill Daniel USA 2005
56 mins (adv 12A)
Documentary
American transience is the subject of Lay Down Tracks, a beguilingly direct and
engagingly unpretentious ultra low budget documentary produced, directed,
photographed and edited by first-time filmmakers Lombardi and McCaffrey. No
matter what the actual cost of production (a figure of $14,364 has been cited)
McCaffrey and Lombardi clearly know how to get the very most out of limited
means.
Their tools were chiefly a 16mm camera and a tape recorder, resulting in a film
which makes a creative virtue out of the absence of conventional “synch” sound. The
simplicity of their equipment plays a major part in the intimacy with which
Lombardi and McCaffrey record their subjects: we hear from (and see) five very
different Americans - a retired carnival worker; a (young, female) trucker; a railroad
executive; a riverboat pilot who happens to be a nun, and a surfer who happens to
be a chimney sweep. All are articulate and reflective individuals, who speak about
how they make their living, and what travel has come to mean to them.
These are journeys which are parallel, never physically intersecting: they are joined
only by their encounters with the filmmakers, and as elements of the journey made
through the film made by the viewer. And it’s a pleasurable, hour-long trip, as we
move from place from place to atmospheric place (captured via some rough-edged
but often striking camerawork) and from voice to articulate voice, sound and image
occasionally dovetailing, occasionally diverging, occasionally forming an arresting
counterpoint.
The surfer/sweep and railroad executive have travelled far beyond their country’s
borders (the one for holiday/adventure, the other for work) and the film includes
extracts from the surfer/sweep’s own 8mm ‘home movies’, and follows the executive
into South America - these sections adding an extra dimension to what’s largely a
specifically national focus. Indeed, Lay Down Tracks ultimately emerges as a casually
democratic collage of ‘found’ Americana, poised at a fruitful, under-explored
midpoint between anthropological survey and by-the-people-for-the-people folk art.
Neil Young, Jigsaw Lounge
LOREN CASS
Ten years ago, street violence broke out after TyRon Lewis was shot by police when
Lewis tried to run over an officer during a traffic stop. Chris Fuller was 15 years old.
Tension in school and on the streets enveloped him. The turmoil haunted him. He
began to write about it. Three years later, he had a movie script. Eventually, he
hooked up with Frank Craft and the two became a combination pursuing a cinematic
dream. The result is an 83-minute movie, Loren Cass, shot in St. Petersburg, Florida.
For the two men, it has meant eight years of labour, often 24/7, to write and produce
a movie about a defining era in the city’s history. “It’s tough,” said Fuller, now aged
24. “We realised a long time ago there’s no turning back and you’ve got to push on
through, no matter what they throw at us.” Fuller’s written description says his work
is “an effort to tell a coming-of-age story in a way that I didn’t think had been done
before, with an experiential, dreamlike look into the mind and soul of an adolescent
during a time of toil and tension.”
Loren Cass tells the story of three teenagers coping in a “dirty, dirty town by a dirty,
dirty sea.” The film is shot in St. Petersburg. A segment was produced at the house
where beat writer Jack Kerouac lived. Familiar landmarks such as the Sunshine
Skyway show up. And so do the streets. A moody portrait of St. Petersburg emerges.
Call it “sunshine noir,” perhaps a new genre. Violence, alcoholism, suicide and lost
innocence are among the elements. Fuller said he and Craft hope to see the movie
released in theatres. “Whether wide or limited,” Fuller observed. “We just want to
find a good home for it.”
Jon Wilson, St. Petersburg Neighborhood Times
Production company:
Jonesing Pictures, Inc.
2553 1st Avenue North, St. Petersburg, Florida, 33713-8701, USA
www.lorencass.com
UK PREMIERE
NIGHT SHIFT
(Nachtshift)
Dir. Wendy Montellano Belgium 2006
11 mins (adv PG) Subtitles
Koen De Bouw, Dahlia Pessemiers, Iris
Bouche, Anita Allara, Delfine Bafort,
Miel Van Hasselt
Benny, a human resources manager,
turns down a perfect job candidate
because she’s black. Later that day he is
contemplating suicide when two
immigrant workers arrive on the
scene….
Potemkino
Ribaucourtstraat 194, Brussels, 1080,
Belgium
Tel: 00 32 2 478 82 53 19
Courtesy of Jonesing Pictures, Inc.
Production company:
Lace Factory Films
www.lacefactoryfilms.com
82 UNCHARTED STATES
Courtesy of Lace Factory Films
UNCHARTED STATES 83
WALKMAN
Dir. Alexandra McGuinness 2006
Wuzza Conlon, Siobhan Lam
Sometimes the latest hi-tech gear isn’t
cool. Sometimes a retro look gets you
noticed. A short film about love, music
and shoes.
Alexandra McGuinness
25 Elsham Road, London W14 8HB,
United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7970 994 190
ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE / 27 YEARS LATER
POLICE BEAT
Dir. James Benning USA 2005 116 mins (adv PG)
Monday 19 March6pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. Robinson Devor USA 2005 81 mins (adv 15) Some subtitles
Pape Sidy Niang, Anna Oxygen, Eric Breedlove, Sarah Harlett, Elijah Geiger, Scott Meola,
Larry Coffin
Over the past three decades, James Benning has established himself as one of the
major names in American avant-garde cinema. A former mathematician, his films almost all of which have an acute political subtext - are primarily concerned with
geography, chronology and landscape. We’re proud to present his latest work, which
provides a perfect introduction to his singular career as it includes the entirety of
what was arguably the first film to establish his name. Variety magazine’s Eddie
Cockrell takes up the story: “Fearing the imminent destruction of the Milwaukee
industrial valley of his childhood, James Benning shot 60-minute-long narratives
during March 1977. The self-described ‘surrealist little stories’ featured family,
friends, three German-made station wagons and his revered gifts for composition
and patience. In 2003, as he dryly put it, “I shot the same film again,” reclaiming
identical static camera set-ups to examine the durability of these urban vistas.”
As the new work’s title suggests, the second half of One Way Boogie Woogie / 27
Years Later shows these 2003 shots - but accompanied by the soundtrack from the
original film. Some of the locations have barely changed; some are unrecognisable in the latter, our memory is jogged primarily by what we hear rather than what we
see. As is often the case with Benning, much sly humour is deployed to leaven what
might otherwise seem an arid academic exercise - but there’s no mistaking the
political elements of his approach (are we seeing evidence of Milwaukee’s decline, or
signs of its economic revival?) The result is a quirky kind of time travel: an
exploration of how memory functions, specifically in terms of how it relates to our
external environment. One Way Boogie Woogie / 27 Years Later is clearly unlike
anything else that’s out there at the moment, a playful contribution to the American
“avant-garde” that also forms a perfect introduction to one of its most consistently
fascinating exponents. Neil Young
Production company:
James Benning
c/o CalArts (California Institute of the Arts), 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia, 913552397, California, USA
Tel: 001 661 255 1050
http://calarts.com/schools/film/faculty/benning_james.html
Courtesy of Forum (Berlin)
84 UNCHARTED STATES
A drift between the workaday duties of a Seattle bicycle cop and the more pressing
demands of his inner world, Robinson Devor’s Police Beat is a film that’s neither here
nor there - and I mean that as a compliment. Where most American cop movies are
poundingly literal, as if drawing their tonal cues from semiautomatic weapons, this
one takes only the length of its first several shots to wander away from the crime
scene. The bike cop - a calm, stocky man known as Z (Niang) - spies a fully-clothed
corpse floating face down a few feet offshore and almost immediately pictures
himself kissing his girlfriend (Oxygen) who, we soon learn, has gone on a camping
trip with another guy. Love and loss are the film’s twin preoccupations. Z’s lonely
interior monologue is delivered in subtitled Wolof, the language of his native
Senegal; the cop, like the movie, appears between worlds.
Police Beat [is] what we used to call an independent film - the sort made with
unknown actors, modest budgets, innovative production strategies and regional
specificity. Its look is uniquely ravishing, its effect hypnotic. Shot through blue-green
filters in widescreen 35mm and set to an aptly lulling mix of Satie and Aphex Twin,
the movie is moodier still by simple virtue of Seattle, whose steep, verdant beauty
could’ve been the filmmakers’ sole inspiration. (Mother Nature is a genius, although
the location scouts deserve a special award, as does ace cinematographer Sean
Kirby.) Z’s periodic police reports become increasingly poetic and existential (“No one
in Seattle can help this man. He is in a lonely place…”), as if the cop (referring to
himself?) has fallen under the movie’s spell. Dreamlike in style, Police Beat is also a
real-world vision of what American indies could be if they dared to recognise the
drama in our own neighbourhoods. Rob Nelson, The Village Voice
WINDOWS XP
Dir. Ujkan Hysaj Kosovo 2005
Agon Bala, Besar Zahiti, Genc Gashi
Bored with the outdated information
being taught to them, students in a
computer class demonstrate their skills
by playing a prank on their teacher.
However the teacher, realising that he
needs to bring his material up to date,
doesn’t appreciate the joke.
SYTHI
rr.afrim Loxha, Blloku1, b3/1, Prishtina,
Kosovo, 10000
Tel: 00 381 38 44 206 398
Production company:
Police Beat LLC
1515 12th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122, USA
Tel: 001 206 329 2629
www.policebeatmovie.com
Courtesy of Northwest Film Forum
UNCHARTED STATES 85
UK PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
Dir. Bill Daniel USA 2005 56 mins (adv 12A)
Documentary
(aka W.K.C.R. Redux)
WHO IS BOZO TEXINO?
+ LAY DOWN TRACKS
Dirs. Brigid McCaffrey, Danielle
Lombardi USA 2006 59 mins (adv 12A)
With: Bill Crowley, Tamara Beard, Larry
McCaffrey, Joy Manthey, Eben Talmage
Nearly 20 years in the making, Who Is Bozo Texino? is quite simply a great American
movie - and its greatness is tied up very closely with its American-ness. With this
brilliant experimental documentary, self-styled hobo filmmaker Bill Daniel places
himself firmly in the bootprints of Jack London, Jack Kerouac, Walt Whitman and
Woody Guthrie - a fine, long tradition of American artists who look for their
inspiration to the marginal, the underclass, the vagabond and the outcast. Nominally
a chronicle/survey/history of boxcar graffiti (a tradition as old as the railroad itself)
and the men who create it, Who Is Bozo Texino? soon transcends its narrow subject
matter to become a gloriously rough-edged elegy for an America which is being
swept away before our eyes.
Unlike so many American counterculture documentaries (even entertaining,
relatively recent examples like Murderball, Dogtown and Z-Boys and Stoked)
Daniel’s film manages a near-perfect union of radical form and radical content. And
it does so in consistently accessible style: at first you’re intrigued by the stunning
monochrome images captured by his self-effacing, sensitively-handled camera(s); by
the startling kineticism of his fluent editing style; by the sheer range of voices,
music and sound effects we hear as he tracks down a series of grizzled hobos and
wisdom-dispensing graffiti ‘markers’.
Then you realise that, just as these men have always instinctively rejected authority
and convention, Daniel has likewise embraced the unorthodox in his style of
filmmaking - even down to his choice of title and running time. Indeed, in less than
an hour Daniel manages to say more about life, art, America and the simple joy of
filmmaking than most directors manage in decades. We should leave the last word
to Daniel himself - according to the director, this “absurd quest for the true identity
of railroading’s greatest artist will likely amuse and confound you in its sincere
attempt to understand and preserve this artform”. Neil Young
Production company:
Bill Daniel
1810 Market St, Shreveport, LA 71101, USA
Tel: 001 503 939 6916
www.billdaniel.net
Courtesy of Bill Daniel
86 UNCHARTED STATES
WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN?
Wednesday 14 March 6pm Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Travis Wilkerson USA 2005/7 73 mins (adv 15)
Barrett Miller, Charlie Parr, Dylan Wilkerson
We’re delighted to present the World Premiere of this newly-edited version
(described by the director as WKCR Redux) of Travis Wilkerson’s confrontational
socio-political drama Who Killed Cock Robin? Wilkerson’s initial, 88-minute version
appeared on several leading European critics’ ‘Top Ten’ lists of 2005.
Who Killed Cock Robin? is based on a newspaper report about a young unemployed
man who, in the space of a week, went from a shoplifting charge for stealing a case
of beer to murdering his landlord. Yet with a decency that seems almost perverse,
the movie itself suppresses this last incident, and transforms it into a sorry and
inconclusive scuffle. What sort of crime movie is this, with its unwarranted aversion
to bloodshed?
Travis Wilkerson first related the sorry history of Butte, Montana in his searing
agitprop essay An Injury to One (2002): how coal made it a Mecca for immigrants
100 years ago, and it became, in the ‘20s, the radical cutting edge of the American
labour movement. Then the mining companies got heavy, bringing in the Wobblies
and Pinkerton detectives (including Dashiell Hammett) to break the strikes. The
union’s most charismatic advocate, Frank Liddle, disappeared for his trouble.
Eventually, decades later, the seams ran out and the money went with them, leaving
behind only toxins and the citizens who grew up there - Wilkerson among them.
Returning to the scene of the crime, Who Killed Cock Robin? is vastly different... is
shot on DV, handheld, and seems wilfully, dizzyingly ragged and abrasive. Sitting on
the shoulder of his three principals... and constantly cutting ahead of the beat,
Wilkerson accentuates the rough-hewn nature of the project. The film’s narrative
trajectory is headed straight for that old miner’s sore, the pit of despair. But
Wilkerson finds some solace in songs of resistance and solidarity - the film itself is
best seen as an uncompromising working class protest song. Tom Charity, Cinema
Scope
UK PREMIERE
13 STAGES
(13 Stufen)
Dir. Daniel Böhme Germany 2006 27
mins (adv 15) Subtitles
Roman Roth, Kirstin Warnke
First kiss. Co-habiting. Falling out.
Separation. Julius narrates 13 stages of
his affair with Laura, and makes a
blueprint for relationships in general.
Two smart and funny players make this
work a treat, briskly charting a modern
romance with a wry, hopeful smile.
Soda.film Berlin
Cotheniusstr. 6, Berlin, 10407, Germany
Tel: 00 49 30 420 86622
Production company:
Extreme Low Frequency
855 East Kensington Road, Los Angeles, CA 90026 USA
Tel: 001 213 250 7160
Courtesy of Extreme Low Frequency
UNCHARTED STATES 87
Cinefile
A concise but eclectic documentary strand,
CineFile is a kaleidoscopic collection of films
that records and documents the world of
movies and moviemakers.
ANGER ME
Dir. Elio Gelmini Canada/Italy 2006 72 mins (adv 15)
With: Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekas
Where does one start with a figure like Kenneth Anger? (Not that there is anyone
around much like the man born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, of course). A basic
description might be that he is “an American underground avant-garde filmmaker
and author”. But Anger himself takes great exception to the terms “underground”
and “avant-garde” - see the characteristically waspish quote which accompanies our
‘Uncharted States of America’ section of this catalogue. A proudly self-proclaimed
“independent”, Anger is, in the end, impossible to pigeonhole, classify or accurately
describe.
Almost every fact about his life (including the 1927 birth date cited by most sources)
is a matter of debate, conjecture, controversy and speculation. His films - which
include seminal, defiantly transgressive works such as Fireworks, Inauguration of the
Pleasure Dome, Scorpio Rising and Invocation of My Demon Brothers - are all wildly
influential, but exist in many different forms and lengths and perhaps even now
remain works in progress. Then there’s Anger the author - his two Hollywood
Babylon books have long been scandalous tell-all bestsellers, crammed full of
salacious stories that foreshadow much of today’s celebrity gossip culture. And what
about Anger the actor, the muse (friend of Kinsey, Cocteau, Jagger...), the traveller,
the aesthete, the model, the Aleister Crowley devotee?
Well, the best place to start with Anger is with Anger himself - and until the man
completes his long-gestating autobiography (provisionally and irresistibly entitled
Look Back, Ken Anger) that means via Elio Gelmini’s absorbing and accessible
documentary Anger Me. It’s a simple enough formula - Anger himself looking back
over his life and career, generously interspersed with well-chosen clips from the
protean, prodigious oeuvre - but one that proves wickedly entertaining, consistently
surprising, and unexpectedly poignant. For anyone even remotely interested in
alternative cinematic culture, meanwhile, Anger Me is an absolute must-see. Neil
Young
Production company:
A Few Steps Production
c/o filmswelike, 24 Mercer St., Toronto, Ontario, M5V 1H3, Canada
Tel: 001 416 782 5697
www.angerme.com
Courtesy of A Few Steps Production
90 CINEFILE
EUROPEAN PREMIERE
BUDD BOETTICHER:
A MAN CAN DO THAT
Fridfay 16 March 1.45pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. Bruce Ricker USA 2005 86 mins (adv 12A)
With: Budd Boetticher, Robert Towne, Paul Schrader, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood,
Robert Stack, Peter Bogdanovich Commentary spoken by Ed Harris
Tracing the career of one of Hollywood’s true mavericks, Budd Boetticher - A Man Can
Do That pays tribute to the director perhaps now best known for the cycle of seven
near-legendary B-movie westerns he made with star Randolph Scott between 1956’s
Seven Men From Now and 1960’s Comanche Station. In the words of veteran
Australian critic John Flaus: “Moral values are lived out, not argued out... and a
tarnished mirror is held up to the identification figure of the hero, with only fitful
gleams of anything that might be called glory.”
In A Man Can Do That, director Bruce Ricker nimbly assembles clips from many of
Boetticher’s movies, along with archive and original interviews which guide us
through a particularly hectic life. The clips are copious, extensive and well-chosen,
illustrating Boetticher’s many strengths and also some of his weaknesses - and
they’re put in their proper historical and artistic context by Ed Harris’s commentary,
written by esteemed film critic Dave Kehr. The interviewees are also excellent value:
they include Kehr’s fellow critic Andrew Sarris plus a range of articulate, cine-literate
Hollywood luminaries such as Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Towne, Paul Schrader and
Larry Cohen.
Some of the most entertaining segments feature the rather unlikely couple of Clint
Eastwood and Quentin Tarantino, filmed together and clearly having a ball in each
other’s company, enthusing about an individual both evidently hold in the highest
respect and affection. But, quite rightly, it’s Boetticher himself - sometime matador,
world traveller, and ranch-owner - who’s emphatically the star of the show. He
speaks at length in two interviews - one recorded in the early ‘70s, the other taped
only a couple of years before his 2001 death - and these provide ample proof of the
charisma, charm and toughness so favourably commented upon by his many friends
and fans. Neil Young
Production company:
Rhapsody Films
PO Box 179, New York, NY 10014, USA
Tel: 001 212 243 0152
www.rhapsodyfilms.com
Courtesy of Rhapsody Films and film channel Turner Classic Movies
available on SKY 319, Virgin TV 419 and Top Up TV Anytime
CINEFILE 91
UK PREMIERE
UK PREMIERE
CINEMATOGRAPHER STYLE
DIRECTED BY JOHN FORD
Saaturday 17 March 4pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. Jon Fauer USA/Germany 2006 86 mins (adv PG)
Documentary with Vittorio Storaro, Gordon Willis, Roger Deakins, Ellen Kuras, William
Fraker, Remi Adefarasin, Caleb Deschanel
(aka Directed By)
One hundred and ten world-class cinematographers’ thoughts on their widely
discussed but little understood art-plus-craft are packed into 86 minutes in
Cinematographer Style. For a film about cinema’s visual aspects, [the documentary]
is strikingly contained to talking-heads shots - often closely held - of the lensers, who
represent the cream of the English language film world. The open and gracious
manner of the subjects confirms what some already know: That no group in the film
biz matches “lensers” as a collection of classy, level-headed folks. Tech-heads may
chirp about lack of inside baseball chatter, but [the film] is rightly directed toward a
general audience of movie lovers.
Though each participant has an average of 45 seconds’ worth of screen time, a few
inevitably dominate the discussion by virtue of the sheer depth, value and
theatricality of their comments. The unquestioned star is Italian maestro Vittorio
Storaro (The Conformist; Apocalypse Now), legendary in film circles as the greatest
living philosopher/practitioner on the application of light, color and shadow for the
film camera. Storaro uses props (light bulbs; dimmers) to demonstrate such
techniques as light placement and the effect of color on mood. And to make matters
clear, he also explicitly states at the start, “I am a cinematographer. I am not a
director of photography.”
Alongside Storaro in impact is veteran cinematographer Gordon Willis (The
Godfather trilogy; Manhattan), whose frank and matter-of-fact statements lend the
film a vibe of honesty and common sense. His biggest admission is that he didn’t
decide on the look of The Godfather until about 20 minutes before the first day’s
filming, and he draws possibly the biggest laugh by asking fellow cinematographer
and the film’s director Jon Fauer to momentarily turn off most of the lights in the
room during his interview; now viewed in near darkness, with just a splash of
backlight, Willis says, “See? That’s about right.” Robert Koehler, Variety
92 CINEFILE
Dir. Peter Bogdanovich USA 1971/2006 108 mins (adv 12A)
With: John Ford, Peter Bogdanovich, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood
Narrated by Orson Welles
These days Peter Bogdanovich is perhaps best known as an actor - he plays the
psychiatrist’s psychiatrist in The Sopranos - or as an author (hefty interview
compilations Who The Devil Made It? and Who The Devil’s In It?) Back in 1971,
however, he was America’s most promising young auteur - with Targets under his
belt and The Last Picture Show earning him the kind of reviews most directors only
dream about. He could do pretty much anything he wanted. And what he wanted to
do was a documentary about John Ford.
The result was a film which, in the words of LA Weekly film editor Scott Foundas “has
long enjoyed a somewhat mythic status among cinephiles, in part because,
following a smattering of festival and television screenings, it was essentially
withdrawn from circulation”. Withheld from view because of legal rights wrangles,
the picture existed in a limbo for three and a half decades. It was only in early 2006
that Bogdanovich - who was reportedly never totally happy with the 1971 version went back and finally finished the job to his satisfaction. He recorded totally new
interviews with Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg and
incorporated a rare audio recording of Ford and his sometime-paramour Katharine
Hepburn. He seamlessly integrated these new elements alongside the strongest
sections from the first version - including extended interviews with Ford and
collaborators such as John Wayne and Henry Fonda.
The result is a truly unique labour of love - a comprehensive and expertly-judged
tribute to the man now regarded as perhaps America’s greatest-ever filmmaker.
Bogdanovich’s own career as a features director has long since been a cause for
concern and regret - but Directed By John Ford proves that he’s lost none of his
energy and ability as a chronicler and lover of film, and suggests that his own star
may yet be due for a belated re-ascendance. Frank Mangus
Production Company:
T-Stop Productions (Jon Fauer)
c/o ASC, 1782 N Orange Dr., 90028 Hollywood, California, USA
Tel: 00 1 323 969 4333
www.cinematographerstyle.com
Production company:
Turner Classic Movies (TCM)
1050 Techwood Drive, Atlanta, Georgia, GA 30318, USA
Tel: 001 404 885 5535
www.turnerclassicmovies.com
Courtesy of T-Stop Productions
Courtesy of film channel Turner Classic Movies
CINEFILE 93
UK PREMIERE
UK PREMIERE
SCREENING WITH: THE SLANTED SCREEN
Dir. Shannon Davis USA 2006 64 mins (adv PG)
With: Martin Scorsese, Edward Burns, John Sayles, Spike Lee, Thelma Schoonmaker, Gena
Rowlands, Peter Falk, Henry Jaglom, Darren Aronofsky, Seymour Cassel, Arthur Penn, Peter
Biskind, Peter Bogdanovich, Stanley Tucci, Steve Buscemi, Paul Seydor, Leon Vitali
DREAM MAKERS
Dir. Susan Cardinal Canada 2006 47 mins (adv 12A)
With: Tantoo Cardinal, Graham Greene, Tom Jackson, August Schellenberg, Gordon Tootoosis,
Dakota House, Lorne Cardinal
A fascinating - if shameful - aspect of 20th century North American screen culture is
explored in entertaining, accessible and illuminating fashion in Dream Makers, which
examines how the continent’s native populations living in the USA and Canada have been
represented in films and on TV. For many years, of course, these “representations” would be
more accurately labelled as “distortions”. It isn’t that long since it was considered the norm
for actors of European stock to brown up and step in front of the camera to play native
“savages” of varying degrees of nobility: even the most respected directors and actors were
guilty of the practice, such as the somewhat Aryan-looking Burt Lancaster as Robert
Aldrich’s Apache from 1954.
“I’ve wasted the greater part of my life looking for money. It’s about two per cent moviemaking and 98 per cent hustling. That’s no way to spend a life.” – Orson Welles
As chronicled by director Cardinal - an award-winning documentarian with over 25 years
experience in the medium - North American’s “aboriginal” populations (their own preferred
term) have come a very long way indeed since those days. This is especially the case in
Canada, where they now produce and direct films, star in television programmes and - a
development which has yet to be reproduced “south of the border” - even have their own
cable network.
Charting the course of the independent from Chaplin and Co in United Artists through
the early struggles of a post-Citizen Kane Orson Welles to the likes of Nicholas Ray, Sam
Fuller, Woody Allen and Sam Peckinpah, Edge of Outside then focuses on the disparate
experiences of directors such as Stanley Kubrick, who opted for total control, and John
Cassavetes. It was Cassavetes who was to become the poster boy for aspiring directors
who longed to escape the contradictions of the studios. While they offered some
semblance of security, they also tied talent to a treadmill.
Cardinal smoothly switches between well-chosen clips (from the likes of Little Big Man and
Dances With Wolves) and interviews with aboriginal performers, many of whom painfully
remember the worst features of the “bad old days”. With speakers such as Oscar-nominated
Dances with Wolves star Graham Greene (most recently seen in Transamerica) guiding the
way, Dream Makers abounds with humour, intelligence and a fierce determination to set
the record straight. “I don’t have to stand there and say ‘How’ for peanuts, now,” says
Greene, “I can go out there and really act”.
It’s a story that has lost not a jot of its relevance today, when communities around the
world must struggle with racism and ignorance in order to make their voices heard and
ensure that their peoples’ stories are brought into the spotlight they deserve. Frank Mangus
94 CINEFILE
EDGE OF OUTSIDE
There was a time when independent filmmaking was a pejorative term. Now, in the
wake of titans like Welles, Kubrick and Scorsese, indie filmmaking represents freedom
that straddles both the artistic and commercial. This taut and concise documentary
stars an eclectic band of pioneering filmmakers with one shared perspective: they
decided to make movies outside the mainstream and gave collective birth to the
concept of American indie cinema.
A host of acclaimed artists queue up to laud their heroes and reflect on their various
travails that affect any filmmaker who aspires to eschew studio control. All do so with a
mixture of enthusiasm for what could have been, weariness at what occurred and
sadness at the various missed opportunities. With archive footage of Welles, Ray,
Peckinpah, Fuller, Cassavetes and Hitchcock at work, Edge of Outside salutes the
tenacity of the individual and offers a retrospective point of view on how so many
directors’ careers first flew and then plummeted in flames.
Perhaps the most telling comment comes from Spike Lee. Considering the topsy-turvy
life of Orson Welles, he says: “Orson Welles was a cautionary tale for me, because I don’t
wanna be selling wine 20 years from now to get by.” Tony Earnshaw
Production Company:
joeMedia TV
305 10th Ave SE, Calgary, Alberta, T2G OW2, Canada
Tel: 001 403 264 5400
www.joemedia.tv
Production company:
Turner Classic Movies (TCM)
Turner House, 16 Great Marlborough Street, London, W1F 7HS, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 693 1000
www.tcmonline.co.uk
Courtesy of joeMedia
Courtesy of film channel Turner Classic Movies
+ ENTER THE DRAGON
(U Zmajevom Gnijezdu)
Dir. Ozren Milharcic Bosnia-Herzegovina
2006 59 mins 55 secs (adv U) Subtitles
Documentary
Mostar, unofficial capital of
Herzegovina, needs a statue of Bruce
Lee. Locals Nino and Veso are
convinced of this, and have spent years
raising funds to help realise their
dream: a life-size bronze statue of the
king of kung-fu to stand defiant and
hopeful in their divided home town. As
the project accelerates, Mostar enters a
sprint to the finish with Hong Kong:
who will be first in the world to claim
Bruce Lee as their own? But this is no
mere publicity stunt; Nino and Veso are
sincere believers that martial arts
superstars can be transformative
public art. Enter the Dragon is a smart
and humane experience, treating its
apparently oddball subject with
deserved faith. Can Bruce Lee give hope
to a traumatised Balkan city?
Contact: [email protected] Dervisa
Numica 30`, Sarajevo, BosniaHerzegovina, 71000
Tel: 00 387 33 641 050
CINEFILE 95
UK PREMIERE
WORLD PREMIERE
Saturday 17 March 10.30am Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dirs. Donatello Dubini, Fosco Dubini, Barbara Obermaier Germany 2006
84 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
With: Hedy Lamarr, Mickey Rooney, Kenneth Anger, Lupita Tovar Koehner,
Chris Horak, Robert Rodenburg, Arlene Roxbury
Saturday 24 March 10.45am Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. Tony Earnshaw GB 2007 80 mins (adv 15)
With: Malcolm McDowell
HEDY LAMARR - SECRETS OF A HOLLYWOOD STAR
“And so she came west, perhaps as beautiful as any woman ever filmed, but nearly
stunned by all the things being said about her, and by her extensive limits as an
actress. She did her best: but conscientiousness is not quite what we expect in our
femmes fatales. Too often, she had a worried look.” So wrote David Thomson in his
Biographical Dictionary of Cinema. The subject: Hedy Lamarr - subject of this
enthralling new documentary and a name which, to cinemagoers of a certain age,
still conjures a potent whiff of eroticism, mystery and glamour.
Back in the early Thirties, however, Lamarr - born Hedwig Kiesler in WWI Vienna was a byword for scandal, having appeared completely nude on film in the
sensational 1932 hit Ecstasy (Ekstase). Within a few chaotic years she had fled Nazi
Germany for Hollywood and Algiers (1938) but, having turned down the Ingrid
Bergman roles in both Casablanca and Gaslight, her career entered a long, slow
decline - halted only by her uninhibited turn as Salome in Cecil B. De Mille’s Samson
and Delilah (1949). And that “worried look”? Well, it could have been something to
do with the fact that Lamarr was never content to be ‘just’ a movie-star. ‘Hidden
depths’ doesn’t quite cover it: during World War II, the fiercely anti-Nazi Lamarr codeveloped a “frequency-hopping” system intended to make radio-guided torpedoes
harder to jam. The technology wasn’t implemented until the 1960s - but formed the
basis for many of today’s communications systems, including cordless phones and
WiFi internet.
It’s a truly stranger-than-fiction story - and is just one of the many remarkable
episodes chronicled in this painstakingly researched biography, which features
archive footage and interviews featuring Lamarr herself as well as illuminating
contributions from a range of experts, friends and onlookers. These include none
other than Kenneth Anger - subject of another of this year’s CineFile documentaries,
Anger Me and, as always, excellent value as a tell-all raconteur. Frank Mangus
Production company:
Movie Relations
Kalker Haupstr. 178, 51103 Cologne, Germany
Tel: 0049 221 346 39 60
www.movierelations.de/hedylamarrfilm/index.html
96 CINEFILE
Courtesy of Movie Relations
MALCOLM McDOWELL:
MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES MADE TO ORDER
After five decades in motion pictures Malcolm McDowell still looks forward to the
intensity of the studio floor. It is the labour ethic of a working class lad from Leeds,
and it has never left him.
His friends call McDowell an original and an outsider. His legions of fans see him as
something of an institution – not quite a living legend yet, but definitely an icon,
which is not far from it. There’s a touch of the anarchist about him – certainly the
antagonist. He still sees much of himself in Mick Travis, the rebellious kid whose
rebellion climaxes in an apocalyptic attack on The System replete with languid
girlfriend and a machine-gun. He’s proud to be a working actor - a slogger who has
learned something from every single film he’s ever made. And there have been many.
As Mick Travis, the anti-Establishment student hero of If…, McDowell effortlessly
donned the mantle of public school revolutionary and enjoyed the notorious
privilege of what is called overnight stardom. It was a heady period that gave birth
to a lifelong professional relationship with Lindsay Anderson – the filmmaker who,
without doubt, can accurately be described as McDowell’s mentor. The other great
collaboration in McDowell’s life came via Stanley Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange.
This charming yet brutal sexual deviant has loomed over McDowell’s career since the
film was made in 1971.
Reptilian bully boys, psychos, malign miscreants, flamboyant, swaggering sociopaths,
sadistic fascists, debauched maniacs and intergalactic loonies have been McDowell’s
stock-in trade since he exploded to international prominence in A Clockwork Orange.
McDowell has always enjoyed the intense symbiosis between actor and filmmaker.
In this interview-cum-one-man show he revisits some of the key moments in his life
and recalls, with candour, laughter and profanity, some of the many people with
whom he’s worked in a 40-year career. Allen Faulkner
Production company:
National Media Museum
Pictureville, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD1 1NQ, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0) 1274 203320
www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
Courtesy of NMeM Archives
CINEFILE 97
EUROPEAN PREMIERE
THE SLANTED SCREEN
SCREENING WITH: DREAM MAKERS
Dir. Jeff Adachi USA 2006 60 mins (adv 12A)
With: Mako, Tzi Ma, Jason Scott Lee, Terence Chang, Phillip Rhee, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa,
James Shigeta
One of the first significant roles for an Asian-American man in Hollywood was the
title character of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1915 silent classic, The Cheat. The lead was the
handsome Japanese-born Sessue Hayakawa, who became a matinee idol during that
era. It was simultaneously a breakthrough and an unfortunate template for the
“yellow peril” films, in which Asian men may seem nice but usually have a nefarious
trick up their sleeves. They don’t get the girl, either. In the 1960s and ‘70s, the
romantic leading man James Shigeta (Flower Drum Song) and the action hero Bruce
Lee (Enter the Dragon) shattered myths of Asian-American evil and impotence,
leading to… what, exactly? Not much.
STILL ALIVE - A FILM ABOUT KRZYSZTOF
KIESLOWSKI
(Still Alive - Film o Krzysztofie Kieslowskim)
Dir. Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz Poland 2006 82 mins (adv 12A) Subtitles
Documentary with Krzysztof Kieslowski, Wim Wenders, Agnieszka Holland, Irene Jacob,
Krzysztof Zanussi, Slawomir Idziak, Juliette Binoche
This is a beautifully made and totally engrossing feature-length retrospective
portrait of Kieslowski by a former student of his - who is now one of Poland’s finest
documentary filmmakers, Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz (who has made more than 40
documentaries since 1982’s Everybody Knows Who’s Behind Who). She gives a lot of
attention to the beginnings of Kieslowski’s career: his studies at the Lodz Film School
and his first documentary films (including 1966’s The Office and The Tram and 1971’s
Workers).
And so we have The Slanted Screen, an entertaining and informative documentary,
generously loaded with film clips, about the plight of the Asian-American actor
onscreen and speculation on what the future might bring. The film is peppered with
interviews, including clips of Shigeta, whose unprecedented run of leading parts in
the late ‘50s and early ‘60s - including two movies in which he landed a white
leading lady - has, sadly, been unmatched.
The film recounts as fully as possible the artistic path of Kieslowski and the character
of the man, presenting a portrait of a fulfilled artist, of a director wholly engaged in
the drama of the time of his protagonists. An important aspect of the documentary
(made to mark the 10th anniversary of Kieslowski’s death in 1996) is how it tries to
explain the phenomenon of Kieslowski’s reception in Poland and abroad, as well as
an analysis of the standing of his work today and who is following in his footsteps.
Adachi keeps everything on track, and the best part of The Slanted Screen are the
film clips and the stories of some past legends. I had forgotten that Hayakawa, who
is now mainly known as the elderly camp commandant in The Bridge on the River
Kwai, was once a young, dashing and popular leading man. Philip Ahn could have
succeeded Hayakawa in that capacity, but had the bad luck of coming of age during
the race-baiting Fu Manchu years of the 1930s and the World War II era, during
which he often played Japanese heavies. His greatest fame came in old age, when he
was wise Master Kan on the TV’s Kung Fu. Still, Adachi believes the future is bright,
and The Slanted Screen is obviously a labour of love.
The film is richly illustrated with archival material as well as excerpts from the
student, documentary, and feature films of Krzysztof Kieslowski. Zmarz-Koczanowicz
uses the late director’s own words as well as scraps of memories kept by his friends
and colleagues: Wim Wenders, Agnieszka Holland, Slawomir Idziak (the
cinematographer who shot seven of Kieslowski’s works), Jacek Petrycki, Grazyna
Szapolowska, Tadeusz Sobolewski, Irene Jacob (star of Kieslowski’s The Double Life of
Veronique), Zbigniew Preisner, Marcin Latallo, Juliette Binoche (from Three Colours:
Blue), Andrzej Titkow, Andreas Veiel, Krzysztof Zanussi and others.
G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle
Loved and admired, Kieslowski was a filmmaker’s filmmaker: “Cinema is about
drudgery. It is about getting up early, about not sleeping at night, about fretting,
about rain. This is cinema, this is real cinema. And the moments of satisfaction
happen seldom.” New York Polish Cultural Institute
Production company:
AAMM Productions
PO Box 77313, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA
www.slantedscreen.com
Courtesy of AAMM Productions
98 CINEFILE
UK PREMIERE
Production Company:
Es-Media Sp.zo.o
00-854 Warszawa, ul. Lucka 20/1101, Poland
Tel: 00 48 22 654 17 31
Courtesy of Telewizja Polska, SA
CINEFILE 99
UK PREMIERE
THE WELL
(Brunnen aka Brunnen - en film om Orson Welles)
Friday 16 March 11.30am Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Dir. Kristian Petri Sweden 2005 107 mins (adv 15) Subtitles
With: Orson Welles, Oja Kodar, Jess Franco, William Law, Peter Viertel, Kristian Petri
Well, Well, Welles: there have been several documentaries - and not a few feature films made over the years about the legendary director / writer / actor / impresario / bonviveur Orson Welles. Never has there been one quite like Swedish cinephile Kristian
Petri’s The Well.
Audaciously, Petri doesn’t hesitate from treating himself as the focus and subject of his
film - he’s in the position of Citizen Kane’s dogged journalist/investigator Thompson,
with Welles as the project’s version of ‘Charles Foster Kane’. He goes from place to place,
talking to those who knew, drank, fought and worked with the enigmatic, charismatic
auteur, building up an appropriately idiosyncratic and patchwork portrait of an individual
who delighted in disguise, sleight-of-hand and general obfuscation.
The Well doesn’t attempt to cover the whole of Welles’ dauntingly long and varied career.
Instead, Petri focuses closely on Welles’ many visits to Spain: location for the filming of
the director’s personal favourite among his works, Chimes at Midnight, destination for
countless holidays and adventures, and final resting place of Welles’ mortal remains.
Indeed, it may come as a surprise even to Wellesophiles that their hero’s ashes can be
found at the bottom of a well on an estate near the town of Ronda - in the grounds of a
house owned by Welles’ great friend, bullfighter Antonio Ordonez. Petri’s pilgrimage to
the well features interviews with Welles’ long-time companion Oja Kodar and legendary
horror director Jess Franco, but finds just as much illumination and anecdotage among
the non-celebrity folk who came into contact with Welles in everyday life.
Far from being your conventional, by-the-numbers biopic, The Well aims much higher: as
we see modern Spain through Petri’s lens, we accompany him on a personal voyage of
discovery through a startlingly beautiful land of rolling countryside and spectacular
coastline. A travelogue with heart and brain as well as soul, The Well is compulsive
viewing for anyone interested in Welles, Spain or the nature of creativity. Frank Mangus
Production company:
Charon Film
c/o SFI (Svenska Filminstitutet / Swedish Film Institute), Box 271 26, SE-102 52 Stockholm,
Sweden
Tel: 00 46 8 665 11 00
www.sfi.se
100 CINEFILE
Courtesy of Svenska Filminstitutet / Swedish Film Institute
Special Events
CRASH SYMPOSIUM
FILM & MUSIC CONFERENCE
INDUSTRY WEEKEND
KRASZNA-KRAUSZ BOOK AWARDS
PANDORA’S BOX
Crash Symposium
CRASH CINEMA 6
Wednesday 21 March, 10am - 6pm
Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Admission free
Crash Cinema, now into its sixth year, has become a feature of the Bradford
International Film Festival, and is a showcase of the co-operation between the
National Media Museum, the University of Bradford’s EIMC department and Bradford
School of Art. The symposium acknowledges the importance of the study of film for
students undertaking postgraduate studies in visual representation, especially of the
cinematic arts, but also students of art & design, fine art, photography and media
communication.
Crash attracts contributions from a broad range of disciplines and a special feature
of the symposium is that it encourages a wide variety of approaches to, and subject
matter from, the world of film. There is always an emphasis at Crash on
representation as an exciting means of unearthing political, social and cultural
meanings as articulated through the art of film. Unlike prescribed film symposia,
Crash seeks to provoke and stimulate - the post conference screening of a
controversial film reinforces this key aspect.
This year also sees the publication of Crash Cinema: Representation in Film, the first
collection of essays from the symposium, beginning what should become a rich
contribution to writings on film.
Crash is always supported by the superb facilities of the film department of the
NMeM and has occurred because the National Media Museum promotes the
importance of film both as an academic subject for study and for the critical
appreciation of the informed public. Together, we look forward to many more
remakes of Crash Cinema at the Bradford International Film Festival.
Mark Goodall
Department of Electronic Imaging and Media Communications, University of
Bradford
The Crash Symposium is presented by the EIMC Department, University of Bradford
and Postgraduate Studies in Visual Representation, School of Art and Design,
Bradford College and will be introduced by Mark Goodall.
A brief discussion will follow the reading of each paper.
104 CRASH SYMPOSIUM
CRASH CINEMA 6
PROGRAMME
NICK REDFERN
(University of Central Lancashire)
Land of Hope and Bloody Glory
Starts: 10am
The affirmation of British national
identity in Brassed Off.
JAMES RILEY
(Cambridge University)
Peter Whitehead: Two Documentaries
Starts: 10.45am
An examination of the
representational strategies used in
these two documentaries.
CLAIRE MOLLOY
(Edge Hill University)
Ghost-pale: the representation of
albinism in mainstream cinema.
Starts: 11.45am
Examining how the relationship
between villainy and albinism is
deployed and negotiated within The Da
Vinci Code.
ANDREW WEBBER
(Chatham Grammar School for Girls)
The Good, The Bad and Bukowski:
Alcohol and the American Dream
Starts: 12.30pm
Representations of alcohol and drinkers
in Hollywood films.
WILL GODFREY
(University of Bradford)
Becoming the Others of Ourselves: PostColonial Hybridity in Anita and Me
Starts: 2.15pm
Can the representation of post-colonial
hybridity in ‘Anita and Me’ provide a
compensatory discourse to the colonial
Manicheanism of mainstream
cinematic representations of British
Asians?
T.E. EYRES
(Trinity College, Cambridge)
The Communicative Slip:
Misunderstanding, Misrecognition and
Fantasy in the cinema of Atom Egoyan
Starts: 3pm
Close readings of Exotica and The
Adjuster.
IAN INGLIS
(University of Northumbria)
Playing at/with Reality: The Pop/Rock
Biopic
Starts: 4pm
A reassessment of its history and its
likely future trajectory.
ALISON PEIRSE
(Lancaster University)
Capturing the Monstrous Male Body in
The Mummy
Starts: 4.45pm
A close analysis of how the monstrous
male body is constructed in classic
horror film.
CRASH SYMPOSIUM
105
3rd Film & Music Conference
3rd Annual Film & Music Conference
A Symposium on the Discourse of Film Music
Friday 16 March 2007
On Location Conference Suite
The University of Leeds School of Music and the School of Art of Brunel University, in
collaboration with the National Media Museum, are pleased to present the 3rd
Annual Film and Music Conference in association with the Bradford International
Film Festival. The conference features a keynote interview with David Arnold,
composer of the score for the recent James Bond blockbuster, Casino Royale (Cubby
Broccoli Cinema), as well as a presentations by professionals from within the film
industry and a round-table discussion focusing on the discourse of film music. The
fee is £15 for the full conference (excluding accommodation and meals) with £10
concessions for students and the unwaged. Registration begins at 10am on the day.
For full details and an application form email Ian Sapiro ([email protected]) or
see the conference website at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/music/filmmusic/index.htm.
KEYNOTE INTERVIEW:
DAVID ARNOLD
Friday 16 March, 11am
We are delighted to welcome internationally acclaimed film composer David Arnold
to open this Symposium on the Discourse of Film Music, the 3rd Annual Film and
Music Conference at the Bradford International Film Festival. David has written more
than 40 scores for film and television including the James Bond films Tomorrow
Never Dies, The World is Not Enough, Die Another Day and the recent blockbuster
Casino Royale, as well as Stargate, Independence Day, Stoned and Amazing Grace.
David Arnold will be in conversation with Professor David Cooper (University of
Leeds) and Professor Christopher Fox (Brunel University).
106 FILM & MUSIC CONFERENCE
REGISTRATION & RECEPTION
Cubby Broccoli Cinema foyer, 10am - 11am
GUEST SPEAKER SESSION 2
On Location Conference Suite, 3.30pm - 5pm
KEYNOTE INTERVIEW
Cubby Broccoli Cinema, 11am - 12.30pm
Special guest composer David Arnold in conversation with
Professor David Cooper and Professor Christopher Fox.
GARY CARPENTER (Orchestrator)
Gary has orchestrated the scores for films including The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The League of Gentlemen’s
Apocalypse, and has worked alongside composers as diverse as
Joby Talbot, John Harle, Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman.
GUEST SPEAKER SESSION 1
On Location Conference Suite, 1.30pm - 3pm
Dr. Ian MacDonald (University of Leeds), Garry Lyons
(University of Leeds) and Dr. Erik Knudsen (University of
Salford) (Screenwriters). This team combines a strong
combination of academic and professional knowledge, and
experience of writing for both stage and screen.
ILAN ESHKERI (Composer)
Ilan worked with Hans Zimmer, Michael Kamen and Ed
Shearmur before composing the score for Layer Cake. He
has recently completed work on the score for Hannibal
Rising, the fourth film in the Hannibal Lecter series.
TEA BREAK
3.00pm-3.30pm, On Location Conference Suite
Delegate Posters will be on display for discussion and
consultation.
DENIS DERCOURT (Director)
Denis was solo viola with the French Symphony Orchestra from
1988 to 1993 and his most recent film, The Page Turner, revisits
the world of Classical music. The film follows Mélanie, a child
with a gift for the piano, whose life is changed by her failure to
pass a Conservatoire entrance examination.
TEA BREAK
On Location Conference Suite, 5pm - 5.30pm
Delegate Posters will be on display for discussion and
consultation.
ROUND-TABLE DISCUSSION:
THE DISCOURSE OF FILM MUSIC
On Location Conference Suite, 5.30pm - 6.30pm
Chaired by Professor David Cooper with the day’s guest speakers.
FILM & MUSIC CONFERENCE 107
Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 March
Weekend Passes £45 (£25 concessions)
Industry Weekend
A weekend of events and masterclasses for the region’s
filmmakers, centred on the Festival’s opening weekend, providing
an opportunity for filmmakers to expand and broaden their
knowledge of the different aspects of filmmaking from key figures
in the film industry.
Covering a wide variety of different aspects of getting your film
from conception to distribution with guidance and advice on
funding, distribution, post production and working with actors
and how they interact with a film crew.
The weekend will also offer the opportunity to attend the
networking event which promises to be a lively and energetic
evening, devoted to getting filmmakers in the region meeting and
exchanging ideas.
Forward Into Europe
Co-ordinated by Propeller, Skillset and the Regional Language
Network, a selection of seminars and workshops to help and
advise new filmmaking talent of the opportunities available to
expand into Europe.
Benefits;
Free entry into all Industry Weekend events
Industry Weekend delegate pack
Free tea/coffee and biscuits during the morning receptions of the
Industry Weekend in Pictureville
Vouchers to buy lunch and refreshments in the Intermission Café
Networking Evening on Saturday
£1 off entry to all screenings during Bradford Film Festival
Free entry to screening of Cheeky followed by Q+A with Trudie
Styler
Saturday 10 March
9:30am Delegate reception
Pictureville Bar
Collect your delegate information pack and mingle with
other delegates over a cup of tea or coffee in the
Pictureville Bar area before the masterclasses, seminars
and workshops begin.
10:00am Micro Budget Production
Our panel of experienced filmmakers and industry experts
provide an insight into the practicalities of making a micro
budget film.
11:30am International Sales
Film distributor David Nicholas Wilkinson is joined by Gary
Phillips of Moviehouse Entertainment, in explaining the
role and purpose of the international sales agent and how
to go about finding one.
2pm SCREENING: CHEEKY
Dir. David Thewlis GB/France 2003 95 mins (15)
David Thewlis, Ian Hart, Trudie Styler, Johnny Vegas
David Thewlis scripts, directs and stars in this tragicomedy
about a man whose relationship with his teenage son take
a turn for the worse after he enters a TV quiz show to help
him grieve his wife’s untimely death.
+ SCREENTALK: TRUDIE STYLER
Multi-talented Trudie Styler – producer, actress, writer and
director – discusses her flourishing career as an
independent filmmaker.
4.30pm Short Films – From Start to Finish
On Location
Highlighting the importance of short filmmaking, the
purpose it serves, schemes available and the process of
developing your project.
108 INDUSTRY WEEKEND
6pm Networking Evening
Forward Into Europe
Museum Foyer
A free networking and social event open to anyone involved
in the film and television industry. A lively and energetic
event for like-minded creative talent to make contacts, and
with the opportunity to meet key influential figures from
the industry.
Documentaries in Europe - From idea to commission
12:15pm On Location
Discussing co-productions, pre-sales, acquisitions and media
industry funds with the opportunity to pitch ideas for
feedback on funding and development strategy. Guest
speaker: Andy Glynne – The Documentary Filmmakers Group
Sunday 11 March
Delegate reception
10am Pictureville Bar
Collect your delegate information pack and mingle with
other delegates over a cup of tea or coffee in the
Pictureville Bar area before the masterclasses, seminars and
workshops begin.
Nuts and Bolts of Filmmaking
10:30am Cubby Broccoli Cinema
A look at the aspects of filmmaking that are often
overlooked and that are just as important as the director,
producer and big named actor.
Forward Into Europe: Subtitling
10:30am On Location
An interactive Workshop on the Theory and Practice of
Subtitling. Guest speaker: Ruth Linden - Regional Language
Network
Producers Workshop - First Feature Film
12:30pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
Piers Tempest, David Lascelles and Liz Rymer are three
industry professionals with very different experiences of
producing films. Whatever level of experience you have as a
filmmaker, their wealth of knowledge and expertise will
help guide you through the process of getting that all
important first feature film off the ground and into the
cinema.
Guest speakers:
Liz Rymer (Chair) – Producer, Wildlight Pictures Ltd
Piers Tempest – Head of Production, Buena Onda Films
David Lascelles – Producer,
Post Production
2pm On Location
Paul Peppiate of VTR North and Graham V. Hartstone, former
Head of Post Production and now consultant to Pinewood
Studios, will discuss how to prepare for post-production by
following certain industry principles.
Forward Into Europe
Distribution - The commercial opportunities available in
European broadband, satellite and cable.
2.15pm Action Zone 1
Stage by stage practical advice to European distribution. A
hands on guide to the commercial realities of working in
Europe.
Guest speaker: Director of commercial European TV
organisation and distributor (tbc)
Corporate Filmmaking
3.30pm On Location
Two experienced professionals highlight the many different
genres, creative liberation and skills, and the experience
provided by corporate films. Guest speakers:
Paul Rowlston – Writer/Director/Producer
Raza Mallal – Eyeline Productions
Forward Into Europe
Taking advantage of overseas funding opportunites.
4.15pm Action Zone 1
A discussion on the funding available for marketing and
market research into Europe, mentoring advice available and
the ‘Passport to Export’ scheme. Guest speaker:
Nigel Goddard – Digital and Creative Sector Specialist, UK
Trade and Investment
INDUSTRY WEEKEND 109
Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards
THE 2007 KRASZNA-KRAUSZ BOOK AWARDS
This Year’s Judges
Thursday 22 March
Pictureville Cinema
Martin Barnes is Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum,
The Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards celebrate and acknowledge the best literature
about the still and moving image. They have been awarded annually since 1985 by
the Foundation established by Andor Kraszna-Krausz, the Hungarian-born publisher
and founder of Focal Press, who died in 1989. Now administered by the National
Media Museum (NMeM), this year’s awards will be presented by Alan Bennett.
Over the years, the awards have attracted a high calibre of entries and have been
presented at annual ceremonies by such big names from the worlds of film and
photography as Mike Leigh, Don McCullin and Miklos Jancso.
The Chairman of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, Colin Ford CBE, said: ‘Since 1985, the
worlds of photography, film and television have changed a great deal. The Trustees of
the Foundation have reviewed their increasingly successful awards in the light of
these changes, and believe that partnership with NMeM will enable the awards to
play an even more influential role in the next thirty years’.
London, which he joined in 1995. The V&A holds the national collection of the art of
photography.
Edward Buscombe was formerly Head of Publishing at the British Film Institute.
He has written widely on cinema and is currently Visiting Professor in Film & Media
at Sunderland University.
Colin Harding is Curator of Photographic Technology at the National Media
Museum, Bradford. He has written and broadcast extensively on the history of
photography.
Michael Harvey is Curator of Cinematography at the National Media Museum,
Bradford. His recent exhibitions include Myths and Visions: The Art of Ray
Harryhausen (2006) and Bond, James Bond (2002).
Clyde Jeavons is a film historian, archivist and programmer. He is a former curator
The Head of the National Media Museum, Colin Philpott, said: ‘We are delighted to
help re-launch these prestigious awards. It is vitally important that literature about
the still and moving image is properly celebrated and recognised and we are happy to
play our part in making sure that this happens’.
of the National Film & Television Archive and the author of the genre film histories
Westerns, War Films and Sex in the Movies. He is Archive Consultant for the London
Film Festival.
The Shortlist:
and since 1998 has been an editor at Granta, the literary magazine, where she is
now Associate Editor. She also works as a freelance editor on photographic books.
Liz Jobey is a writer and editor. She has formerly worked in national newspapers
Moving Image
Orson Welles: Hello Americans by Simon Callow (Jonathan Cape)
Mizoguchi and Japan by Mark Le Fanu (British Film Institute)
Silent Film Sound by Rick Altman (Columbia University Press)
Photography
The Photo Book: A History, vols. 1 and 2 by Martin Parr & Gerry Badger (Phaidon)
Young America, The Daguerreotypes of Southworth and Hawes by Grant Romer and
Brian Wallis (ICP/George Eastman House
All The Mighty World, The Photographs of Roger Fenton, 1852-1860 by Baldwin,
Daniel, Greenough et al (MET, NGA, Getty, Yale University Press)
110 KRASZNA-KRAUSZ AWARD
KRASZNA-KRAUSZ AWARD 111
Tickets from the
Museum Box Office
0870 70 10 200
PANDORA’S BOX
(Die Büchse der Pandora)
With live musical accompaniment by Terry Ladlow
Monday 12 March, 7.15pm
Dir. G. W. Pabst Germany 1928 131 mins (PG) b/w
Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Franz Lederer, Carl Goetz, Alice Roberts, Gustav Diessl
UK PREMIERE
THE WINDOW
Dir. Tomasz Laczny GB 2006
A long pull back from a window to a
(seen or imagined?) interior world. The
scene is impossible - this is cinema of
fever-dreams and nostalgia, with
echoes of Tarkovsky’s shots at their
most foreboding.
Flat 31, All Nations House, 2 Martello
Street, London, E8 3PF, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 207 275 0733
Seductress Lulu is mistress to a rich Berlin society figure, Dr. Schön. Engaged to
someone else and keen to avoid scandal, Schön wants rid of Lulu, yet it’s obvious
that he loves her. Asked why he doesn’t simply marry Lulu instead, he replies, “One
doesn’t marry that kind of woman; it would mean death…” Pandora’s Box is Lulu’s
downward spiral, from keen admirers in opulent Berlin high society; to a squalid
London encounter with Jack the Ripper. Built on the self-destructive charisma of star
and character, it’s a daring, modern film about obsessive desire. Containing the first
screen portrayal of an ‘out’ lesbian, it’s remarkable for its treatment of open
sexuality, and was heavily cut, or ignored, on original release. It has since been hailed
as a masterpiece.
Casting his movie, German director Georg Wilhelm Pabst saw the perfect lead in the
American Louise Brooks. By the mid-1920s, Brooks’ fascinating presence on camera
and resultant status as iconic modern girl had been established in Hollywood studio
pictures. Approached by Pabst to work in decadent Berlin, and always willing to take
risks, Brooks became the only significant Hollywood star ever to go to Germany to
work, rather than vice versa. More than any other of her few films, Pandora’s Box
captures what would eventually turn her into an enduring cause célèbre. Using the
then voguish close-up, Pabst found one of the very great silent star performances;
smart, erotically charged, always hinting at hidden depths. Tom Vincent
This screening will feature a restored print of Pandora’s Box, released to celebrate the
centenary in 2006 of Louise Brooks’ birth. We are also delighted to welcome two
special guests: silent film specialist Keith Withall, who will give a short introduction,
and musician Terry Ladlow, who will accompany Pandora’s Box with a specially
commissioned piano score.
Print source: British Film Institute
12th
Annual Lumiere Lecture
September 2007
Traditional elegance in the heart of Bradford
The Midland Hotel, with its wide sweeping staircases, high ornate ceilings and glittering
chandeliers, has all the ambience of an era long ago. It’s a uniquely relaxing experience
that will make even the shortest visit a memorable one. And, although our roots are in the
past, our facilities are the finest the 21st century has to offer.
In the Heart of Bradford
Magnificent Public areas
90 spacious bedrooms
English & Continental restaurant
Two Bars
24 hour Room Service
112 PANDORA’S BOX
Forster Square Bradford West Yorkshire BD1 4HU Tel: 01274 735735 e-mail: [email protected]
Special Guests
KEN LOACH
MICHAEL PARKINSON
PATRICK KEILLER
GODFREY REGGIO
TRUDIE STYLER
DAVID ARNOLD
ALAN BENNETT
DENIS DERCOURT
TERENCE DAVIES
EUAN LLOYD
BOX OFFICE 0870 70 10 200
KEN LOACH
A RETROSPECTIVE LOOK AT 40 YEARS IN FILM
Ken Loach is one of the great pioneers of British cinema.
Garlanded with awards since his debut in the 1960s, Loach retains a unique aesthetic and a socio-political
conscience that remains undimmed by changes in the industry. His feature films – 21 of them between 1968
(his debut with Poor Cow) and his most recent, The Wind That Shakes the Barley – are often crassly described
as being realist in tone – a throwback to the British ‘social realism’ explosion of the 1960s that gave birth to
Anderson, Richardson, Reisz and Schlesinger.
Yet Loach has always considered Poor Cow
and Kes, which followed in 1970, as a
response to that outpouring of gritty
cinematic emotion; by then the mood had
changed, anyway. Arriving beforehand was
the devastating docudrama that was Cathy
Come Home (1966) – a heartbreaking
exposé of homelessness that led directly to
the creation of the charity Shelter.
Over the years he has slipped in and out of
vogue – some might argue he was never
‘in’ vogue in the first place – but it would
be accurate to say he has never been out of
favour among right-thinking cinephiles
who understand and accept his particular
dynamic and his frequent use of nonprofessional performers. His reputation as
a champion of the oppressed and a
staunch defender of civil rights, minorities
and, significantly, the underdog, has been
sturdily founded on an array of films,
documentaries and television plays that
pose awkward questions and provide a
platform for debate.
A fearless campaigner for causes close to
his heart, Loach’s oeuvre contains hardhitting documentaries on the Labour
movement, the plight of Liverpool’s dock
workers and the British political system. As
an avowed socialist in the Thatcherite
1980s he found himself at odds with
television’s policy makers and his films
about the union movement, Questions of
Leadership, were notoriously banned from
being broadcast by Channel 4.
116 SPECIAL GUESTS
Perhaps as a reaction Loach in the 1990s
turned to dramas about contemporary
British life and helmed a series of
acclaimed feature films that firmly reestablished him as a force within
international cinema. Over the last 16
years the eclectic nature of his subject
matter has seen him tackling illegal
immigration and workers’ rights (Bread
and Roses), the ideological backdrop to
the Spanish Civil War (Land and
Freedom), poverty and unemployment
(Raining Stones), inter-racial romance
(Ae Fond Kiss…) and the birth of the
Republican movement in Ireland (The
Wind That Shakes the Barley).
Since Kes won a prize at Karlovy Vary in
the former Czechoslovakia in 1970,
almost all of Loach’s films have been
selected for inclusion in Europe’s major
festivals. In 2006 The Wind That Shakes
the Barley was a popular and deserving
choice of the Cannes Film Festival’s
Palme d’Or – Loach’s first win after
seven previous nominations.
Now 70, Loach can reflect on a body of
work that mirrors a closely-held social
and political conscience. Yet he tends
not to wallow in professional nostalgia,
preferring instead to consider the next
project on the horizon, saying, “It’s one
game at a time. I tend not to look back
too much or forward too much. I just
make Saturday’s game the big one.”
Allen Faulkner
BLACK JACK
LADYBIRD, LADYBIRD
RAINING STONES
Saturday 10 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Ken Loach GB 1979 105 mins (adv
PG)
Jean Franval, Stephen Hirst, Louise
Cooper, Andrew Bennett, Packie Byrne
Tuesday 13 March
Dir. Ken Loach GB 1994 102 mins (18)
Crissy Rock, Vladimir Vega, Sandie
Lavelie, Mauricio Venegas, Ray
Winstone, Claire Perkins, Jason Stracey,
Luke Brown
Tuesday 13 March
Pictureville Cinema
Bruce Jones, Julie Brown, Gemma
Phoenix, Ricky Tomlinson, Tom Hickey,
Mike Fallon, Ronnie Ravey, Jonathan
James
Maggie, the victim of abuse in
childhood, has four children, by four
different fathers in abusive
relationships, all taken away by social
services after one nearly dies in a fire.
When she has two more with a gentle
Paraguayan political refugee, they are
also seized, apparently only because
she is regarded as an ‘unfit’ mother. For
once, there’s no room for humour in
this tale of unrelenting misery and
injustice, based on the real-life case of
a London woman and scripted by Rona
Munro. After giving up his search in the
capital for a suitable actress to take
the harrowing lead role, Ken Loach
scoured Glasgow, Newcastle and
Sheffield, before finding stand-up
comedian Crissy Rock in Liverpool. It
was another case of the director
finding a performer whose own
experiences collided with those of her
character, Rock having grown up in
poverty, suffering abuse from her
grandfather as a child and being
battered by her first husband. She won
the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the
Berlin International Film Festival.
Bob (Bruce Jones) is unemployed and
struggling to supplement his income
to support his wife and daughter.
Partnered by his mate, Tommy (Ricky
Tomlinson), he tries everything from
sheep stealing to unblocking the
church drains to raise money for his
daughter’s communion dress. Working
again with screenwriter Jim Allen,
Raining Stones emerged as Loach’s best
film for years, continuing a long and
prize-laden career which included a
Jury Prize at Cannes in 1993.
Leon Garfield’s novel about an 18th
century highwayman who escapes the
gallows, abducts a draper’s young
apprentice and rescues a girl wrongly
condemned to the lunatic asylum is
transplanted from London and Surrey
to North Yorkshire. Ken Loach, who
adapted the book himself, adds to this
authentic, pre-Industrial Revolution
English landscape characters with a
South Yorkshire dialect - which he had
discovered 10 years earlier with Kes - to
create a period drama not weighed
down by heavy costumes or stilted
dialogue. The film also features Jean
Franval in the title role, the result of
financial backing being promised by a
French company as long as one of that
country’s actors was the star and the
film was aimed at a young audience. A
slightly unfinished production, with a
budget of just £500,000, Black Jack
remains a curiosity in Loach’s CV - a
children’s film rarely seen since its
initial, limited release.
With special thanks to Bill Shapter
‘Never anything less than masterly:
Loach’s comic timing is exemplary.’ Patricia Dobson, Screen International
Print source: Pathé Distribution Ltd
SCREENTALK: KEN LOACH
In conversation with Anthony Hayward
Monday 19 March
Pictureville Cinema
We are delighted to welcome Ken Loach to Pictureville for this very special Screentalk
interview. Ken is also the recipient of the 2007 BIFF Lifetime Achievement Award and
the presentation will take at the conclusion of the event. Anthony Hayward is a
journalist and the author of Whose Side Are You On? Ken Loach and his Films
(Bloomsbury).
+ THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY
Monday 19 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Ken Loach France/Ireland/GB 2006 126 mins (15)
Cillian Murphy, Pádraic Delaney, Liam Cunningham, Gerard Kearney, William Ruane
In 1920s Ireland two brothers are driven to action by the forces of oppression as
represented by the Black and Tans. As the rebellion gathers pace they find
themselves divided - the war with the British becoming a civil war between rival Irish
factions. Less a story of national conflict than a magnificent song of sorrow centred
on the tragedy of two siblings, The Wind That Shakes the Barley demonstrates how
violence can baptise and finally drown the human spirit even as ideology breaks free.
It is apparent where Ken Loach’s sympathies lie when one sees British soldiers
beating and killing ordinary folk. Yet Loach’s political conscience has always been
perfectly clear; all this masterly historical drama does is hammer home his anger at
the concept of occupying forces and his belief in the cause of working class guerrilla
units fighting for freedom. The film rightly won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes
Film Festival.
118 SPECIAL GUESTS
SPECIAL GUESTS 119
MY NAME IS JOE
Sunday 18 March
Peter Mullan, Louise Goodall, David
McKay, Anne-Marie Kennedy, David
Hayman, Gary Lewis, Lorraine McIntosh,
Scott Hannah
Ken Loach’s films are typified by the
incredible performances of his leading
players and Peter Mullan’s explosive
characterisation of the eponymous
lead in My Name is Joe is as naked and
revelatory as they come. After years on
the bottle, living in one of Glasgow’s
most depressed areas, Joe is trying
hard to get his life in order, struggling
to do the right thing, helping out the
local kids and sinking immense energy
into running the city’s worst youth
football team. A chance meeting with
independent-minded Sarah (Goodall), a
dedicated health visitor, leads to a
relationship that looks as if it might
help to keep Joe on the straight and
narrow. Once again Loach proves that
when it comes to making real-looking
films about real-ish lives there is
nobody in this country, except perhaps
Mike Leigh, who can come close to the
disturbing, riveting authenticity of his
movies.
BREAD AND ROSES:
DIRECTOR’S CUT
CARLA’S SONG:
DIRECTOR’S CUT
Tuesday 20 March
Pictureville Cinema
Pilar Padilla, Adrien Brody, Elpidia
Carrillo, Jack McGee, Monica Rivas,
Frankie Davila, Lillian Hurst
Friday 23 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Ken Loach GB/Germany/Spain 1996
106 mins (15) Some subtitles
Robert Carlyle, Oyanka Cabezas, Scott
Glenn, Salvador Espinoza, Louise
Goodall, Richard Loza, Gary Lewis
Bread and Roses was a departure for
Ken Loach, in that it was his first film
shot in Los Angeles. Despite the shift of
locale it still focuses on the problems
of the working class – albeit with two
actors who are now major stars. Maya
is an illegal immigrant who joins her
sister, Rosa. Rosa finds her work with
her cleaning. She meets union
organiser Sam who is campaigning to
organise them and claim better terms.
Loach seeks no easy answers. Adrien
Brody plays Sam, a complex character,
and hints at the power that he brought
to his Oscar-winning performance in
The Pianist. This version constitutes
Loach’s own cut and is 15 minutes
shorter than the ‘official’ studio
release.
Print source: Ken Loach/Sixteen Films Ltd
It is 1987 and Glaswegian bus driver
George falls in love with Nicaraguan
dancer and refugee Carla, who is
traumatised by the war in her own
country, where the democratically
elected, revolutionary Sandinista
government is fighting the US-backed
Contra rebels. After the shock of her
attempted suicide, George travels to
Carla’s homeland with her to exorcise
the painful demons of her past. Robert
Carlyle plays George, in his second film
for Ken Loach, and the difficult task of
casting Carla was resolved by putting
Nicaraguan dancer Oyanka Cabezas
through a language course in London
to develop her non-existent English.
This was Loach’s first picture with
writer Paul Laverty, a former lawyer
who worked as a human rights
monitor in Nicaragua at the height of
the war and has since become the
director’s regular collaborator.
Criticised by some at the time for being
a film of two uneven halves, Loach has
recently cut 20 minutes from its
original running time and this is the
print featured at the festival.
Print source: Ken Loach/Sixteen Films Ltd
120 SPECIAL GUESTS
LAND AND FREEDOM
Wednesday 14 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Ken Loach GB/Spain/Germany/Italy
1995 109 mins (15) Some subtitles
Ian Hart, Rosana Pastor, Icíar Bollaín,
Tom Gilroy, Marc Martínez
Liverpool, 1936. Fired up by stories of
plucky rebels fighting Franco’s fascist
forces, unemployed David Carr (Ian
Hart) heads off to the Spanish Civil
War and joins other Communists in a
battle for ideals. A skillfully-delivered
capsule history lesson, Land and
Freedom is a raw anti-war movie that
peels away the veneer of comradeship
as in-fighting and treachery replace
ideology and faith. Loach even makes
space for an all-too-brief love affair
between Hart and soulful Rosana
Pastor, though political differences
soon put paid to their romance. A
companion piece to The Wind That
Shakes the Barley, this is a moving
document of a forgotten conflict - an
immaculately staged and intelligently
constructed recreation of a social
revolution and the militarism that
killed it.
David Armstrong,
San Francisco Examiner
Print source:
Artificial Eye Film Company Ltd
KEN LOACH
Born: 17 June 1936
Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England
Feature filmography
1968 Poor Cow
1970 Kes
1971 Family Life
1979 Black Jack
1980 The Gamekeeper
1981 Looks and Smiles
1986 Fatherland
1990 Riff-Raff
1990 Hidden Agenda
1993 Raining Stones
1994 Ladybird Ladybird
1995 Land and Freedom
1996 Carla’s Song
1998 My Name is Joe
2000 Bread and Roses
2001 The Navigators
2002 Sweet Sixteen
2002 11’09’’01 – September 11 (segment)
2004 Ae Fond Kiss…
2005 Tickets (segment)
2006 The Wind That Shakes the Barley
2007 These Times
SPECIAL GUESTS 121
MICHAEL PARKINSON
ON THE BOX
Michael Parkinson once remarked that he wound up on television by falling over a drunk in a bar. The
drunk turned out to be a TV producer who later offered him a job. Parkinson accepted. Now, almost four
decades and xx shows later, the Parkinson brand has become the one most emulated by those who have
followed in his wake. The Parkinson approach was never about ego. Instead the Barnsley-born former
Fleet Street reporter used a winning combination of Yorkshire plain-speaking and disciplined journalistic
ferreting to draw remarkable candour from some equally remarkable guests. The high standard of his
interviewing proved that the chat show format didn’t merely exist in the States where hosts like Dick
Cavett and Johnny Carson attracted stellar stars from the film and music industries.
PARKINSON:
RICHARD BURTON
Sunday 11 March
TV Heaven Viewing Room
Dir. Colin Strong GB 1974
60 mins (adv PG)
With: Richard Burton
By 1974 Richard Burton, a notorious
drinker, was lucky to be alive. Given just
three weeks to live while filming The
Klansman in California, he was rushed to
hospital, given massive blood
transfusions and emerged looking
haggard, pasty and older than his 49
years. This interview had to be recorded
during the afternoon for fear that Burton
would be too inebriated by the evening.
Accordingly, an audience of canteen
workers in their white overalls was
hastily convened. Burton apparently
confessed afterwards that the view from
the studio floor as he walked on made
him think that the “men in white coats”
had finally caught up with him. In this
candid interview Burton reflects on his
brush with death, discusses his
relationship with La Taylor and delivers
an impromptu impersonation of
Laurence Olivier.
122 SPECIAL GUESTS
PARKINSON: JAMES
CAGNEY & PAT O’BRIEN
Sunday 11 March
Dir. Bruce Milliard GB 1981
60 mins (adv PG)
With: James Cagney, Pat O’Brien
A special edition of the show in which
Michael Parkinson talks to veteran
Hollywood star James Cagney and his
long-time friend and sometime co-star,
Pat O’Brien. Good friends for 50 years,
Cagney and O’Brien had become a
recognised screen duo during the ‘30s
and ‘40s, notably in Angels with Dirty
Faces: Cagney played the gangster and
O’Brien the childhood pal who eschews
crime for the priesthood. In 1981, 20
years after he ‘officially’ retired, Cagney
returned to the screen in Milos
Forman’s Ragtime. Among his co-stars
was his old pal O’Brien. It was the last
film for both of them. Parkinson
explores their long friendship, their
screen personas and discovers exactly
why the 81-year-old Cagney returned
to the screen and what he thought of
celebrity.
PARKINSON:
ORSON WELLES
Wednesday 21 March
Dir. Brian Whitehouse GB 1973
60 mins (adv PG)
With: Orson Welles
The interview that started it all. When
Parkinson secured an interview with
Orson Welles in the 1970s it proved his
chat show was a forum for in-depth
explorations of legendary stars and
intriguing icons. Parkinson himself has
since revealed that the Welles
interview led to agents calling his
office, rather than the other way
around. He remembers the interview
fondly, claiming the sultan-like Welles
insisted that he dispose of his list of
questions beforehand, reassuring him:
“We’ll talk”.
Julie Andrews Fred Astaire Richard Attenborough Lauren Bacall Jack Benny Jacqueline
Bisset Cate Blanchett Kenneth Branagh Jeff Bridges Pierce Brosnan Yul Brynner Sandra
Bullock Richard Burton James Cagney Michael Caine Cher John Cleese Sean Connery Billy
Connolly Kevin Costner Daniel Craig Bing Crosby Russell Crowe Tom Cruise Bette Davis
Judi Dench Diana Dors Kirk Douglas Minnie Driver Clint Eastwood Edith Evans Gracie
Fields Henry Fonda Stephen Fry Mel Gibson John Gielgud Hugh Grant Richard E. Grant
Joyce Grenfell Alec Guinness Larry Hagman Tom Hanks Richard Harris Nigel Havers
Goldie Hawn Nigel Hawthorne Charlton Heston Dustin Hoffman Bob Hope Anthony
Hopkins Jane Horrocks John Hurt Burl Ives Samuel L. Jackson Gene Kelly Patsy Kensit
Nicole Kidman Kevin Kline Hugh Laurie Jack Lemmon Jennifer Lopez Joanna Lumley Ewan
McGregor Ian McKellen Shirley MacLaine Walter Matthau Sarah Miles Spike Milligan
John Mills Helen Mirren Robert Mitchum Ron Moody Dudley Moore Morecambe and
Wise Robert Morley Bill Nighy David Niven Pat O’Brien Peter O’Toole Michael Palin
Anthony Quinn Diana Rigg Meg Ryan Peter Sellers Phil Silvers Maggie Smith Will Smith
Kevin Spacey Timothy Spall Terence Stamp James Stewart Patrick Stewart Elaine Stritch
Gloria Swanson Jacques Tati Shirley Temple Terry-Thomas Emma Thompson John
Travolta Peter Ustinov Roger Vadim Julie Walters John Wayne Raquel Welch Orson Welles
Emlyn Williams Esther Williams Kenneth Williams Robin Williams Bruce Willis Richard
Wilson Oprah Winfrey Ray Winstone Shelley Winters Renee Zellweger
PARKINSON:
INGRID BERGMAN
Friday 23 March
Dir. Unknown GB 1973 60 mins (adv PG)
With: Ingrid Bergman, Joel Grey
Beginning in 1971 Michael Parkinson soon
had a reputation for interviewing icons
from the ‘golden age’ of Hollywood. This
episode with Ingrid Bergman illustrates
the host’s characteristic warmth and
British charm, which made Parkinson’s
longevity inevitable. Bergman reflects on
her 40-year career and there are clips
from Casablanca and The Inn of the Sixth
Happiness.
PARKINSON: MEG RYAN
Friday 23 March
Dir. Unknown GB 2003 60 mins (adv 12A)
With: Meg Ryan, Shane Ritchie, Trinny
Woodall, Susannah Constantine
Throughout his career Michael Parkinson
has generated his fair share of memorable
television moments. Many interviews
have been insightful, some heartwarming and others hilariously brilliant.
However, his encounter with actress Meg
Ryan, in the UK to publicise her new film
In the Cut, will always be remembered for
the awkward exchanges between
interviewer and interviewee. Following
the episode viewers were divided as to
whether Ryan was behaving like a prima
donna or whether Parkinson’s questions
were unusually hostile.
SCREENTALK:
MICHAEL PARKINSON
In conversation with Tony Earnshaw
Wednesday 14 March
Pictureville Cinema
The doyen of British chat shows, Michael
Parkinson has been a household name since
the early 1970s. In almost 40 years there is
barely a cinema icon he hasn’t persuaded to
open up in the type of casual yet in-depth
conversation for which he has become
recognised. This Screentalk puts the boot
firmly on the other foot, and Artistic Director
Tony Earnshaw will explore the art of
objective chat and the skills required to draw
answers from a sometimes taciturn guest.
PATRICK KEILLER
URBANE SPACEMAN
“I’ve been looking again at the films of Patrick Keiller. His masterpieces are London and
Robinson in Space, both of which tour around the industrial wastelands of modern Britain
and find poetry and insight there. Each frame could be a photo by Andreas Gursky, so great is
the composition. He combines these images with a voice-over in which a narrator offers us
his thoughts on modern life. These two [films] remind you that he’s one of the greatest
auteurs in this country.”
Alain de Botton, The Independent, August 18, 2006
Patrick Keiller was born in Blackpool in 1950, and from 1967 to 1979 he studied and practised
architecture. He then studied Fine Art at the Royal College of Art. He has been making films
since 1981; his audio-visual installations were exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1982; and he
exhibited in the British Art Show in 1990.) His commissions include the Arts Council, the
British Film Institute, the BBC and Channel Four, and he is best known for his features London
(1994) and Robinson in Space (1997; adapted and extended into book form in 1999).
KEILLER x 5:
SHORT FILMS
(adv PG)
Wednesday 14 March 2pm
STONEBRIDGE PARK 1981 21 mins
NORWOOD 1983 26 mins
THE END 1986 11 mins
VALTOS (THE VEIL) 1987 11 mins
THE CLOUDS 1989 20 mins
These increasingly sophisticated short
films, climaxed in 1989 with The Clouds, a
further topographical exploration
combining another anxious fictional
commentary with imagery derived from a
journey across the north of England. This
programme will also include the quasiscience-fictional Valtos and The End. They
form a crucial bridge between Keiller's
short-form and long-form ruminations.
Print source: Lux; BFI (The Clouds)
124 SPECIAL GUESTS
Patrick Keiller is an Arts and Humanities Research Board Fellow in the Creative and
Performing Arts at the Royal College of Art with a project The City of the Future, which
examines how the city, and our experience of it, evolved during the first hundred years or so
of cinema. His most recent project is Londres/Bombay: Victoria Terminus at France’s National
Studio for Contemporary Art in Le Fresnoy near Lille, a moving-image reconstruction of
Mumbai/Bombay’s largest railway station. He has started preliminary work for a projected
third Robinson film, to be provisionally entitled The Robinson Institute. Neil Young
LONDON
Sunday 11 March 10.15am Pictureville
Dir. Patrick Keiller GB 1994 85 mins (U)
Narrator: Paul Scofield
Keiller’s first feature: quite literally, a “capital” venture...
Keiller’s daringly simple and yet fulsomely written meta-documentary is composed of three
fairly fundamental elements: footage of London shot in 1992, a rich spoken text of deep
cynicism and literary wit, and the laconic oracular tones of Scofield, acting as the unnamed
narrator. That’s it, but the assemblage is hypnotic, hilarious, and beguilingly close to
redefining what a movie narrative is and isn’t. Strictly first-person, the narration tells the
story of his sometimes sexual relationship with Robinson, an unseen and precociously
romantic figure who hunts the eponymous city looking for meaning, which he finds lacking
in the modern age. Keiller evokes a dense world of recurrences, historical connections, and
patterns of force; what we see of London’s surfaces is framed as merely the charade under
which the significances of public life hide. The economy, English literary history, the
exploding horror of modern consumer culture, and the apparent social dysfunction
responsible for the 1992 parliamentary elections are all grist for the two men’s mills, and
Keiller’s ur-British piece of fiction is revelatory, possibly the most telling film made about
that national sensibility since Ken Loach’s Family Life. Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice
Print source: BFI
SCREENTALK:
PATRICK KEILLER
In conversation with Neil Young
Tuesday 13 March 8pm Cubby Broccoli Cinema
+ ROBINSON IN SPACE
Dir. Patrick Keiller GB 1997 82 mins (PG) Narrator: Paul Scofield
Keiller’s crowning masterpiece - and arguably the finest British film of the 1990s. Keiller’s
companion piece to London is a wonderfully erudite and amusingly anecdotal study charting
the increasingly unknown space of present-day England. Robinson, now teaching in reduced
circumstances at a language school in Reading, is invited by a well-known advertising agency to
undertake a study of the “problem” of England. Robinson is interested in the way things look.
He quotes Oscar Wilde: “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true
mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible...” During his tour, Robinson visits factories,
ports, distribution estates and heritage sites examining English anachronisms, culture,
dilapidation and industrial economy. His digressions and insights are constantly juxtaposed
with the images on screen, resulting in wry whimsy delivered with deadpan economy: “The
only company in the world that makes latex sheeting suitable for fetishwear,” he informs us, “is
based in Derbyshire.” As Robinson’s behaviour becomes increasingly unpredictable, the picture
building up of England becomes ever more fractured and Kafkaesque. What ultimately emerges
is an extraordinary and thought-provoking film essay. Monika Maurer, Kamera
Print source: BFI
THE DILAPIDATED DWELLING
Tuesday 13 March 4pm Pictureville
Dir. Patrick Keiller GB 2000 80 mins (adv PG) Narrator: Tilda Swinton
A rare chance to see Keiller’s most recent feature length project: a meditative, polemical
documentary commissioned - but never shown - by Channel Four.
This elegant essay-film asks how the UK - the “most wired nation in Europe” - can also be
the one with the oldest, most run-down houses. The Dilapidated Dwelling should be
mandatory viewing for architects, urban planners and politicians: combining the
detachment of Peter Greenaway with the cultural richness of architect Witold Rybcinski’s
writing, former architect Keiller bears down on the decay of his home island both as a
metaphor for modernism’s unfinished business and as a thoughtful call to arms. He does
this via cool narration by Swinton, in the role of a researcher who has returned to England
after a 20-year stint in the Arctic. Her beautifully written and read observations, set
against meticulously composed landscape shots, are not cheerful, especially when
compared with the pre-war optimism of futurists (seen in archival footage) who figured
we’d all be living in cheap modular housing by now. But this is Keiller’s most urgent and
accomplished effort. Ken Eisner, Variety
Print source: Illuminations
SPECIAL GUESTS 125
MASTERCLASS:
GODFREY REGGIO
Thursday 22 March
PICTUREVILLE CINEMA
Your chance to learn about the art of filmmaking from a master of contemporary
cinema. Godfrey Reggio’s skill in combining film and technology, sound and vision in
an expression of global, environmental and political ideas will be of interest to
creatives, campaigners, theorists and instructors alike. Before working in the film
industry Reggio worked as a teacher and community activist and this session
promises to be both practical and stimulating.
GODFREY REGGIO
THE IMAGE IS OUR LOCATION
Few directors of modern cinema have captured the tensions between nature and industrialisation,
humans and animals, entertainment and education as effectively as the American filmmaker
Godfrey Reggio. Over the course of 20 years, through what became known as the ‘Qatsi’ trilogy,
Reggio and his team have trained their cameras across the post-modern global landscape to create
an unforgettable portrait of a world that is shocking, disturbing, wretched and poignant.
Born in New Orleans, Reggio spent the early
part of his career in a Jesuit religious order.
The silent contemplation central to such
living would impact upon the more
meditative aspects of his subsequent film
work. After leaving the order Reggio served in
the community with the juvenile street gangs
of New Mexico where his social conscience
and concern for the effects of environment
on human experience was also strengthened.
He also taught college and school classes.
Reggio’s pedagogic work led to the
foundation of the Institute of Regional
Education, a location for arts, multimedia and
community research; this was reprised later
in his role as the first director of Benetton’s
Fabrica Institute in Northern Italy.
Reggio’s interests in the impact of technology
on privacy and control developed at this time
and were to drive his entry into the film
world. The Qatsi project was inspired also by
the writings of French theorists such as
Jacques Ellul and Guy Debord who had earlier
warned in their texts of the effect of
industrial processes on the human psyche
and the natural environment. Debord’s
haunting thesis for example, repeated in his
own 1973 film Society of the Spectacle, that
‘everything that was directly lived has
receded into a representation’ is expressed in
contemporary visual form through Reggio’s
oeuvre, where the film is part essay and part
extravaganza.
126 SPECIAL GUESTS
Reggio works without conventional scripts or
screenplays, instead conducting a dramaturgy
with each member of his team contributing
their own creative talents. This team has
included most notably the cinematographer
Ron Fricke and composer Philip Glass.
Through a powerful blend of vision and
sound Fricke and Glass have articulated the
movement and emotion of Reggio’s vision,
equal partners in the rich text of the film. As
the director has noted, “only collaborative
energy could pull it off”. Glass’s score for
Koyaanisqatsi has become, with good
reason, one of best-loved cinematic
soundscapes. Experience, for example, the
climax, two-thirds into the film when the
incessant screaming choruses, building to a
crescendo, suddenly halt: the viewer is left
literally breathless. Fricke’s sensibilities as a
cameraman meanwhile, a master of the
screen panorama, would later influence the
development of widescreen processes such
as IMAX.
The Qatsi trilogy, and Reggio’s short works
such as Evidence and Anima Mundi, remain
particularly germane as they engage
relentlessly with technology. Reggio both
critiques and embraces technological
developments; there is no simplistic
condemnation of scientific advances, more a
concern with the thoughtless application of
such activities. His interactive online project
IMAGINATION acts as a repository for debate
about technology and the creation of new
visual languages.
Heavyweight producers/directors such as
Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and
Steven Soderbergh have recognised the
power of Reggio’s style and lent valuable
support, financial and moral, to ensure that
this exceptional vision is realised. For once
the adjective ‘unique’ is fully justified.
Mark Goodall
Godfrey Reggio
Born: 1940
New Orleans, USA
Films as Director
1983 Koyaanisqatsi
1988 Powaqqatsi
1992 Anima Mundi (doc, short)
1995 Evidence (short)
2002 Naqoyqatsi
SCREENTALK:
GODFREY REGGIO
In conversation with Mark Goodall
Wednesday 21 March
PICTUREVILLE CINEMA
In a rare UK interview, Godfrey Reggio discusses his work as a filmmaker and
pedagogue with Mark Goodall, academic, film historian and co-author of a
forthcoming essay on his work. This is a special opportunity to meet one of the
visionaries of cinema. Audience questions are welcomed.
+ KOYAANISQATSI
Dir. Godfrey Reggio USA 1983 87 mins (U )
The first film in Reggio’s ‘Qatsi’ trilogy is an astonishing work of art. The film is at the
same time a visually stunning travelogue, a social critique, a head-trip and an avantgarde epic. The word koyaanisqatsi derives from the Hopi Indian language meaning
‘crazy life’ or ‘life out of balance’ and the film proceeds to represent this vividly and
intensely. The Hopi philosophy of man living in partnership with nature, illustrated
by the beautiful opening shots of the natural world, is then shattered by a
succession of devastating image portraits of Western (American) society in turmoil.
Technology corrodes nature and the built environment shatters around the people.
The tremendous success of the project was down to the combination of an amazing
array of talents. Cinematographer Ron Fricke, inventor of his own widescreen
process, went on to make the equally stunning Baraka and Chronos. Meanwhile the
skill of composer Philip Glass in providing atmosphere transcends the work of most
film scores. In Koyaanisqatsi, a film without words, the score provides the framework
and narrative for the stunning images. Glass conceived the music for the film, in
contrast to formulaic cinema and advertising, as “allowing the viewer time to think”.
It is indeed virtually impossible to view this film and not reflect on the terror of an
environmental catastrophe about to engulf all humanity.
SPECIAL GUESTS 127
128 SPECIAL GUESTS
POWAQQATSI
NAQOYQATSI
Thursday 22 March 8.15pm
Dir. Godfrey Reggio USA 1988
97 mins (U)
Friday 23 March 6.15pm
Pictureville cinema
89 mins ( adv PG)
The second film in the ‘Qatsi’ trilogy
moves away from the technological
society and the gradual destruction of
the developed world to the impact of
globalisation on the developing world.
The film juxtaposes images of ancient
cultures with those of the modern
world to illuminate the concept of ‘life
in transformation’. As with the
previous film, the dual edge of
‘progress’ is examined, a visual culture
clash, designed to show how the
continents of the Southern hemisphere
try to adapt western
modern/postmodern techniques and
processes. Although Reggio uses fewer
special effects (time-lapse, extreme
slow-motion) than in Koyaanisqatsi the
effect is still profound: a record of the
‘third world’ trying to ‘catch up’ with
the ‘first world’. We know now of
course that this race has become
frantic, triggering the dire
environmental effects that total global
industrialisation threatens. In the end,
the film is designed to affect western
audiences, to provoke through the
physical impact of spectacular cinema,
a rethink of the foreign policy decisions
of the world’s richest nations. Reggio
has produced an unforgettable visual
portrait of today’s world as
prophesised from the past.
The culmination of both Reggio’s
‘Qatsi’ trilogy and of the director’s own
visual sensuality and moral
questioning, Naqoyqatsi (‘life as war’)
is a kaleidoscope of pictures and ideas
about the present and future ‘age of
the image’. Reggio’s “re-animated look”
is created by delving into images of
advanced technology and digital
manipulation, re-presenting the past
as a vision of tomorrow. Unlike the
previous components of the Qatsi
trilogy, which relied heavily on location
shooting, Naqoyqatsi was created
exclusively with the tools of postproduction. Indeed the director’s
instructed his team at the outset that
“the image is our location”. The film
presents a hyper-real, totally wired
vision of the 21st Century, a world
where technology has finally
conquered every aspect of our lives:
media, medicine, politics, nature and
culture. Almost 80 per cent of the film
is culled from a mesmerising hoard of
stock footage, newsreels, and corporate
videos, re-textured and “re-animated”
with cutting edge digital software to
shock and astound the viewer. In the
first part of the trilogy Reggio mapped
the natural landscape onto the
computer microchip. Here, at the
climax of a masterpiece of modern
cinema, the microchip completes its
inexorable, total control. Philip Glass’
haunting score is augmented by the
cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
+ EVIDENCE
Dir. Godfrey Reggio USA/Italy 1995
8 mins (adv PG )
Made as an inaugural film for the
Benetton-backed arts school Fabrica (of
which Reggio was a director), this
haunting, powerful short depicts
various intense, slow-motion close-ups
of children’s faces. Their mesmerised
and hypnotic expressions, as they seem
to stare directly at the audience, are
made more disturbing by the inclusion
of Philip Glass’s brilliant saxophone-led
minimalist piece Façades (originally
written for a sequence in Koyaanisqatsi
but cut from the final version). The
viewer is puzzled as to what is
capturing the children’s attention so
dramatically. The cause is only revealed
at the end of the film.
+ ANIMA MUNDI
30 mins ( adv PG )
Documentary
Reggio’s unique aesthetic sensibilities
are applied to a film experience of the
living natural world as seen through
the animal kingdom. Funded by the
World Wildlife Fund and the Italian
jewellers Bulgari, stunning images of
the natural world are complemented
by another of Philip Glass’s pulsating
scores. In this short film Reggio’s
concern for the preservation of the
environment and call for diversity are
writ large on the screen. The images
were shot by Graham Berry, an expert
on aerial cinematography, and the
techniques have since been aped in
film and television wildlife spectacles.
SPECIAL GUESTS 129
TRUDIE STYLER
SCREENTALK;
TRUDIE STYLER
Saturday 10 March
Trudie Styler is an actress, film producer, director, environmentalist, human rights
activist and Unicef Ambassador.
Trudie’s film credits with her production company Xingu Films include the
documentaries Boys from Brazil, IDA award-winning Moving the Mountain, awardwinning documentary on the making of a Walt Disney animation The Sweatbox
which she co-directed and A Kind of Childhood. Feature film credits include The
Grotesque, Guy Ritchie’s first two films Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and
Snatch (which she executive produced), Greenfingers, Cheeky; Alpha Male and a Guide
to Recognizing your Saints. Commissioned by Glamour magazine, Trudie directed her
first short film entitled Wait in the summer of 2005 in New York. The film stars Kerry
Washington (to be seen in our BIFF preview Catch a Fire) and Debi Mazar.
Trudie’s recent acting credits include a guest appearance in Friends, a major role in
the ABC series Empire and the highly acclaimed BBC series Love Soup. Her most
recent film roles include Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Me without You, Cheeky
and Alpha Male.
In 1988 Trudie co-founded The Rainforest Foundation with husband Sting, and for 13
years she has produced benefit concerts at Carnegie Hall, securing the talents and
enthusiasm of some of the world’s most prestigious artists and raising $21 million
for the cause. We are delighted to welcome Trudie to Bradford. Chris Flanders
130 SPECIAL GUESTS
DAVID ARNOLD
TRUDIE STYLER
Films as producer
SCREENTALK: DAVID ARNOLD
1993 Boys from Brazil
1995 Moving the Mountain
1995 The Grotesque
1998 Lock, Stock and Two Smoking
Barrels
2000 Snatch
2000 Greenfingers
2002 The Sweatbox
2003 Cheeky
2006 Alpha Male
2006 A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
Hailed as one of the most successful young British composers, David Arnold began his
film career making short films with fellow enthusiast Danny Cannon, teaching
himself to write, orchestrate and compose the scores for their films. In 1993, he scored
Cannon’s feature film debut The Young Americans, combining lush orchestration with
Bjork’s vocals for the title song Play Dead, which earned critical and commercial
success. He was then offered the opportunity to score Roland Emmerich’s sci-fi film,
Stargate.
In conversation with Duncan McGregor
Thursday 15 March
Picture Ville Cinema
DAVID ARNOLD
Born: 27 February 1962
Luton, England
Selected filmography
1993 The Young Americans
1994 Stargate
1996 Independence Day
1997 Tomorrow Never Dies
1999 The World is Not enough
2000 Shaft
2001 Zealander
2002 Die Another Day
2004 The Stepford Wives
2005 Stoned
2006 Amazing Grace
2006 Venus
2006 Casino Royale
2007 Hot Fuzz
Since then David Arnold has been recognised by the film industry as a talented and
diverse composer, arranger and producer, whose scores include Shaft, Changing Lanes,
2 Fast 2 Furious, The Stepford Wives and, most recently Roger Michell’s Venus, Edgar
Wright’s Hot Fuzz and Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace – the latter receiving its UK
Premiere as the opening night gala at this year’s Bradford International Film Festival.
Winner of seven BMI Awards for his music for Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not
Enough, Die Another Day, Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla and 2 Fast 2 Furious,
he also won a Grammy for Independence Day and recently won the Royal Television
Society Award for the title music of the UK comedy series Little Britain. In addition, he
won the Ivor Novello Award for the music for The World Is Not Enough.
Away from the film world, David Arnold maintains a career as a successful record
producer and songwriter, working with a wide range of contemporary artists
including, among others, Pulp, Iggy Pop, George Michael and Damien Rice.
An avid James Bond fan, in 1997 Arnold produced Shaken and Stirred, an album of
James Bond film title songs that reached number 11 in the UK album chart. As
composer for Casino Royale, Arnold collaborated with Chris Cornell to write the title
song You Know My Name. We are delighted to welcome him to Bradford. Ben Eagle
SPECIAL GUESTS 131
ALAN BENNETT
A PRIVATE FUNCTION
THE HISTORY BOYS
Thursday 22 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Malcolm Mowbray GB 1984 94
mins (15)
Michael Palin, Maggie Smith, Denholm
Elliott, Liz Smith, Pete Postlethwaite, Jim
Carter, Richard Griffiths, Tony Haygarth,
Alison Steadman
Thursday 22 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Nicholas Hytner GB 2006 109 mins
(15)
Richard Griffiths, Samuel Anderson,
Samuel Barnett, Stephen Campbell
Moore, Clive Merrison, Frances de la
Tour
Post-war in the depths of Yorkshire and
a small village is preparing to celebrate
the marriage of Princess Elizabeth. A
struggling chiropodist and his wife are
anxious to be involved in the social
gathering. A superb script from Alan
Bennett is redolent with biting satire.
Partly filmed in Ben Rhydding and
Ilkley, the comedy A Private Function
features Alan Bennett’s first screenplay,
set in ration-book Britain when people
would go to any lengths for a pig.
Adapted from Alan Bennett’s play, The
History Boys is set in a northern boys’
grammar school during the Thatcher
years. A group of A-level students are
caught up in the opposing influences
of their teachers. The headmaster
(Merrison) wants his students to go on
to Oxbridge and hires young history
teacher Irwin (Moore) to help with
their grades. In contrast the English
teacher Hector (Griffiths) doesn’t
believe in the value given to exam
results and impresses the value of
knowledge instead on the boys. The
third influence is a fact-based
approach from Mrs Lintott (de la Tour)
who must put up with the maledominated environment.
SCREENTALK:
ALAN BENNETT
Thursday 22 March
Pictureville Cinema
Photograph courtesy of Yorkshire Post Newspapers Ltd.
Alan Bennett first appeared on stage in 1960 with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and
Jonathan Miller in the revue Beyond the Fringe. His stage plays are Forty Years On,
Habeas Corpus, The Old Country, Getting On, Enjoy, Kafka’s Dick, An Englishman
Abroad and A Question of Attribution, an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The
Wind in the Willows, The Madness of George III, The Lady in the Van, and several of
the monologues from the Talking Heads collection: A Chip in the Sugar, A Lady of
Letters and A Woman of No Importance, Bed Among the Lentils and Soldiering On
(which he also directed).
His work for television includes A Day Out, Sunset Across the Bay, A Visit from Miss
Prothero, Me, I’m Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Doris and Doreen, The Old Crowd,
Afternoon Off, One Fine Day, All Day on the Sands, Intensive Care (in which he played
the leading role), Our Winnie, Marks, Rolling Home, Say Something Happened, A
Woman of No Importance, An Englishman Abroad, The Insurance Man, 102
Boulevard Haussmann and two collections of Talking Heads monologues, the second
of which won the South Bank Show Award for Best Drama.
Bennett’s feature film credits include A Private Function, Prick Up Your Ears and The
Madness of King George (which was nominated for two Academy Awards including
Best Adapted Screenplay). A collection of his prose writing, Writing Home, was
published by Faber and Faber in 1994 followed by the bestselling compendium,
Untold Stories, in 2005.
We are delighted to welcome him back to the Bradford International Film Festival –
12 years after The Madness of King George opened the very first festival in 1995.
132 SPECIAL GUESTS
SPECIAL GUESTS 133
Denis Dercourt has made a series of films that highlight his profession
in music education, but equally are fascinating and enjoyable stories
with a twist on traditional genres – the thriller, the road movie, family
drama. He is a great developing European talent and a man Variety
called “The Michael Winterbottom of France”.
DENIS DERCOURT
A RETROSPECTIVE
THE FREELANCERS
MY CHILDREN ARE DIFFERENT
(Les Cachetonneurs)
(Mes enfants ne sont pas comme les autres)
Monday 12 March
Dir. Denis Dercourt France 1998 91 mins (U) Subtitles
Pierre Lacan, Henri Garcin, Marie-Christine Laurent
Wednesday 14 March
Dir. Denis Dercourt France/Belgium 2003 86 mins (adv 12A) Subtitles
Richard Berry, Mathieu Amalric, Elodie Peudepiece
Dercourt focuses on the dynamics of a group of musicians
in this off-beat comedy. Roberto has finished one concert
and is offered a good and financially lucrative concert for
which he needs to bring together a group of musicians for a
private concert on New Year’s Eve. He brings together six
friends and gets the service of the famous conductor
Svarowvski to bring them all together. Blending the talents
and handling the foibles of these young musicians is no
easy task. Already working with the themes of
musicianship, Dercourt tackles the complications of a
chamber piece with a group of actors playing off each other
in gentle underplayed comedy.
Widowed cellist Jean Debart is committed to ensuring that his two
children stick to their musical education. But 17-year-old Adele,
following her father in playing the cello, is starting to rebel and when
she meets musician Thomas she grows further apart. Meanwhile
Alexandre, 11, is dutifully following his father’s wishes and learning to
play the piano. The family is complemented by grandfather Maître
Erhardt, who is an orchestra conductor, and their uncle Gerald, a
musician without ambition who finds work making background
sounds. As Adele is preparing to take part in the most crucial musical
contests, the stresses in the family start to mount. A stark and
heartbreaking elegance gives this opus the intensely profound, almost
chilling dimension of a baroque musical masterpiece.
Print source: Les Films à un Dollar
Print source: Roissy Films
FLOATING WORLD (Ukiyo)
LISE ET ANDRÉ
Thursday 15 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Denis Dercourt France 2005 67 mins (U)
Anna Nakai, Yasusuke Oura
Friday 16 March
Dir. Denis Dercourt France 2000 87 mins (U) Subtitles
Isabelle Candelier, Michel Duchaussoy, Aïssa Maïga
As she wanders around the attractions of Tokyo, a 19-yearold girl must make a life-altering decision. Shot on DV as
part of a fellowship to Japan, Floating World is an
exceptional study of a young woman as she wanders
towards a major change in her life.
Lisa Nesselson, Variety
Lise is a Parisian prostitute with a young son, Sebastien, who sings in
the church’s children’s choir. He is injured in a car accident and falls
into a coma. Still in a coma after three months, Lise is looking for any
remedy. She turns to the elderly priest, André. Facing diminishing
powers and faith he seeks solace in the choir. Lise starts to see
salvation in the miracle of the virgin of Abbeville and decides that she
and André must go on a pilgrimage to Abbeville, much against his
wishes. Lise et André is an unusual road movie with two unlikely
characters on a journey deeper into the wilderness of the French
countryside as they leave Paris behind. Even with splendid
performances from the two leads, it is the sublime musical soundtrack
that haunts the film. .
Print source: Denis Dercourt
Print source: Les Films à un Dollar
‘After engaging micro-budget doodle The Move, delightful
comedy-with-music The Freelancers, sin-and-redemption
road movie Lise et André and intense family drama My
Children are Different, this outing practically qualifies
versatile helmer as the Michael Winterbottom of France.’ –
134 SPECIAL GUESTS
SCREENTALK:
DENIS DERCOURT
In conversation with Bill Lawrence
Friday 16 March
The 13th Bradford International Film Festival is delighted to welcome French
writer/director/musician Denis Dercourt to the National Media Museum. He will be
conversation with Bill Lawrence, Head of Film.
+ THE PAGE TURNER
(La Tourneuse des pages)
Friday 16 March
Dir. Denis Dercourt France 2006 85 mins (15) Subtitles
Catherine Frot, Déborah François, Pascal Greggory, Xavier de Guillebon, Christine Citti,
Clotilde Mollet, Jacques Bonnaffé, Anton Martynciow
Screened in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, The Page Turner arrived in
British cinemas after a successful tour of the summer festivals. A delicately told story
of revenge served cold, The Page Turner is French cinema at its best. In a short
prologue Mélanie, the daughter of a butcher, is practising assiduously for a piano
exam. When she goes before the judges, she performs well until one of the judges,
concert pianist Ariane Fouchecourt, is interrupted for an autograph. Mélanie loses
her concentration, fails the examination and vows never to play the piano again.
Some years later, the adult Mélanie arrives at the offices of prestigious attorney Jean
Fouchecourt ready to impress him and his family. Dercourt’s Lise et André was one of
the gems of the 7th Bradford Film Festival in 2001. His obvious talent then bears full
fruit with his latest film. A music professor in France, Dercourt’s films blend classical
music with perfectly nuanced performances. All are great, but Déborah François is
outstanding as Mélanie in a performance of few words but every gesture and glance
precisely judged. Last seen in L’Enfant, she is clearly a major talent.
Print source: Artificial Eye Film Company
SPECIAL GUESTS 135
Terence Davies is one of Britain’s greatest living filmmakers - a talent
that can be rated alongside the great poets of cinema, Cocteau, Pasolini,
Tarkovsky and Parajanov. We are pleased to welcome Terence Davies to
the 13th Bradford International Film Festival to discuss his work to date.
This season is presented in conjunction with the Cambridge Arts
Cinema and the National Film Theatre.
TERENCE DAVIES
THE POET OF BRITISH CINEMA
THE NEON BIBLE
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH
Saturday 10 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Terence Davies GB 1995 92 mins (15)
Gena Rowlands, Diana Scarwid, Denis
Leary, Jacob Tierney, Aaron Frisch, Bob
Hannah, Leo Burmester
Tuesday 13 March
Dir. Terence Davies GB 2000 135 mins (PG)
Gillian Anderson, Eric Stoltz, Dan Ackroyd,
Anthony LaPaglia, Laura Linney, Eleanor
Bron, Jodhi May, Elizabeth McGovern,
Terry Kinney
‘This adaptation of John Kennedy Toole’s
novel returns to the concerns of Terence
Davies’ acclaimed autobiographical work:
the joys and agonies of family life; the
onset of adulthood; the oppressive
hypocrisy of organised religion. Here,
however, instead of Liverpool, the setting
is small-town Georgia in the ‘40s: life is
quiet for young Tierney, son of struggling
farmer Leary and hyper-sensitive Scarwid,
until the sudden and not entirely
unwelcome arrival of his aunt, a has-been
but eternally optimistic nightclub singer
whose devil-may-care ways sit awkwardly
with the town’s conservatism. Though the
writer/director is working abroad and
telling a linear story, it’s immediately
apparent - from the measured pacing, the
immaculate compositions and elegant
camera movements, the audacious
ellipses and the inspired use of music that this is a hallmarked Davies film. As
such, it is extraordinarily moving, notably
in a simple, underplayed death scene.
Gena Rowlands’ performance is a marvel
of subtle nuances.’ - Geoff Andrew, Time
Out
‘Terence Davies’ adaptation of Edith
Wharton’s novel is a triumph which puts
most recent screen versions of the
classics to shame. It concerns a New York
socialite beauty who ends in disgrace,
despair, poverty and worse after she is
wrongly rumoured to have had an affair
with the philandering husband of one of
her friends. Though period and place are
sensitively evoked, Davies sidesteps
superficial details to home in on both the
cruel nuances of the wealthy set’s polite
social rituals and the resultant suffering.
It’s a marvellously elegant (but unflashy)
film of faces in sombre close-up, an
emotionally devastating study of
injustice, enforced solitude, wasted
opportunities and love never quite
gratified. The casting is inspired, with
Anderson, especially, repaying her
director’s faith with an immaculate,
unsentimental but immensely moving
performance, while Davies’ writing,
sense of pace, and customary honesty
make for a film that profoundly affects
both the heart and mind.’ - Geoff Andrew,
Time Out
Print source: Artificial Eye Film Company Ltd
136 SPECIAL GUESTS
SCREENTALK: TERENCE DAVIES
TERENCE DAVIES – INFLUENCES
The following trio of classic movies
represents only a tiny fraction of the films
that influenced Terence Davies in his
career. We are delighted to present them
as ‘Terence Davies’ choice’ during
BIFF2007.
In conversation with Bill Lawrence
Sunday 11 March
Pictureville Cinema
Terence Davies discusses his career as actor and filmmaker with the NMeM’s Head of
Film, Bill Lawrence. The evening will include the presentation of the Festival’s
Fellowship Award.
SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN
Sunday 11 March
Dirs. Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen USA
1952 102 mins (U)
Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds
Terence Davies’ films are redolent with
references to the golden age of
Hollywood musicals, so it is no surprise
that he should chose one of the best as a
key influence. Magnificent set pieces and
a stunning dance routine make this one
of the most entertaining two hours of
+ DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES (new digital print)
Dir. Terence Davies GB 1988 85 mins (15)
Freda Dowie, Pete Postlethwaite, Angela Walsh, Dean Williams, Lorraine Ashbourne,
Sally Davies
Photo: Sarah Fitzgerald
cinema ever made.
THE LADYKILLERS
Sunday 11 March
Dir. Alexander Mackendrick GB 1955
97 mins (U)
Alec Guinness, Katie Johnson, Peter Sellers
Criminal mastermind Professor Marcus
moves his gang into a boarding house run
by elderly Mrs. Wilberforce. As the heist
gets closer, she stumbles on their plot,
and they decide to kill her. A majestic,
acerbic Ealing black comedy.
KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS
Monday 12 March
Dir. Robert Hamer GB 1949 106 mins (U)
Dennis Price, Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood
Louis Mazzini is the son of the daughter
of the wealthy and aristocratic D’Ascoyne
family, cut off because she married, below
her class. Obsessed with his rightful
inheritance, he plots their deaths.
TERENCE DAVIES
Born: 10 November, 1945
Liverpool, England
Filmography
1976 Children
1980 Madonna and Child
1983 Death and Transfiguration
1988 Distant Voices, Still Lives
1992 The Long Day Closes
1995 The Neon Bible
2000 The House of Mirth
‘Through a fragmented series of almost ritualistic gatherings drawn from his own
family’s memories of the ‘40s and ‘50s, Davies paints a vivid picture of the painfully
restrictive knots bound round a working class family by a stern, unforgiving patriarch
who lords it over wife, son and daughters with mute menace and brute force. Music
is crucial to Davies’ decidedly neo-realist method, partly as a self-protective strategy
adopted by his downtrodden creatures. If this sounds unbearably cerebral or
excruciatingly melancholy, fear not. It all looks superb, the largely unknown cast
performs to perfection, and the entire movie works beautifully, both as an
unprecedentedly honest, unpatronising account of British working class life, and as a
tribute to the human spirit’s capacity to survive immense setbacks with dignity.
Ambitious, intelligent, profoundly moving, it thrills with passion, integrity and
imagination unseen in British cinema since Powell and Pressburger.’ - Geoff Andrew,
Time Out
THE SOUTH BANK SHOW:
TERENCE DAVIES
Saturday 17 March 2pm
Davies discusses his career.
SPECIAL GUESTS 137
EUAN LLOYD
MAGNIFICENT SHOWMAN
SCREENTALK: EUAN LLOYD
Sunday 18 March
PICTUREVILLE CINEMA
Euan Lloyd
Born: December 6 1923, Rugby,
England
Filmography
(All credits as producer unless
otherwise listed)
1956 April in Portugal (short) (& dir)
1959 Invitation to Monte Carlo (& dir,
scr)
1961 The Secret Ways (assoc prod)
1965 Genghis Khan (assoc prod)
1966 The Poppy is also a Flower
1966 Murderer’s Row (co-prod)
1968 Shalako
1971 Catlow
1973 A Man Called Noon
1975 Paper Tiger
1978 The Wild Geese
1980 The Sea Wolves
1982 Who Dares Wins
1985 Wild Geese II
Euan Lloyd broke into films as a sixteen-year-old in 1939, working as a trainee cinema
manager. After wartime service with the Royal Armoured Corps he returned to work in the
motion picture industry, acting as a publicist for J. Arthur Rank’s Eagle-Lion Distributors on
such British classics as Olivier’s Henry V, This Happy Breed and The Way Ahead. By 1952,
having gained experience in all areas of film exhibition, distribution and publicity he
joined Warwick Film Productions as personal assistant to Irving Allen and Cubby Broccoli.
In 1960 Lloyd was associate producer, with Richard Widmark, of The Secret Ways, and was
closely involved with the making of The Guns of Navarone and The Victors. In 1967 he
struck out as a fully independent producer with Shalako. Over the next ten years he turned
out a string of movies including Catlow, with Yul Brynner, and Paper Tiger, with David
Niven. His finest hour came in 1978 with the production of the mercenary epic The Wild
Geese, which became his biggest hit. One of the most successful independent producers
Britain has ever produced Euan Lloyd will reveal some of the sensitivities of working with
mega stars, how films make their way from page to silver screen and why he was able to
conclude so many deals on a smile and a handshake. We are delighted to welcome him
back to the Bradford International Film Festival.
+ SHALAKO (70mm)
Dir. Edward Dmytryk GB/Ger 1968 113 mins (PG)
Sean Connery, Brigitte Bardot, Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Peter van Eyck
Hardened Indian fighter Shalako finds himself embroiled in a new kind of conflict when
Apaches attack a hunting party of effete European aristocrats. A star-studded
adaptation of the Louis L’Amour novel, Shalako marked Sean Connery’s only appearance
in a western. It also hinted at the style of Euan Lloyd’s future productions: big stars, big
style and overflowing with action. There are some genuinely savage moments in
Shalako, thus lending the film a level of credibility that was missing from other films of
the period. Legend has it that Lloyd hocked his wife’s fur coat to help raise funding for
his debut as producer.
Print source: Canal Plus/NMPFT Archives
Special thanks to John Herron
138 SPECIAL GUESTS
The Widescreen Weekend welcomes all those fans of large format and
widescreen films – CinemaScope, VistaVision, 70mm, Cinerama and
Imax – and presents an array of past classics from the vaults of the
National Media Museum. A weekend to wallow in the best of cinema.
HOW THE WEST WAS WON
Saturday 17 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dirs. Henry Hathaway, John Ford, George Marshall USA 1962
162 mins (U)
Debbie Reynolds, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Gregory Peck,
Carroll Baker, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, George Peppard
There are westerns and then there are WESTERNS. How the
West was Won is something very special on the deep curved
Cinerama screen with 7-track stereo sound. Thanks to
generous contributions from many of the film’s fans, we have
been able to keep this excellent print going to present the
best 3-strip Cinerama film ever made. A hit at the Widescreen
Weekend year after year, we just can’t let this classic movie lie
dormant. Bringing together three of the best Hollywood
western directors, How the West was Won tells the story of
the development of the West from a portrait of an 1830s
pioneer family to the carnage of the American Civil War. The
panoramic scenes across the three panels of the full curved
screen are spectacular and the lift from Alfred Newman’s
extraordinary score is exhilarating. Cinerama is the only way
to see the film; everything else pales by comparison.
How the West was Won is presented in a superbly well-preserved,
vintage 3-strip print with a 7-channel stereo soundtrack.
Print source: NMPFT Archives
NEW TODD-AO PRINT
THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR
FLYING MACHINES
or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 hours 11 minutes
(70mm)
Sunday 18 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Ken Annakin GB 1965 133 mins (U)
Stuart Whitman, Sarah Miles, James Fox, Alberto Sordi, Robert
Morley, Gert Fröbe, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Irina Demick, Eric Sykes,
Red Skelton, Terry-Thomas, Benny Hill, Yûjirô Ishihara, Flora
Robson, Karl Michael Vogler, Sam Wanamaker, Eric Barker,
Maurice Denham, Fred Emney, Gordon Jackson
This is a film that created a genre, leading to It’s a Mad Mad
Mad Mad World, the Smokey and the Bandit series and the
Wacky Races to name just three imitators. It’s 1910 and the
world is suddenly getting smaller. A newspaper baron
sponsors a London to Paris air race and unleashes upon the
world a wild range of aspiring but mad pilots all determined
(by fair means or foul) to be the first to complete the flight
in bizarre machines that may fly, but probably not for long.
With a gem of a performance from Terry-Thomas, and
cameos from Tony Hancock and Benny Hill, the humour is as
strong as the mayhem. Surely time for a new print of this
comedy classic. Director/co-writer Ken Annakin was a
special guest at the 6th Bradford Film Festival in 2000.
MAYERLING (70mm)
BLACK TIGHTS (70mm)
Monday 19 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Terence Young France/GB 1968 140 mins (PG)
Omar Sharif, Catherine Deneuve, James Mason, Ava Gardner,
James Robertson Justice, Geneviève Page
Sunday 18 March Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Terence Young France 1960 130 mins (PG)
Zizi Jeanmaire, Cyd Charisse, Roland Petit, Moira Shearer,
Maurice Chevalier
It is the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The world is
changing, and Archduke Rudolph (Sharif), the young son of
Emperor Franz-Josef (Mason) finds himself desperately looking
for a purpose. Depressed and powerless, he falls in love with
the married Baroness Vetsera (Deneuve) and causes a royal
scandal. After Dr Zhivago, Omar Sharif was a hot property and
again is in an Eastern European role in this stunningly beautiful
film shot by Henri Alekan. Director Terence Young also helmed
another of this year’s WW offerings, Black Tights.
A very rare screening of this 70mm title from 1960. Before
going on to direct Bond films (see our UK premiere of the
new digital print of From Russia with Love), Terence Young
delivered this French ballet film. Maurice Chevalier
introduces four ballets performed by Roland Petit’s Les
Ballets de Champs Elysees, and the dance routines are
always impressively delivered by stars such as Cyd Charisse,
Moira Shearer and Zizi Jeanmaire. With beautiful studio sets
and a simple story, it’s the dance that counts.
Print source: 20th Century Fox
Special thanks to Schawn Belston
140 WIDESCREEN WEEKEND
WIDESCREEN WEEKEND 141
NEW TODD-AO PRINT
CLEOPATRA (70mm)
Friday 16 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz GB/USA/Switzerland 1963 243 mins
(PG)
Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Pamela Brown,
George Cole, Hume Cronyn, Cesare Danova, Kenneth Haigh,
Andrew Keir, Martin Landau, Roddy McDowell, Robert
Stephens, Francesca Annis, Martin Benson, John Cairney,
Michael Hordern, Marne Maitland, Richard O’Sullivan, Gwen
Watford, Douglas Wilmer
A magnificent spectacle with a majestic, multitudinous cast,
Cleopatra is arguably the biggest, brashest, most sprawling
historical epic in modern movie history. Famously begun by
Rouben Mamoulian and then shelved due to the illness of
star Elizabeth Taylor, the film was re-started with a different
director (Joe Mankiewicz) and a new cast that saw Richard
Burton replace Keith Baxter and Rex Harrison take over from
Peter Finch. The resulting motion picture is one of the alltime costume extravaganzas – a gigantic, OTT slice of
Hollywoodery with the added sparkle of witnessing the
Taylor/Burton dalliance explode into a full-blown love affair.
Based on Carlo Mario Franzero’s biography, Cleopatra is more
than just a lavish blockbuster; it is an example of runaway
filmmaking at its most uncontrolled.
SHALAKO (70mm)
+ Euan Lloyd (producer) in person
Sunday 18 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Edward Dmytryk GB/Germany 1968 113 mins (PG)
Sean Connery, Brigitte Bardot, Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins,
Peter van Eyck, Honor Blackman, Woody Strode, Eric Sykes,
Alexander Knox, Valerie French
Hardened Indian fighter Shalako finds himself embroiled in
a new kind of conflict when Apaches attack a hunting party
of effete European aristocrats. A star-studded adaptation of
the Louis L’Amour novel, Shalako marked Sean Connery’s only
appearance in a western. It also hinted at the style of Euan
Lloyd’s future productions: big stars, big style and
overflowing with action. There are some genuinely savage
moments in Shalako, thus lending the film a level of
credibility that was missing from other films of the period.
Legend has it that Lloyd hocked his wife’s fur coat to help
raise funding for his debut as producer.
TITANIC (70mm)
Saturday 17 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. James Cameron USA 1997 193 mins (12)
Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates
Frances Fisher, Gloria Stuart, Bill Paxton, Bernard Hill, David
Warner, Victor Garber, Jonathan Hyde, Suzy Amis
Ten years on from its American release and by far the biggest
film of all time, Titanic is still one of the best reasons this
year to go to the movies, especially with the enhancement of
the digital sound experience in Pictureville Cinema and the
inadequacies of the film’s video version. James Cameron’s
epic was nominated for 14 Oscars and won 11 including best
picture, best director and best cinematography. It deserved
them all, though the stand-out performance by Gloria Stuart,
as the aged heroine of 1912, was overlooked. She was 87 at
the time of her nomination; now 97, she still makes the
occasional appearance in movies.
INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST
CRUSADE (70mm)
Friday 16 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. Steven Spielberg USA 1989 127 mins (PG)
Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Denholm Elliott, Alison Doody,
John Rhys-Davies, Julian Glover, Michael Byrne
Steven Spielberg pulled off a stroke of genius by casting
Sean Connery as Indiana Jones’s crusty old dad. Connery
steals the film – a tough call when the plotline has Indy
criss-crossing the globe in search of the Holy Grail.
Arguably the best of the series, Indiana Jones and the Last
Crusade combines Arthurian myth with the 1930s Nazi
milieu that made the first film so atmospheric. There is
genuine chemistry between the two leads, Denholm Elliott
supplies the comedy and Alison Doody makes for a suitably
icy femme fatale. It is the setpieces, though, that remain in
the memory: an aerial escape from a zeppelin, a whiteknuckle tank chase and the final challenges of the film’s
last reel – “Only a penitent man will pass”. Superb.
We are delighted to welcome Euan Lloyd back to the Festival to
discuss the making of Shalako – his first project as an
independent producer.
Print source: Canal Plus/NMPFT Archives
Special thanks to John Herron
Special thanks to Schawn Belston
CASINO ROYALE
+ David Arnold
(composer) in person
Thursday 15 March Pictureville
Cinema
Dir. Martin Campbell
USA/Germany/GB/Czech Republic
2006 144 mins (12A)
Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads
Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright
Casino Royale brings the James Bond franchise back to life
with a new lead and a new style. Back to basics and close to
the original text of the first book in the series, Casino Royale
is a breath of fresh air and that rare thing, a critical and
audience hit. Daniel Craig proves his worth in the lead as
Bond is on the trail of Le Chiffre whom he must defeat in a
high stakes poker game at the Casino Royale in Montenegro.
This is the nastier side of Bond, evident in the first film, and a
thrilling piece of filmmaking. We are delighted to welcome
David Arnold to introduce the film and talk about writing
music for such a classic series in the footsteps of John Barry.
Print source: Sony Releasing
THIS IS CINERAMA
(3-Strip Cinerama)
CINEMA THEATRES ASSOCIATION
with Richard Gray
Friday 16 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dirs. Merian C. Cooper, Michael Todd, Fred Rickey USA
1952 120 mins (U)
Saturday 17 March, 3.15pm
Pictureville Cinema
This is Cinerama attracts devotees and the curious alike, not
least writer Bill Bryson who described the experience in
Notes from a Small Island as ‘amongst the most enjoyable
three hours of my life’. Showing on three projectors in
Pictureville Cinema, the world’s only Cinerama theatre, the
film still offers a giddy, white-knuckle ride, and is about as
fun a piece of Americana as you are ever likely to see. This is
the original Cinerama feature which launched the
widescreen era, here presented in the original three-strip
format with seven-track stereo sound. There is no narrative,
merely a variety of ‘attractions’: the famous rollercoaster
ride is followed by a series of musical and travelogue
episodes culminating in an aerial tour of America. More
than a technological curio, it’s a document of its era.
Following 2005’s introduction to the work of The Projected
Picture Trust by Dion Hanson, we are delighted to welcome
Richard Gray to talk about the work of the Cinema Theatre
Association. The CTA was set up in 1967 by journalist Eric
George, who wished to see more attention paid to the
magnificent movie palaces of the 1920s and ‘30s, which
were then starting to disappear from Britain’s towns and
cities. Since then the CTA has widened its horizons to
encompass the study of all cinema buildings, live theatres,
music halls and those entertainment centres now used for
bingo or other purposes. All aspects of cinemas and theatres
are studied including architecture, decoration, film projection
and stage facilities. Consideration is given to their study in
terms of the history of entertainment, social history,
industrial archaeology and architectural history.
CINERAMA ADVENTURE
With an introduction
by David Strohmaier
Saturday 17 March
Pictureville Cinema
Dir. David Strohmaier USA 2001 100 mins (adv U)
With: Carroll Baker, Debbie Reynolds, Russ Tamblyn, Eli Wallach
A labour of love and dedication, Dave Strohmaier’s
documentary tells the extraordinary story of Cinerama
through the eyes of those involved in developing the process.
From the development of the system to Cinerama’s finest
achievement How the West Was Won, this is the finest
tribute to one of cinema’s greatest technical achievements.
Complete with newly re-printed elements, Cinerama
Adventure is a must for all those who have ever seen and
wondered at the 3-projector magnificence that is Cinerama.
KEEPERS OF THE FRAME
With an introduction
by Randy Gitsch
Sunday 18 March
Dir. Mark McLaughlin USA 1999 70 mins (adv U)
With: Alan Alda, Stan Brakhage, Roddy McDowell,
Debbie Reynolds
Keepers of the Frame was the first filmed documentary to
examine in-depth the history, science and struggles of those
committed to film preservation. It witnesses artists and
technicians passionately preserving our filmed heritage.
Their story is an adventure, rife with discoveries of lost
treasures.
Print source: Randy Gitsch
CINERAMACANA
Sunday 18 March, 10am
Pictureville Cinema
One of the most popular events of the Widescreen Weekend
and a great way to wake up on a Sunday morning,
Cineramacana brings together all those little bits and pieces
that lie around in people’s cupboards or on dusty shelves in
archives and seldom see the light of a projector. Over the
years there have been some magical discoveries and nobody
knows what will be shown until the event itself. Even then
there is the occasional surprise.
And there will just be time for the traditional photograph on
stage of all the WW delegates.
Print source: David Strohmaier
Spellman Walker Ltd. are delighted and
extremely proud to be associated with
The National Media Museum.
In particular, as printers and sponsors of
this catalogue, we wish this, the 13th
Bradford Film Festival, every success.
Graphica House, Chase Way, Bradford BD5 8SW
Tel:
01274 722555
Fax:
01274 722333
email: [email protected]
Web: www.spellman.co.uk
TV Heaven
The Robert Horne Group are delighted to be working in association with Spellman & Walker Ltd to
support the National Media Museum Film Festival
Because we all have to make choices:
We are all well aware that the choices we make can have a dramatic effect on our
environment and natural resources, but we are also aware that unless we provide
viable, no-compromise alternatives people will struggle to make the right choices.
Established for over 80 years, the Robert Horne Group is able to offer one of the most
comprehensive Environmental Paper and Board portfolios.
We believe people who want to address environmental issues deserve all the support
we can give them. As the UK's leading paper, board and plastics merchant the
Robert Horne Group are committed to doing just that.
www.roberthorne.co.uk
TV Heaven is a collection of more than 900 classic television
programmes from the last 60 years of British broadcasting
history, all of which can be viewed free of charge on our
custom-built viewing gallery, the only facility of its kind in the
UK. From Dennis Potter to Monty Python, Seven Up to Animal
Magic, TV Heaven holds the very best in memorable dramas,
classic comedies, hard-hitting documentaries and nostalgic
children’s shows, and above all reflects and celebrates the rich
diversity of British television programming.
Now located in the Experience TV Gallery on Level 3, TV
Heaven’s private booths can accommodate between two and
five people, while our re-modelled 39-seat Viewing Room is
ideal for larger group bookings and educational visits. Booking
is not necessary but is advisable at busy times.
All titles showing during BIFF2007 will begin at 2pm in the TV
Heaven Viewing Room except where stated.
A DAY OUT
AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD
Tuesday 13 March
Dir. Stephen Frears GB 1972 60 mins (adv U)
David Waller, James Cossins, John Normington, Philip Locke,
David Hill, Brian Glover, Paul Shane
Thursday 15 March
Dir: John Schlesinger GB 1983 65 mins (adv PG)
Coral Browne, Alan Bates, Charles Gray, Harold Innocent,
Douglas Reith, Peter Chelsom, Alexei Jawdokimov, Roger
Hammond, Trevor Baxter, Vernon Dobtcheff
Chronicling a day in the life of a Halifax cycling club in 1911,
A Day Out was not only Alan Bennett’s first television play
but his first exercise in writing in a ‘northern’ dialogue, the
style for which he became so well known. The play also
marked the writer’s first collaboration with director Stephen
Frears, who would go on to direct and/or produce the
majority of Bennett’s television work for the next decade.
Featuring a mixture of professional actors and locals, A Day
Out allows us to listen into the conversations of the cycling
group and glean a brief insight into their lives, relationships,
hopes, reflections and the freedom that these days out
afford them.
ME! I’M AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF
Wednesday 14 March
Dir. Stephen Frears GB 1978 70 mins (adv PG)
Alan Bennett, Neville Smith, Carol McCready, Thora Hird,
Derek Thompson and Alan Bennett as the narrator
Painfully shy and self-effacing English lecturer Trevor
Hopkins (Smith) lives in fear of his actions being
misinterpreted and longs to be as unselfconscious as his
girlfriend, mother and students. Me! I’m Afraid of Virginia
Woolf was the first play to be televised in the LWT series By
Alan Bennett – Six Plays, and is filled with the writer’s
amusing observations on the quirkier side of human nature
and his recurring preoccupation with shyness, loneliness and
alienation. The play was partly shot in and around Leeds,
although the play’s fictional location is never specified.
148 TV HEAVEN
Scripted by Alan Bennett and directed by John (Billy Liar)
Schlesinger, An Englishman Abroad is the true story of a
meeting in 1950s Moscow between the actress Coral Browne
(playing herself) and the exiled British traitor, Guy Burgess
(Alan Bates). The play won a deserved BAFTA Award for Best
Single Drama in 1984, and recently came fifth in the British
Film Institute’s poll of the best single television dramas of all
time – not surprising considering the wealth of talent involved
at all levels of the production. As filming in the USSR was
impossible, Schlesinger and his team were forced to fashion a
surprisingly convincing 1950s Moscow… from contemporary
Dundee.
TALKING HEADS:
A CREAM CRACKER UNDER THE
SETTEE
Friday 16 March, 2.50pm
Dir. Stuart Burge GB 1988 30 mins (adv PG)
Thora Hird
The adage goes that “talking heads” make bad television, but
these superbly crafted and acted monologues argue
otherwise. Poignant, sometimes sad and occasionally uplifting,
the Talking Heads series showcased Alan Bennett’s powers of
observation, comic timing and exquisite turn of phrase, and
attracted some of Britain’s finest actors, including Patricia
Routledge, Julie Walters, Anna Massey, Stephanie Cole, Maggie
Smith and even Bennett himself in the segment A Chip in the
Sugar. In A Cream Cracker Under the Settee, Thora Hird stars as
Doris, an old lady coming to the end of her life, too scared and
too proud to ask for help from outside agencies. Obsessed
with cleaning, she falls and breaks her hip while dusting, and
from her position on the floor, she muses on life with her
husband and the future she faces.
THE SOUTH BANK SHOW:
ALAN BENNETT
Friday 16 March
Dir. David Hinton GB 1984 50 mins (adv PG)
With: Alan Bennett, Melvyn Bragg
An entertaining episode of the long-running arts series, full
of Alan Bennett’s gentle but sly humour. The documentary
takes an on-location look behind the scenes of Bennett’s film
A Private Function, while the man himself discusses his work
for film, television and theatre, as well as his life-long
relationship with Leeds.
HOME JAMES
Tuesday 20 March
Dir. Patrick Boyle GB 1972 55 mins (U)
With: James Mason
James Mason is best known for working alongside some of
Hollywood’s biggest stars and directors, among them Alfred
Hitchcock, Marlon Brando, Nicholas Ray, Cary Grant, Stanley
Kubrick and Judy Garland. In this intimate documentary,
Mason’s co-stars are a little more down to earth when he
returns to his home town of Huddersfield, talks to the locals
and listens to the town’s male voice choir. Home James is a
wonderful example of regional programming made
specifically for local viewers by Yorkshire Television.
THE MAKING OF A BLOCKBUSTER
Saturday 10 March
Dir. Jane Dickson GB 1999 95 mins (adv PG)
With: David Arnold, Peter Lamont, Vic Armstrong, Michael
Apted, Michael G. Wilson, Robert Wade, Neil Purves, Simon
Crane
This Channel 4 documentary follows the pre-production,
shooting and post-production of the 19th James Bond film
The World is Not Enough (1999), which took $37 million
during its opening weekend in America alone. Made as an
educational programme, The Making of a Blockbuster was
originally aimed at GCSE/A-Level media students, but is of
great interest to anyone who has ever watched a big-budget
blockbuster. It looks at the formulation of the Bond genre as
well as the shooting process, set design, stunts, green-screen
effects, location shooting, editing, soundtrack, and marketing
that all go into creating the high-octane world of 007.
THE LOST CITY
Thursday 22 March
Prod. Richard Cawston GB 1958 45 mins (adv U)
With: J.B. Priestley, Jacquetta Hawkes
When novelist and playwright J.B. Priestley expressed concern
about the state of Bradford in the 1950s he made many
enemies in his home city. In this fascinating BBC
documentary, he returns to talk about how his birthplace has
changed and to express his loyalty to a city he loves. A
fascinating portrait of both Priestley’s early life and the
evolution of Bradford itself.
TV HEAVEN 149
OMNIBUS:
SONG OF SUMMER
SHADES OF GREENE:
THE OVERNIGHT BAG
Friday 9 March
Dir. Ken Russell GB 1968 80 mins (adv U)
Max Adrian, Maureen Prior, Christopher Gable, David Collings,
Geraldine Sherman, Elizabeth Ercy.
Sunday 18 March, 3.25pm
Dir. Peter Hammond GB 1975 15 mins (adv PG)
Tim Brooke-Taylor, Eleanor Summerfield, Dudley Sutton, Joyce
Carey, Diana Berriman, Daphne Lawson, Neville Phillips
Director Ken Russell had already become well known for his
1962 Monitor film about Edward Elgar before he went on to
direct Song of Summer, Dante’s Inferno (with Oliver Reed,
1967), and a film about the composer Richard Strauss (1970)
for the BBC’s Omnibus series. Song of Summer looks at the
later life of Bradford-born composer Frederick Delius (18621934), and how Eric Fenby, a gifted young Scarborough pianist
and organist, helped him to compose when he became blind
and paralysed. Both moving and humorous, the film naturally
makes great use of Delius’ evocative music and Fenby himself
(who co-wrote the script with Russell) believed that the film based on his book Delius as I Knew Him - was very true to life.
SHADES OF GREENE:
WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK
Sunday 18 March
Dir. Alan Cooke GB 1975 50 mins (adv PG)
Paul Scofield, Roy Kinnear, Annette Robertson, Derek Smith,
Terence Budd, Stella Tanner, Frank Thornton
The Goodies’ Tim Brooke-Taylor plays Henry, a seemingly mildmannered (if somewhat secretive) man determined to get his
bag past curious plane passengers and Heathrow Customs, in
this sinister episode from the Shades of Greene series of
Graham Greene adaptations.
SHADES OF GREENE:
DREAM OF A STRANGE LAND
Sunday 18 March, 2.50pm
Dir. Peter Hammond GB 1975 35 mins (adv PG)
Niall MacGinnis, Ian Hendry, Graham Crowden, Esmond Knight,
Richard Heffer, Michael Petrovitch
OTHER TV HEAVEN SCREENINGS IN
MARCH…
FIRST TUESDAY:
THE FALKLANDS WAR
- THE UNTOLD STORY
Thursday 8 March, 6.30pm
Dir. Peter Kosminsky GB 1983 105 mins (adv 12A)
BRITISH ANIMATED CLASSICS
Friday 23 March, 12.00
Dirs. Mark Baker, Paul Berry,
Barry Purves GB 1991/93 35 mins (adv PG)
A TV Heaven screening of a selection of Britain’s finest
animations, including The Village, Mark Baker’s tale of murder
and hypocrisy in an enclosed community; The Sandman, Paul
Berry’s sinister re-working of a childhood myth; and Barry
Purves’ exquisite Japanese love story, Screenplay.
Using archive footage and testimonies from both British and
Argentinean civilians and military personnel, this provocative
and deeply moving documentary was criticised by the British
Government in 1983 for its sympathetic portrayal of
Argentinean involvement in the Falklands conflict. Join TV
Heaven staff for an introduction and screening of this
memorable film.
Another of the excellent Thames Television adaptations of
Graham Greene’s short stories in which a distinguished doctor
rejects his patient’s unlawful request to keep his disease a
secret, only to have a difficult decision to make when an old
military friend arrives at his office.
Adapted from Graham Greene’s short stories, the 1975
Shades of Greene anthology featured some of Britain’s best
actors and writers. In this episode, Paul Scofield stars as Mr.
Fennick, a con man responsible for selling degrees from
Oxford ‘college’ through the post. His successful business is
soon under threat, however, when Lord Driver (Roy Kinnear)
enrols his son.
150 TV HEAVEN
TV HEAVEN 151
The Shine Award
TREADING THE BORDERS YET PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES
THE SHINE SHORT FILM AWARD
Saturday 23 March
Inaugurated in 1998, Shine is the short film platform in the
Bradford International Film Festival. This forum showcases
the six films short-listed for the Shine Award - our
competition for best international film. Works featured in
competition are selected from hundreds of entries
submitted to the festival each year.
The focus of the Shine Award is to honour the best short by
an emerging director, and to support innovation and
originality.
The Shine Jury – critic James Cameron-Wilson, director Jack
Gold, film lecturer Liz Rymer, producer David Lascelles and
BIFF international consultant Neil Young - will select the
winning film from the short list during the opening weekend
of BIFF2007. The presentation will take place on Saturday 23
March in Cubby Broccoli Cinema.
THE SHINE SHORT LIST:
PRIVATE LIFE
TALK TO ME
MIRAMAR STREET
Dir. Abbé Robinson GB 2006 15 mins 49 secs (adv 12A)
Lucy Lieman, Jana Carpenter, Toby Sawyer, Andy Henderson,
David Westbrook
One Friday afternoon, a single twentysomething woman
leaves her mundane job in a 1950s textile mill and takes the
train to Manchester to meet up with a man. But all is not
what it appears…
Dir. Mark Craig GB 2006 22 mins 45 secs (adv PG)
A beautiful, poignant and tremendously affecting
autobiographical documentary in words and pictures based
on 20 years of answer machine messages. The voices of old
friends, former loves and relatives combine to create a moving
memento mori as filmmaker Mark Craig revisits his past with
the assistance of Ken Morse, the doyen of British rostrum
cameramen.
Dir. Jon Garaño Spain 2006 8 mins (adv PG) Some subtitles
Fele Tunaya, Ana Martinez, Adam Sanjurjo
San Diego, California. A Spanish taxi driver in picks up a
passenger who asks to be taken to an address in Miramar
Street. In an instant the driver’s world is changed forever. A
delicious little passion play with a sting in the tail.
Kale Nagusia, 41, 2-EZK, Astigarraga, Spain, 20115
Tel: 00 34 65 77 32 888
MORTEM COMPANY
Dir. Stéfan Le Lay France 2006 20 mins (adv PG) Subtitles
Loïc Fourniaud, Artus de Penguern, Mathilde Mottier,
Guillaume de Tonquédec
Narrating the story, Bruno is proud of his father’s unusual job
and becomes very excited when he is finally taken to visit his
place of work. But an incident on the way precipitates a
series of events that begin to affect their lifestyle and
eventually Bruno’s life.
Stéfan Le Lay
21 rue de Pont-Menou, Ploueragt-guerrand, 29620, France
Tel: 00 33 6 61 61 09 73
152 SHINE SHORTS
Maria Pavlou
Mad Cat Films Ltd
37-39 Milton Road, Branton, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, DN3
3NX, United Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7733 223 439
THE RED BALLOON
Dir. Michael Olesen USA 2005 3 mins 14 secs (adv U)
Aidan Gould, Pedro Miguel Arce
Enlisting the assistance of a balloon vendor, a young boy
sends a birthday wish to his Mom – in the only way he knows
how. A poignant, pocket-sized poem.
www.MichaelOlesen.com
Stopwatch Productions
39 Lushington Road, Kensall Green, London, NW10 5UX, United
Kingdom
Tel: 00 44 (0)7973 327 026
www.talktome.org.uk
THE WAY WE PLAYED
(Kako smo se igrali)
Dir. Samir Mehanovic GB 2005 13 mins 18 secs (adv PG)
Subtitles
Almir Mehanovic, Eldar Zubcevic
Kosovo, 1992. Oblivious to the growing conflict that will soon
engulf their country, two boys search for hidden treasure in an
abandoned hill fort. Instead they unearth a gun. Their country
is about to be plunged into civil war – and their lives will
change forever.
SHINE SHORTS 153
‘Anyone can jump out of a plane
without a parachute. The clever
thing is being able to do it twice’
Roy Alon, 1978
THE WORLD’S MOST PROLIFIC STUNTMAN
ROY ALON – THE WORLD’S MOST
PROLIFIC STUNTMAN
Spring 2007
Pictureville Bar
Between his debut in 1968 and his death in January
2006, Yorkshire-born Roy Alon racked up more than
1,000 credits on television and in films - notably in the
James Bond series - as a stunt performer, co-ordinator or
second unit director.
His jobs – including crashing cars through windows,
falling off horses, setting himself on fire, jumping from
ridiculous heights and fighting or doubling 007 – took
him all over the world.
In a career spanning four decades he acquired the
reputation of a solid all-rounder. In 2004 his astonishing
record led to him being listed in the Guinness Book of
Records as the world’s most prolific stuntman.
Throughout his career, Roy Alon assembled a personal
archive of his work. Drawing on this archive, we pay
tribute to a consummate professional and reveal some
of the intricacies of the stuntman’s art.
154 ROY ALON EXHIBITION
ROY ALON SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1987
1988
1989
1991
1993
1994
1995
1996
1998
1999
2002
2003
2004
2007
A Bridge Too Far
The Spy Who Loved Me
Superman
Firepower
The Long Good Friday
Green Ice
An American Werewolf in London
The Trail of the Pink Panther
The Curse of the Pink Panther
Never Say Never Again
Octopussy
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Lifeforce
Death Wish III
The Fourth Protocol
The Living Daylights
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Willow
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves
The Three Musketeers
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Judge Dredd
GoldenEye
Daylight
Entrapment
The World is Not Enough
Die Another Day
Calendar Girls
Troy
Colour Me Kubrick
ROY ALON EXHIBITION 155
Family Events
Every Saturday during the 13th Bradford International Film Festival
you will find a fantastic range of family-orientated activities on offer.
Look out for great family films at 11.00am, and free film-inspired
storytimes and art activities in the afternoons.
CURIOUS GEORGE
Saturday 10 March Starts 11am
Dir. Matthew O’Callaghan USA 2006
86 mins (U)
Voices: Will Ferrell, Drew Barrymore
Museum guide Ted finds him self
lumbered with a simian pal when he
returns from a trip to Africa. George, the
mischievous monkey, stows away and
accompanies his reluctant new friend
everywhere. Perfect family fun.
156 FAMILY FILMS
WHO FRAMED
ROGER RABBIT 70mm
Dir. Robert Zemeckis USA 1988
104 mins (PG)
Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd
It’s 1947 and the Hollywood film industry
depends upon toons - indestructible
cartoon characters. Roger Rabbit, one of
the best, is distracted as he suspects his
wife is unfaithful. The studio boss
employs a private eye, Eddie Valiant, to
check up for him.
CHARLIE AND
THE CHOCOLATE
FACTORY
Dir. Tim Burton USA/GB 2005
115 mins (PG)
Johnny Depp, Freddie Highmore
Charlie Bucket lives in a poor home with
a view of the massive Wonka chocolate
factory. One day mysterious Willy Wonka
announces he will open the factory and
reveal “all of its secrets and magic” to five
lucky children who find golden tickets
hidden inside Wonka chocolate bars.
FAMILY FILMS 157
Thanks...
THE 13TH BRADFORD INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
wishes to acknowledge the support of the following individuals and
organisations:
Special thanks to:
Steve Abbott, the late Roy Alon, and Anne Monks, David Arnold,
Schawn Belston (20th Century Fox), Alan Bennett, Darren Briggs (Arts
Alliance), Martin Bromfield (20th Century Fox), Margaret Brown, James
Cameron-Wilson, Ann Cattrall (Sixteen Films), Mike Cowlam, Terence
Davies, Denis Dercourt, Anna Draniewicz, Colin Ford, Randy Gitsch, Jack
Gold, Mark Goodall, Richard Gray (Cinema Theatre Association),
Thomas Hauerslev, Anthony Hayward, Fritz Herzog (AMPAS), David
Jones, Tony Jones, Patrick Keiller, David Lascelles, Ken Loach, Euan Lloyd,
Grant Lobban, Kevin Matossian, Brian Meecham (AMPAS), Colan
Mehaffey, Adam Nayman, Ian Palmer, Michael Parkinson, Paul Rayton,
Godfrey Reggio, Liz Rymer, Sheila Seacroft, Paul Smithers, Dave and
Carin-Anne Strohmaier, Trudie Styler, The Tony Earnshaw Collection,
David Nicholas Wilkinson and Michael G. Wilson.
Thanks to:
Doug Abbott, Lisandro Alonso, James Benning, Alan Brent, Neil Buckley,
Ivan Francis Clements, Frank Dabell, Bill Daniel, Jamil Dehlavi, Sue
Everett, Paul Gordon, Graham V. Hartstone, Kevin Henry, Incentive Gifts
(Mark Walsh), Chris Jones, Gabe Klinger, Ferdinand Lapuz, Annemiek
Lelijveld, Lee Lynch, Lisa McManus, Raza Mallal, Adam Maxwell, Ben
Meade, Jurij Meden, John Offord, Paul Peppiate, Gary Phillips, Jit
Phokaew, Colin Pons, Julia Puhringer, John S. Rad, Abbé Robinson, Paul
S. Rowlston, Poppy Sebag-Montefiore, Peng Shan, Tony Sloman, Sergej
Stanojkovski, Anita Sumner, Piers Tempest, Ann Tobin, Phil Van
Tongeren, Tonio Van Vugt, Indrek and Triinu Viiderfeld, Travis Wilkerson,
Matt Winn and Ying Liang.
Arte France (Delphine Pertus-Bernard), Artificial Eye (Daniel Graham),
BFI (Fleur Buckley, Christine Whitehouse, Andrew Youdell), Bleiberg
Entertainment (Nick Donnermeyer), Bradford City of Film (Gina Glot,
Nigel Rice), Buena Vista International (Jodie Caron), Canal Plus (John
Herron, the late Dennis Hall), Crossing Europe Film Festival, Linz
(Christine Dollhofer), Danish Film Institute (Christian Juhl Lemche),
Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (Graham Edmondson), EON Productions (Anne
Bennett, Meg Simmonds, Sam Engelen), HandMade Films Plc (Alexei
Slater), Kino Otok/Isola Cinema (Vlado Skafar, Koen Van Daele),
Kinoton (Lutz Schmidt), Metrodome Distribution (Helen Almond, John
Ramchandani), Momentum Pictures (Moira McDonough, Mark Jones),
North West Film Forum (Michael Seiwerath), Omnex Profilm
Technology (Jed Aferton), Optimum Releasing (Ben Luxford),
Paramount Pictures (Sarah Hatton), Park Circus (Nick Varley), Pathé
Distribution Ltd (Carol McKay, Paul Sophocli), Pinewood Studios
(Ann Runeckles), Premier PR (Ginger Corbett, Deborah Reade,
Suhan Razzaque), Propeller TV (Simon Couth), Regional Language
Network (Ruth Linden), Revolver Group (Jody Pope), Rural Route
Film Festival (Alan Webber), Screen Yorkshire (Hugo Heppell, Jay
Arnold, Tony Dixon), Skillset (Ruth Palmer), Soda Pictures (Ed
Fletcher), Tartan Films (Michael Wailes), Tromsø Film Festival
(Martha Otte), Turner Classic Movies (Mette Haacke, Anne Rosen,
Catherine Hayes), TVP (Aleksandra Biernacka), Universal Pictures
(Nigel Taylor, Jenny Erwood, Celeste Berry), Variety (Derek Elley,
Leslie Felperin, Robert Koehler, Todd McCarthy, Jay Weissberg),
Verve Pictures Ltd (Colin Burch, Julia Short), Vertigo Films (Sam
Moore, Charlie Belleville), Warner Bros (Bob Cockburn, Richard
Huhndorf), Winstone Film Distributors (Mike and Sara Ewin), The
Works (Dave Shear), X-Filme (Bruno Niederprum) and Yorkshire Post
Newspapers (Ian Day, Mike Cowling).
Particular thanks also to the directors and producers of the
selected films, and to all of the other filmmakers who submitted
films for consideration.
Festival Selection Committee:
Simon Barnett, Chris Butler, Joan Butler, Sarah Crowther, Ben Eagle,
Tony Earnshaw, Bill Lawrence, Duncan McGregor, Addy Rutter, Deb
Singleton, Tom Vincent, Neil Young.
Film notes by:
Simon Barnett, Jo Booth, Sarah Crowther, Anna Draniewicz, Kate
Dunn, Tony Earnshaw, Allen Faulkner, Chris Flanders, Mark Goodall,
Anthony Hayward, Arkady Insarov, Bill Lawrence, Frank Mangus,
Duncan McGregor, Adam Nayman, Addy Rutter, Ian Sapiro, Sheila
Seacroft, Deb Singleton, Claire Thomas, Tom Vincent and Neil
Young
Exhibition:
Roy Alon – The World’s Most Prolific Stuntman
Exhibitions and Display Manager: Amanda Chinneck
Project Manager: Mandy Godfrey
Catalogue edited by Tony Earnshaw
Festival identity:
Photography: Paul Thompson
Model: Joe Stocks-Brook
Festival Information Line
0870
70
10
200
www.bradfordfilmfestival.org.uk
VENUES AND TICKETS
National Media Museum, Pictureville, Bradford, BD1 1NQ
Tickets may be booked by telephone (daily) from 8.30am - 8.30pm or in person (TuesSun) from 10am-9pm. To avoid busy times please call or drop in during the mornings.
TICKET PRICES
The venue is given with each film and event in the brochure. Concession prices are
available at venues for students, unemployed, senior citizens, registered disabled and
under 15s.
Pictureville & Cubby Broccoli Cinemas
2 films
IMAX Cinema
Full Festival Pass
Industry Weekend Pass
Widescreen Weekend Pass
£5.00 / £3.30
£7.90 / £5.40
£6.95 / £4.95
£120 / £80
£45 / £25
£65 / £45
WWW.BRADFORDFILMFESTIVAL.ORG.UK
The official Bradford International Film Festival website will be up and running
throughout BIFF2007 and beyond, with the latest news and information plus the
latest facts and figures. You can even submit your own film reviews for use on the
site. For filmmakers there are also details of how to submit work for the 6th
Fantastic Films Weekend, the 13th Bite the Mango Film Festival and the 14th
Bradford Animation Festival.
FILM FESTIVALS AT THE MUSEUM
Bradford International Film Festival is one of four major international film festivals
that the Museum hosts annually. The Fantastic Films Weekend (Friday 15 – Sunday
17 June 2007) is a celebration of classic horror and sci-fi with guests, classics from
the archives and sneak previews of new releases. The Bite the Mango Film Festival
(Friday 21 September – Thursday 27 September 2007) is a celebration of world
cinema and documentary making. Bradford Animation Festival (Wednesday 14 –
Saturday 17 November 2007) is a vibrant industry event packed full of seminars,
masterclasses, tributes, screenings and awards.
FRIENDS OF FILM
Friends of Film lets you enjoy NMeM’s diverse programme of world cinema with a
wide range of benefits including free cinema tickets, discounts to the cinemas and
special exhibitions and invitations to special events and previews. Contact our
Friends of Film Co-ordinator on 01274 203326 for more details. Look out for special
membership offers during the Festival.
ACCOMMODATION
We have special rates available with The Midland, our official festival hotel located in
the heart of Bradford and close to the Museum. Please ring for more details, quoting
‘Bradford International Film Festival’: Midland 01274 735735 or
www.midland-hotel-bradford.com
Other city centre hotels include the Victoria (01274 728726), the Hilton (01274
734734) and Express by Holiday Inn (0870 787 2064). A short cab ride away is Lister
Mansion (08700 843436 or 01274 495827).
GENERAL INFORMATION 159
Bradford International
Film Festival Staff
HONORARY PRESIDENT
Lord Puttnam of Queensgate CBE
PATRONS
Jean-Jacques Annaud
Sally Burton
Alex Cox
Simone Izzo
Vittorio Storaro
Ricky Tognazzi
David Nicholas Wilkinson
FESTIVAL EXECUTIVE
Artistic Director Tony Earnshaw
Head of Film Bill Lawrence
ADVISORY BOARD
Maggie Ellis
Film London
Mark Goodall
University of Bradford
SilverCrest Entertainment (Los Angeles)
Kevin Matossian
Julian Richards
Prolific Films, London
Liz Rymer
Wildlight Pictures Ltd (Sheffield)
David Nicholas Wilkinson Guerilla Films (London)
Andrew Youdell
BFI, London
Neil Young
Film Lounge
NMeM EXECUTIVE
Head of Museum Colin Philpott
Cultural Content Director Kathryn Blacker
Trading Director Sam Cooper
Development Director Nicola Corp
Communications Director Lisa Grogan
Operations Director Rod Taylor
CORE STAFF
Animation Coordinator Deb Singleton
Film Administrator Ben Eagle
Industry Weekend Co-Ordinator Addy Rutter
International Consultant Neil Young
Consultant Tony Jones
Festival Archivist Robert J. Moran
Curator of Cinematography Michael Harvey
Cinema Operations Manager Dick Vaughan
Volunteer James Hamilton
GUEST CONSULTANTS
Widescreen Cinema Consultant Thomas Hauerslev
Crash Symposium Mark Goodall (University of Bradford)
Film & Music Conference Prof. David Cooper (University of Leeds)
Film & Music Conference Prof. Christopher Fox (Brunel University)
Film & Music Conference Ian Sapiro (University of Leeds)
NMeM PROJECTION TEAM
Projection Team Manager Duncan McGregor
Senior Projectionist Tony Cutts
Projectionists: Andy Atkinson, Roger Brown, John Cahill, Dave
Chambers, Symon Culpan, Allan Foster, Jennifer Weston-Beyer
Technical Consultant Dion Hanson
Digital Cinema Consultant Darren Briggs
COMMUNICATIONS
Press & PR Manager Dean Loughran
Press & PR Officer Sarah Crowther
Marketing Manager (BIFF) Vic Wilson
Marketing Officer Steve Hyman
Assistant Press & PR Officer Grace Haydon
Communications Administration Assistant Michelle Aspinall
DEVELOPMENT
Development Manager Helen Hawney
Development Executive Sue Clayton
NMeM DESIGN STUDIO
Senior Graphic Designer Janet Qureshi
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Web Manager Richard Claxton
Festival Web Designer Colan Mehaffey
Studios Manager Bob Cox
Media Developer Oliver Trenouth
IT Support Team Leader Richard Bosomworth
Network Support Technician Danny Green
Network Support Technician Richard Tennant
FRONT OF HOUSE
Visitor Operations Manager post vacant
Sales & Call Centre Development Manager Sarah Spurr
Visitor Operations Coordinator Michelle Llewellyn
Duty Manager Allan Winch
Crew Leader Sarah Jarvis
Museum Crew Sharon Attwood, Joan Butler, Sofina Butt,
Vanessa Chapman, Nicola Cocking, Jenny Crowther, Rob
Derbyshire, Rachael Dixon, Cara Freund, Lee Fudge, Kashmir
Kaur, Tom McNally, Hannan Majid, Nargis Mughal, Nasreen
Sharif, Sue Stoddart, Andrew Whimpenny, Sue Wild
MUSEUM INTERPRETERS
Interpreters Ellie Buckland, Suzie Collinge, Joanne Mills,
Victoria Pink
CORPORATE HIRE
Senior Event Coordinator Jan Metcalf
Event Coordinator Gemma Speight
ESTATES
Head of Estates Gavin Pattison
Estates Assistant Elisha Davis
Estates Technician Paul Dourandish
HOUSEPEOPLE
Manager Lynn Worsley
Housepeople Linda Binns, Roger Bramwell, Sue Bramwell,
Diane Farrell, Joan Keeys, Mick Kent-Gayton, Elaine Manton,
Tony Manton, Sue Webb
WARDERS
Chief Warder Bob Cuckson
Warders Fiza Ali, John Anyon, Justin Attwood, Jagdev
Gucharan, Marie Ibbotson, Faz Mushtaq, Kaushik Parekh,
Darren Rhodes, John Schofield, Dan Tordoff, Sharon
Wallwork, Richard Williamson
MOVIE VOLUNTEERS
Coordinator Barry Boyd
Peter Andrew, Kathy Barton, Roger Barton, Paul Bye, Pam
Fluke, Phil Fluke, Richard Fort, Mike Holloway, Richard
Newman, Kate Taylor, John Thornton, Irene Vince
NMeM SHOP
Retail Manager Lesley Barnes
Deputy Retail Manager Corinna Lydon
Retail Assistant Yvonne Pearson
Retail Assistant Marc Rice
Retail Assistant Assad Malik
DIGBY TROUT RESTAURANTS
Catering Manager Anthony Hegney
Assistant Catering Manager Caroline Higham
INTERMISSION RESTAURANT
Head Chef Carole Armitage
Supervisor Ash Choudhury
Second Chef John Kirwan
Chef Gerry Hill
Kitchen Porter Sadik Arobi
Staff Oliver Abakumov, Bryony Allen, Adrian Doyle, Cait
Earnshaw, Hayley Gambles, James Gedney-Higham,
Thomas Gedney-Higham, Danielle Gray, Sarah Hainsworth,
Mike Mitchell, Laura Raynor, Louise Templeton
Diary 9-24 March 2007
Friday 9
Tuesday 13
9.00 Amazing Grace
1.30
2.00
4.00
4.00
5.45
6.00
8.00
8.00
Saturday 10
9.30
10.00
10.15
11.00
11.30
1.45
2.00
3.45
5.00
6.00
7.00
8.30
8.45
Delegate Reception
Micro Budget Production ©
The Well
Curious George
International Sales ©
The Neon Bible
Cheeky + Trudie Styler ©
A Roof over our Heads
January 2nd ©
From Russia With Love + special guest
Minor Revelations ©
Catch a Fire
Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten ©
Sunday 11
Delegate Reception
London
Nuts and Bolts of Filmmaking ©
Ten Canoes
Producers Workshop - First Feature Film ©
Fresh Air ©
Singin' in the Rain
Dry Season
The Ladykillers ©
Paris Je’ T’aime
Lights in the Dusk ©
Screentalk: Terence Davies
+ Distant Voices, Still Lives
8.15 The Caiman ©
10.00
10.15
10.30
12.00
12.30
1.45
2.00
4.00
4.00
6.00
6.15
8.15
House of Mirth ©
Raining Stones
The Dilapidated Dwelling
Ladybird Ladybird ©
Pitbull
Klimt ©
The Lives of Others
Screentalk: Patrick Keiller
+ Robinson in Space ©
Wednesday 14
12.00
12.10
1.50
2.00
3.45
4.00
5.45
6.00
8.00
8.15
Black Jack ©
Dark Water Rising
12 Angry Men (digital)
Patrick Keiller Shorts x 5 ©
Land and Freedom
Regarding Buenos Aires ©
My Children are Different ©
Who Killed Cock Robin? (Redux)
Screentalk: Michael Parkinson
Ghosts of Cité Soleil ©
Thursday 15
10.30
2.00
2.00
4.00
4.00
5.45
6.00
7.30
8.15
Senior Citizens: 12 Angry Men (digital)
Tangshan Tangshan
Loren Cass ©
Border Post
Hamilton ©
Close to Home ©
Floating World (digital)
Screentalk: David Arnold + Casino Royale
Tell No One ©
Monday 12
Friday 16
5.30
6.00
7.15
8.15
8.30
10.00
10.00
11.30
12.45
1.45
3.30
5.30
6.00
7.30
The Freelancers ©
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Pandora's Box ©
Whole Train
Lights in the Dusk ©
This is Cinerama
Film & Music Conference
The Well ©
Cleopatra 70mm
Budd Boetticher ©
Lise et Andre ©
Edge of Outside + Enter the Dragon ©
Digital Cinema - Is it worth it?
Screentalk: Denis Dercourt
+ The Page Turner ©
8.00 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 70mm
Saturday 17
10.00
10.30
12.15
12.30
1.30
2.00
3.15
4.00
4.15
5.45
7.30
8.00
Who Framed Roger Rabbit 70mm
Hedy Lamarr ©
Lost in Tokyo ©
Larger than Life
Cinerama Adventure
Directed by John Ford ©
Cinema Theatres Association
- Richard Gray
Cinematographer Style ©
How the West Was Won
A Summer Day ©
Titanic 70mm
Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing ©
Sunday 18
10.00
10.30
12.30
1.00
2.00
2.15
4.00
4.00
5.30
6.00
8.00
Cineramacana
For Bread Alone ©
Taking Father Home ©
Grant Lobban
Shalako 70mm
My Name Is Joe ©
Screentalk: Euan Lloyd
Keepers of the Frame ©
Black Tights 70mm
Ice Games ©
Those Magnificent Men
in Their Flying Machines 70mm
8.15 Water ©
Monday 19
10.30
5.45
6.00
8.00
8.15
Mayerling 70mm
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Police Beat ©
Edmond ©
Screentalk: Ken Loach
Tuesday 20
12.00
1.45
2.15
3.45
4.15
6.00
6.30
8.15
8.45
Summer in Berlin ©
Dream Makers + The Slanted Screen
Still Alive - Krzysztof Kieslowski ©
Bread and Roses - Director's Cut
Tales of the Rat Fink ©
Fetching Cody
The Boss of it All ©
Jindabyne
Infinite Justice ©
Wednesday 21
10.00
12.00
2.00
4.00
5.45
6.00
8.00
8.00
Crash Symposium ©
One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later
8-Bit
The Feast of St. Barbara
Fast Food Nation
Who is Bozo Texino?+Lay Down Tracks ©
Screentalk: Godfrey Reggio + Koyaanisqatsi
Salvatore ©
Thursday 22
10.30
12.00
12.30
2.00
2.00
4.00
5.45
6.00
6.15
8.15
8.15
Senior Citizens: A Private Function
A Darkness Swallowed ©
Kraszna-Krausz Awards
Anger Me ©
Screentalk: Alan Bennett: The History Boys
Six Figures ©
River Queen
Masterclass with Godfrey Reggio
Zero ©
Powaqqatsi + Evidence ©
Days of Glory
Friday 23
12.00
12.15
1.45
2.00
4.00
4.00
6.00
6.15
8.15
8.30
Analog Days
Frozen Days ©
Carla’s Song - Director’s Cut
Isolated ©
Windows on Monday
The Other Half ©
Tomorrow Morning ©
Naqoyqatsi + Anima Mundi
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man ©
My Best Friend
Saturday 24
11.00
10:45
12:45
1.30
3.30
4.00
6.00
6.15
8.15
8.30
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Malcolm McDowell: Multiple Personalities ©
Los Muertos + Fantasma ©
Apart from That
Shine Awards 2007 ©
Destined for Blues
Rooms for Tourists
Dangerous Men ©
This is England + Guests
Dance Party, USA ©
Index of Films
8-Bit
12 Angry Men (digital)
13 Steps
41 Seconds
50 Cents
A Cream Cracker under the Settee
A Darkness Swallowed
A Day Out
A Plastic Toy Dinosaur
A Private Function
A Roof over our Heads
A Short Film About A Long Film
A Summer Day
Admirer, The
Air
Amazing Grace
An Englishman Abroad
Analog Days
Anger Me
Anima Mundi
Anonymous
Apart from That
Aqua Ad Lavandum
Bad Day
Black Jack
Black Tights
Blind Man’s Alley
Border Post
Boss of it All, The
Bread and Roses: Director’s Cut
British Animated Classics
Budd Boetticher
Bye Bye Benjamin
Caiman, The
Candy & Brandy
Candy Viola
Carla’s Song: Director’s Cut
Casino Royale
Catch a Fire
Centsless
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Cheeky
Christmas in Huddersfield
Cinematographer Style
Cinerama Adventure
Cineramacana
Cleopatra
Close to Home
14
15
87
53
49
148
76
148
42
132
16
79
17
55
66
10
148
77
90
129
63
78
81
27
118
141
37
18
19
120
151
91
19
20
22
77
120
144
21
16
157
22
44
92
145
145
141
23
Clouds, The
Crash Symposium
Curious George
Dance Party, USA
Dangerous Men
Dark Water Rising
Days of Glory
Dear Beloved …
Destined for Blues
Detras
Dilapidated Dwelling, The
Directed by John Ford
Director’s Cut
Distant Voices, Still Lives
Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing
Dream Makers
Dry Season
Edge of Outside
Edmond
End, The
Enter the Dragon
Evidence
F
Fantasma
Fast Food Nation
Father, Unblinking, The
Feast of St. Barbara, The
Felcity’s Fixation
Fetching Cody
Film & Music Conference
Finders Keepers
First Tuesday: The Falklands War
Floating World
Flower Beloved
For a Few Marbles More
For Bread Alone
Freelancers, The
Fresh Air
From Russia With Love (digital)
Frozen Days
Ghosts of Cité Soleil
Guy’s Guide to Zombies
Hamilton
Headless Sailor, The
Hedy Lamarr
History Boys, The
Holocaust Tourist, The
124
104
157
79
80
24
25
23
27
70
125
93
40
137
28
94
26
95
29
124
95
154
128
65
30
31
76
32
43
33
107
58
151
134
15
33
34
134
35
36
37
38
78
81
59
96
132
61
Home James
149
House of Mirth, The
136
How the West was Won
140
Ice Games
39
Il Legal
79
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 143
Industry Weekend
108
Infinite Justice
40
Isolated
41
January 2nd
42
Jindabyne
43
Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten 44
Julie - A Love Story
31
Kadogo
11
Keepers of the Frame
145
Keiller x 5
124
Kind Hearts and Coronets
136
45
Klimt
Koyaanisqatsi
127
Kraszna-Krausz Awards, The
134
La Forêt
64
Ladybird, Ladybird
118
136
Ladykillers, The
Land and Freedom
121
Lay Down Tracks
82, 86
Lights in the Dusk
46
Lise et Andre
134
Lives of Others, The
47
69
Lloyd Ormerod Wants His Face Back
124
London
Loren Cass
83
Los Muertos
48
149
Lost City, The
Lost in Tokyo
49
Making of a Blockbuster, The
149
Malcolm McDowell:
Multiple Personalities
97
127
Masterclass: Godfrey Reggio
141
Mayerling
Me Head’s a Shed
45
Me! I’m Afraid of Virginia Woolf
148
35
Mercury Inspection
Minor Revelations
50
Miramar St.
51, 152
39, 152
Mortem Company
My Best Friend
51
134
My Children are Different
57
My Last Confession
My Name is Joe
120
Naqoyqatsi
129
Neon Bible, The
136
New Life, The
17
Night Shift
83
Noir Total
71
Norwood
124
Ode to Joy
47
Omnibus: Song of Summer
150
One Last Drink Before Morning
50
One Way Boogie Woogie
84
Other Half, The
52
Out of Milk
34
Page Turner, The
135
Pandora’s Box
136
Paris Je t’aime
53
Parkinson: Richard Burton
122
122
Parkinson: Cagney & Pat O’Brien
Parkinson: Orson Welles
122
Parkinson: Ingrid Bergman
123
Parkinson: Meg Ryan
123
Pitbull
54
85
Police Beat
Potter, The
52
Powaqqatsi
128
Private Life
28, 153
Raining Stones
118
Raspberry Ripple
46
36, 153
Red Balloon, The
55
Regarding Buenos Aires
River Queen
56
Robinson in Space
125
57
Rooms for Tourists
Run and Look
32
Salvatore
58
Scene
24
Schattenkind
41
59
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
67
Serenade
Shades of Greene:
Dream of a Strange Land
150
150
The Overnight Bag
When Greek Meets Greek
150
Shalako
138, 142
8, 9
Shine Awards
Singin’ in the Rain
136
80
Siren
60
Six Figures
Slanted Screen, The
98
Snip, Crunch
20
Solomon Grundy
25
South Bank Show, The: Alan Bennett 149
South Bank Show, The: Terence Davies137
Spell, The
26
Steps
56
Still Alive
99
Stonebridge Park
124
Summer in Berlin
61
Taking Father Home
62
Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty 30, 48
Tales of the Rat Fink
63
Talk to Me
29, 153
Tangshan Tangshan
64
Tell No One
65
Ten Canoes
66
144
This is Cinerama
This is England
11
Those Magnificent Men…
141
Tiny Dancer
60
Titanic
143
54
To Die is to Live
Tommy the Kid
38
Tomorrow Morning
67
TV Heaven
147
Ultimatum, The
21
Valtos (The Veil)
124
14
Visitors, The
84
Walkman
Water
68
Way We Played, The
18, 153
100
Well, The
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
157
Who is Bozo Texino?
82, 86
Who Killed Cock Robin? (Redux)
87
Whole Train
69
139
Widescreen Weekend
119
Wind That Shakes the Barley, The
Window, The
136
Windows on Monday
70
85
Windows XP
World Outside, The
68
Wrong Glasses, The
62
71
Zero
Screentalks:
David Arnold
Alan Bennett
Terence Davies
Denis Dercourt
Patrick Keiller
Euan Lloyd
Ken Loach
Michael Parkinson
Godfrey Reggio
Trudie Styler
131
133
137
135
124
138, 142
119
123
127
130
Index of Directors
Adachi, Jeff
Alonso, Lisandro
Annakin, Ken
Apted, Michael
Arevarn, Jakob
Argy, Stephanie
Attias, Ziggy
Austin, Daniel
Balzer, Helge
Baker, Mark
Benhadj, Rachid
Benning, James
Benstock, Jes
Berry, Paul
Bilu, Vardit
Blanshard, Kyle
Blatnik, Ales
Boehm, Alec
Bogdanovich, Peter
Bogliano, Adrian Garcia
Boehme, Daniel
Bouchareb, Rachid
Boyle, Patrick
Bromberg, Betzy
Burge, Stuart
Burton, Josh
Cameron, James
Campbell, Martin
Canet, Guillaume
Cardinal, Susan
Cave, David
Cawston, Richard
Christensen, David
Chrysanthou, Costas
Chu, Kevin
Chu, Terence
98
30, 48
140
10
15
24
76
78
81
151
34
84
61
151
23
67
79
24
93
57
87
25
149
76
148
52
143
144
65
94
31
149
60
47
64
23
Clegg, Stuart
Cooke, Alan
Cooper, Merian C
Craig, Mark
Cugno, Gian Paula
Daniel, Bill
Davies, Terence
Davis, Shannon
De Heer, Rolf
Debenham, James
Dehlavi, Jamil
Dercourt, Denis
Devor, Robinson
Dickson, Jane
Djigirr, Peter
Dmytryk, Edward
Dresen, Andreas
Dubini, Donatello
Dubini, Fosco
Dudley, Kurt
Duque, Ander
Earnshaw, Tony
Fauer, Jon
Ferrari, Manuel
Finley, David
Ford, John
Franzetti, Alejo
Frears, Stephen
Fuller, Chris
Gaag, Florian
Garano, Jon
Geijskes, Mathijs
Gelmini, Elio
Georgiou, Stefan
Giambruno, Daniel
Gordon, Stuart
38
150
144
29, 153
58
82, 86
137
95
66
30, 48
40
135
85
149
66
138, 142
61
96
96
80
22
97
92
55
57
140
55
148
83
69
51, 152
49
90
60
17
29
Graham, Daniel
64
Grlic, Rajko
18
Guerin, Franck
17
Hagar, Dalia
23
Hammond, Peter
150
Haroun, Mahamet-Saleh
26
Hathaway, Henry
140
Hege, Hans
41
Heimbecker, Matthew
20, 56
Henckel von Donnersmarck, Florian 47
Hickmore, Tom
43
Hinton, David
149
Hufen, Jelmar
33
Hysaj, Ujkan
85
Hytner, Nicholas
132
Jamin, Francois
71
Kable, Jonathan
69
Kalina, Martin
55
Katz, Aaron
79
46
Kaurismaki, Aki
Keiller, Patrick
124
Kelleher, J D
50
37
Kelly, Tony
40
Kerr, Joshua
Kidawa-Blonski, Jan
27
Kijak, Stephen
59
Kocsis, Agnes
35
Koehler, Ulrich
70
Kopple, Barbara
28
Kosminsky, Peter
151
Kotaro, Ikawa
49
136
Laczny, Tomasz
21
Lafarge, Sebastien
Lambo, Daniel
11
43
Lawrence, Ray
Le Lay, Stefan
39, 152
Leckonby, Andrew
Leconte, Patrice
Lerner, Dany
Leth, Asger
Liang, Ying
Libster, Cecilia
Lind, Josh
Linklater, Richard
Loach, Ken
Lombardi, Danielle
Loncarevic, Milos
Lumet, Sydney
Mankiewicz, Joseph L
Mann, Ron
Marques, David
Marquez, David
Marshall, George
Martin, Tobias
McCaffrey, Brigid
McDowell, Charlie
McGuinness, Alexandra
McLaughlin, Mark
McNally, Tom
Meadows, Shane
Mehanovic, Samir
Mehta, Deepa
Metzner, Florian
Milharcic, Ozren
Millan, Pablo
Molsen, Ulrike
Montellano, Wendy
Moretti, Nanni
Morris, Nicola
Mowbray, Malcolm
Myers, Chris
Novkovic, Oleg
66
51
37
38
52, 62
55
68
31
116-121
82
38
15
142
63
41
70
140
53
82, 86
19
84
145
65
11
18, 153
68
81
95
26
14
83
20
34
132
25
67
Noyce, Philip
Obermaier, Barbara
Olesen, Michael
Ott, Mike
Pabst, G W
Pec, Cecilia
Pedemonte, Francisco
Petri, Kristian
Phillips, Kevin
Picasso, Clara
Pieprzyca, Maciej
Piniero, Matias
Popovici, Adrian
Porterfield, Matthew
Pozo, Cristian
Proctor, David
Purves, Barry
Rad, John S
Ramocki, Marcin
Ray, David
Recio, Lorenzo
Reggio, Godfrey
Ricker, Bruce
Rickey, Fred
Robinson, Abbe
Rodriguez, Alberto
Ronco, Juan
Ruiz, Raul
Russell, Ken
Santamaria, Andrea
Sarkissian, David
Schlesinger, John
Schneider, Rafael
Servente, Matteo
Seward, Ken
Sewell, Rodney
21
96
36, 153
77
136
28
55
100
68
55
32
55
16
81
63
58
151
80
14
33
59
126-129
91
144
28, 153
62
55
45
150
55
54
148
21
32
25
53
Shainin, Jennifer
Shiley, Mike
Silvestros, Petros
Simonelli, Fabio
Solarz, Malena
Spence, Peter
Spielberg, Steven
Stevens, Benjamin
Strawhand, Justin
Strohmaier, David
Styler, Trudie
Temple, Julien
Thewlis, David
Todd, Michael
Van Belle, Marco
Vaughan, Matthew
Vega, Patryk
Vermillard, Marie
Von Trier, Lars
Walker, Randy
Wander, Kelsey
Ward, Vincent
Weber, Bernard
Whittaker, Patrick
Wilkerson, Travis
Winn, Matt
Wisley, Lesley
Wlyvis, Emilis
Young, Terence
Zmarz-Koczanowicz, Maria
Zhang Hui, Lin
Zukerfeld, Nicolas
78
24
55
77
55
44
143
42
14
145
130
44
22
144
45
27
54
50
19
78
16
56
79
46
87
42
35
71
36, 141
99
39
55
Notes

the 2007 brochure

Transcription

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