Looking forward to this year's Festival...

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23 January

I have been repaid, by a little visit to the Festival web-site, to learn from a recent bulletin that admissions were 20% up at last year's Festival, which can't be bad in these lean times (I hope that I didn't distort the figures too much by my own attendances - no, that would be ridiculous, even with an auditorium of the size of Screen 3, so no pats on the back for me!).

Read a little more here:

http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/news/2012/01/16/2011-admissions-up-2012-onwards-march/


Plus, whilst you're there, a good thing to look at is 'Movies at the Mansion'. OK, Wrest Park (near Silsoe, in Bedfordshire - a property maintained by English Heritage) isn't usually called a mansion (although it may be one), but it's pretty grand, so who cares?!

What matters is that it's an interesting idea to screen some films there (and the grounds are intriguing, too, with follies aplenty):

http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/movies-at-the-mansion/


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Tirza: an epilogue

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9 January

At the time of the Festival, I established that the book from which this book was made, with the participation of its author, into a film was available only in the original Dutch and in a German translation (which, at a pinch, I could have read, but at great cost).

I now see that there is a French translation, which would not put me at any greater advantage, but none in English that I can find, and I wonder what the fate of the film is - if it is not going to get distributed here or in the States, the possibility of an English translation probably depends on it.

Well, I still think that it is a tremendous film, and maybe I shall look for evidence of reviews...*


I have found this, with which I would take issue (and will, given a chance):

http://jasperaalbers.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/the-best-and-the-worst-of-dutch-cinema-%E2%80%93-the-tirza-review/


But, maybe, I'd prefer you to look at (or what preceded it):

http://unofficialcambridgefilmfestival.blogspot.com/2011/10/attempting-to-address-tirza.html


* Contains spoilers *

In the meantime, my knowledge of German allowed me, belatedly and when it had to be returned to the library, to look at the Dutch original, and it may not surprise to know that the ending in the novel appears to differ:

If I didn't miss something, and it isn't a dream, Jörgen does not try to leave, but ends up going back to, Kaisa's dwelling, but makes it to the airport, and, despite her cries of Want company, sir?, boards a flight and labours his way home.

As I say, I was reading the text as someone who speaks German, so I could work out much of what was being said, but I may have missed something in the preceding pages that could indicate that it is Jörgen's fantasy that he makes this journey...

Since then (at the end of February, in fact), Penny, a friend who speaks Dutch, took a look at the closing pages, and found nothing to suggest that there is the intervention of a dream between getting back from Big Mama and leaving Namibia.


End-notes

* Well, I see that it has no reviews at all on the so-called Rotten Tomatoes web-site, and the first one that I found was from one of the Festival's own Take One crew - I obviously didn't submit something myself, or, as others didn't, it didn't appear.


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Dimensions - another screening (in Cambridge) (1)

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20 October

Some will know that, on 4 November, Dimensions hits (hit?!) Wallingford, in Oxfordshire, which I believe that I read about on the film's web-site...

But, and I really should check the date, on 22 November the film (through the Arts Picturehouse, or at least the mention is in its latest booklet of what's on) is being screened for the fourth time in Cambridge, its home city, and I shall provide details here, just as soon as I can (possibly or otherwise - six impossible things before breakfast, etc.)!

As I recall, Sloane and Ant will also be talking about how to make such a film (or any full-length film) without (the usual) funding - if their names are not already familiar to you, then you have been caught napping on the job of jeeping (?) abreast of this blog, and need to remedy that omission, whilst you can, by reading some earlier postings (if you can find them amongst the plethora of dross).


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Guilty of love or Guilty of Romance

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9 October

* Contains spoilers *

One sounds rather better than the other, more mysterious. (Less accurate?)

The starting voiceover sounded as though details being given about district with the greatest concentration of love-hotels were in spite of boredom ('romance-hotels' doesn't sound quite right - and 'love', anyway, is a poor euphemism), but maybe it was just meant to sound a matter-of-fact tone, perhaps as a bid (they did regularly crop up, not usually successfully) to wrong-foot the viewer.

Maybe, having left only 70 minutes in, I am not in a position to judge, but this film just seemed like a whodunnit, and a not particularly interesting one (except for students of mutilation), but one with (attempts at) embellishments. Attempted, because the Effi Briest, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, The Kreutzer Sonata sort of neglected wife with a boorish husband (and / or otherwise unhappy marriage) was only one sort of springboard into this 'adventure' for Mitzuko, and it was neither followed up, nor very convincing (e.g. the absence of her pre-existing life, except when - exceptionally awkwardly - some friends are produced and invited around for tea).

The stupid husband seemed, from what I could judge from the subtitles, to be a celebrated writer, but actually, despite his airs, of Mills & Boon (perhaps where the romance comes in?), or maybe Alan Titchmarsh. (By contrast, Sleeping Beauty did not need an such excuse, and went straight in, not even via touting hot sausages in a supermarket, but with a proper waitressing job that was not enough to finance university and lifestyle.)
Then, along with that Australian film, we move off into the territory of Buñuel's Belle de Jour (frankly more challenging, after all these years (1967), than either), but only as a build-up for sexual liberation generally and, specifically, a cheap laugh about how doing a porno-shoot with a stud makes one better at offering hot sausages enthusiastically (those scenes, in themselves, were surely a surprise to no one, least of all Mitzuko).

And that leads us into the domain (no going back) of casual sex, dressing differently / seductively, and the love-hotels about which we were so carefully told before. After that, and an autopsy complete with maggots, a crime scene with violently coloured pink paint, and a sex-scene in a show with the odd paint capsule thrown in, does one care much about where it is going or, more importantly, how it is going there?

Well, I didn't, but I cared even less to hear what I am fairly sure was Wagner's Siegfried Idyll and Bach's works for cello accompany all this, and that, apart from not being interested in how it unfolded, was my main impulse for leaving. (Perhaps the incongruity would have been less for those who were unfamiliar with this, even so, admittedly well-known music, perhaps not, but it turned the switch to 'off' for me.)

Or was this really an attack on the culural imperialism and globalism of the western world, disguised as a film? Certainly, there was little evidence of the restaurant and retail chains that dominate most cities. Certainly, we were being shown a culture particular to Japan in the love-hotel. Certainly, the western music of the baroque and the nineteenth century was being challenged to stand up against the most graphically demanding of bedfellows (and thereby proved that Bach is not, after all, strong enough to survive any treatment, even if that of Jacques Loussier were not enough to demonstrate otherwise), so maybe...

Still don't care!


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Unlimited dimensions

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22 September

What a brilliantly entertaining evening!

I had deliberately not decided between getting a ticket for Wild Side at 11.00 (in the 'Tartan' strand) or The Disposable Film Festival at 10.45 (in the 'Shorts' (short films) strand), because I might not be able to go to either - and I couldn't, because of compelling matters elsewhere (and ineptly lacking the capacity to bi-locate).

In Screen 2, B8 (more to the front and the centre than I would normally have chosen, because of the sheer popularity evident when I came to buy a ticket for Cambridge film Dimensions) was my seat, where, when waiting for the show to start (which turned out to be director Sloane U'Ren and writer / composer Ant Neely plus almost all of the cast briefly at the front) I got into an interesting conversation with my neighbour about the film and what science might be the basis of what happened.


The film itself was well worth waiting for, and unlike anything else so far in the Festival - picking things out as they occur to me, it had humour (my neighbour and I turned out to have the same sense of humour), stunning visual effects with the titles, a brilliant riverside setting, a script that really kept you guessing about a number of important matters, a type of Faustian pact, a multi-dimensional love interest, boffins and their marvellously whimsical contraptions, and a water-feature that drew all the main characters into its domain.

Oh, I could go on, and mention a splendid tree (not sure what kind) that was another focus, the recreation of the gentility of the twentieth century after the Great War, and a glimpse of Cambridge academic life. However, not only don't I want to give anything away, but those things really say nothing that addresses what the film is about.

Forget the science (wonderfully presented though it is), forget what may already have been public about this film or its budget or how it was made (though those things are facts): this is a film about longing, many people's longing, and for different things, and how that longing affects this brief span that (however long we do live) we are allotted - whether we are longing what we can't have, or doesn't belong to us, or won't do us any good.

It is very well done indeed, and it will have you choked and affected by seeing unfold what holds us back or spurs us on, what makes us who we are or gives us the scope to be something else. If you can guess where the title's 'tangle of threads' will take you, then well sleuthed, and perhaps you were hunting clues!


Later, events took me to the bar with important cast and crew, and I had a chance beforehand to speak to Olivia Llewellyn in a little detail concerning what made this shoot different and the type of thing that she would want to repeat: it was not, as I thought, that what is conventional in the big studios seemed impersonal as such, but that this was different and that there had been a luxury, say, of being with the other protagonists and to build up more of a bond with them off the set. Before that was questions and answers, led by someone not known to me.

Talking to Ant afterwards, neither of us was sure why this person had wanted to talk about the science so much, as if anyone would expect, say, Matt Smith, as Doctor Who, to be questioned about the physics of the TARDIS (but the Doctor always offers people a jelly baby instead or reveses the polarity with the sonic screwdriver), but he did. When things were opened up to the floor, I had my hand straight up, and jumped in with a question about the children whom we see become adults and whether we can see the former in the latter, and it was nice afterwards to have some appreciation for it from those with Ant, Sloane and me in the bar.

I'm not even sure whether it was bizarre, although I have mentioned the notion of longing and what it entails, but, after other audience-led questions, not only was the question put to Ant and Sloane asked whether there was anything that they would have done diferently, but everyone at the front was asked what question they had expected to be asked and what their answer would have been. Perhaps an answer might have combined those two approaches: we would have had a different person leading the session, and can we have a time-machine to go back and put that right?

What I want to do, though, is to take a trip into the future, and see this film get the coverage and exposure that all those who have worked so hard on it deserve. Maybe, in the meantime, I'll see whether I can look at my schedule to establish the possibilities for revisiting this enchanting world, given that (the screening on Thursday 22nd has also sold out), there is now a third on Saturday 24th at 5.00...




(And, of course, getting back late, after staying around carousing until Festival central's ability to let us stay longer finally disappeared, and then making these jottings, was all made possible, consistent with an early bed-time, just by learning the lessons of this film!)



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Monday at the festival

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20 September

Four sessions (five films) to-day – should have been five, but I couldn’t count, and somehow hadn’t spotted, when booking, that one of them would be going in whilst another was still being shown, but which gives me £3.85 credit on my Blue Pass for another day.

Plus a hurry from the extravagance of seeing Douglas Fairbanks (from 1922) in and as Robin Hood in the Great Hall at Trinity (thanks to the indulgence of the college's Master and Fellows), to get back to Festival central for Tirza, of both of which more later. (Suffice to say that those who thought that they were dining in the hall, which was set up like a cinema when I arrived, must have been fed elsewhere.)

,
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A Festival review of Abgebrannt (Burnout) (2011)

This is a Festival review of Abgebrannt (Burnout) (2011)

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19 September

This is a Festival review of Abgebrannt (Burnout) (2011)

To-night's screening was attended by director Verena S. Freytag*, and she spoke to the Festival's own Verena afterwards, and answered questions from the audience (which, it must be said, is a true privilege for a viewer).

Mine elicited that she had not intended to have a music soundtrack, but, having met a violinist (amongst other instruments that he plays) three times by chance in Berlin, and then learnt about him and his work, he composed for the finished edit. (I had felt that the score worked very well with the emotion of the changing scenes, and also adopted at least twice the simple motif of a quiet sustained note that abruptly heralded silence: the song whose lyrics I had thought might have been central from the start had not been.) I also gathered that the film had been edited from around 180 minutes to 102, with the result, Verena said, that the complexion of what happened after the initial location in Berlin had changed much.

As the other Verena commented, Maryam Zaree's performance as a hard-pressed mother (Pelin) was very strong, and I found that Tilla Kratochwil's Christa, for all that she seemed dominating and hidebound, gave her real scope for being near someone with different experiences and for them to learn from each other.

However, I am not quite sure that the trajectory of Pelin's story is really as set out in the Festival brochure (and I do not know where in life she may be heading at the close), but she certainly desires to change her position, if she can be allowed to do so - that is one of the very heartening things about this film, that we are shown her being given a chance, and also that healing and forgiveness can take place. Alongside those things, we also witness self-interest being a motivating force, and the fact that trying to shake off past ties brings new problems.

Thinking about the issues that lead to the family's seaside placement made me wonder whether the story could have fitted in the UK. The concerns portrayed would certainly have brought the same attention to bear on Pelin's behaviour as a mother, and she might, if very lucky, have had a social worker who was prepared to work with her to make things better for her children on the basis of a profession - and evidence - of a willingness to change. Even some sort of respite is sometimes possible (but maybe not so easily on the coast, because of funding), so this is not a scenario unique to Germany and not, say, Cambridge, but perhaps what it would miss is the especially German tendency of propriety about how life should be conducted.


That, however, is not what I shall take from this film: Maryam's expressiveness (and the fatigue with which she battles), her care, however wayward, for her children, her interactions with Christa, and her sheer exuberance when she breaks the rules and goes out dancing - oh, and her utter convincingness as someone who tattoes ('inks') others and believes in herself and in that sort of statement.


End-notes :

* Somewhat irrelevantly to remark, but someone who moved to Berlin has the same middle initial : he adopted it, as a sort of silent 'S', just so that he would have one...


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Sonnet 116

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19 September

A rather faltering reading of Shakespeare in class (which did not, as I recall, include the closing couplet) starts Above us Only Sky (Über uns das All). The poem was still unmistakeable, and highly relevant: 'Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds'. We end with shots, the last with the credits rolling, of the place where Sandra Hüller, as Martha, had expected to be, but on a different basis.

In-between, she finds plenty of alteration, together with confusion, mistrust and loss, and a mystery for which she seems (doomed) to find no answer (and we no answer as to how it could financially have been maintained so that she did not know). Her courage in all this is immense, her denial is evidence of great hope, and she carries and conducts herself with a real knowledge of her worth, and of not wanting inconsequential formalities and pleasantries that do no more than irritate her by their emptiness.

Yet, as we would, we do doubt her mental state, whether, if not actually dissociating and trying to project one person's identity onto another, then perhaps seeking solace where time should heal (as the sonnet again says, 'Love alters not with [time's] brief hours and weeks, / But bears it out even to the edge of doom'): such concern is at its closest in one scene, where she barks out orders, and forces what she insists should be done in a humiliating and damaging way. But not a way that reckons with love, not a way that remembers being told that it is actually easier to make an apology weeks afterwards, although it seems awkward, because it has already been accepted in that time.

The warmth of the joking, the bantering, links this to the most positive parts in the short film Philipp that was shown before: there is a shared life that cuts through trite sentiments such as 'it feels as though we've always known each other', and appears, even with seeming 'impediments', to be 'the marriage of true minds'. (Lovely, also, to see all this against the background of Köln (Cologne), which has a special resonance for me since a long time ago.)


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Omelette rescue

Omelette rescue

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18 September

Omelette rescue

If ever I should get disillusioned (pretty likely, unfortunately), I should remember Kath.

Her extreme kindness in taking pity on the fact that, having been left with just 30 minutes between film 1 and film 2, I was only going to have another 30 minutes before film 3 would begin - with the offer to order me a cheese-and-tuna omelette, which, complete with lettuce and lovely balsamic dressing, was waiting for me when I exited from White White World (2010). A very welcome thing to come out to from that individual experience !

Plus my change in a wonderful origami wallet. As I told Kath, 10 out of 5 !


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Golden sands of time

This is a Festival review of Bombay Beach (2011)

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18 September (Tweets / tags added, 3 January 2015)

This is a Festival review of Bombay Beach (2011)

Bombay Beach (2011) (we had no explanation of the name, sadly) took a little time to get used to, because it seemed (perhaps unnecessarily?) raw in the early shots, and, of course, one has (gained) expectations that what is near the centre of the frame will be - or be put into - focus. (I'm assuming that editing the film with some footage that meets this description at the start was a deliberate ploy.)

In any case, what I quickly came to experience as a real joy, since it is a principle that I try to employ in my photography, was the use of available light (which must have caused some difficulties in places). The whole emphasis on lighting, and on the flatness that gives a distinct horizon at sunrise and -set, was a hallmark of this film, as was the naturalness with which people seemed to get about their business, and come to mean something to us in the (relatively) short time (compared with Alma Har'el) that we (felt that we) spent with them.

Before I went in, Tony Jones, director of the Festival, said that I would want to see the film again when it is on release generally, and he is right - from the sounds of it, as he hopes to have Alma in Cambridge, plenty of time to think up questions before then. Until that point, what I will think about, other than listening to some of my Dylan tracks, is the hope that there was in all that I was allowed to witness, and try to remind myself that it is a privilege to see others' lives.

That said, and nothing to do with how the film was made, but I couldn't help being shocked at how much behaviour is controlled (for) by medication in the States. A young boy, clearly given ritalin because of ADHD (now quite well known in the UK), but also being given an anti-psychotic, then put onto 600mg lithium (instead of the ritalin, unless I misrember), which is one-half of the typical sort of dose for a six-foot man (the exact dose depends on metabolism). As to an explanation to Benny's parents of possible side-effects, particularly for lithium toxicity in the bloodstream, that appeared lacking.

Well, and I'm sorry that I forget his name, but as the elderly guy says who recovers from a mini-stroke, and whose appetite for life and what it is worth were wholly infectious, Life is a habit. For Benny, I hope that he may be able to form a habit where he is not overmedicated to meet others' ideas of who he should be, and the film, in its crazy phantasy ending, offered us that vision.


PS Very much an after-thought, and not intended to detract from the above, but I could not understand the point of the intermittently present and vividly yellow-orange subtitles: at first, they seemed to stigmatize the would-be college student, as if just his diction were not clear enough (although it was), but then they appeared at other times.

Sometimes, during the interactions in the Parish household, they were a help to know what was being said. However, most of the time I did not see the need for them, but, because of how much brighter they were than usual, I could not avoid three effects: they spoilt the appearance of the film, they drew me to read them when I could perfectly well hear what was being spoken, and, because of that, I could not block them out, and so missed important detail on the screen. If I could have pressed a button on a remote-control to turn them off, I would have done, and been happier.

The documentary Bombay Beach (2011), released by @Dogwoof, has this page on @IMDb... : http://t.co/gFe3jzomi5
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 3, 2015

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Festival publications (1) - updated update

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9 September

There is now a link to the actual pages of TAKE ONE, so I need say no more than Happy reading!:
http://issuu.com/camfilmtrust/docs/takeone-08.09.11?mode=embed

New dimensions on Dimensions

8 September


I've just found that one of the films mentioned in the last posting has its own web-site, which might prove interesting to explore:

http://dimensionsthemovie.com/2011/08/23/cambridge-film-festival-dates/

Popular items

8 September


There was no need to guess that - as the Festival web-site announces has happened - the opening film would sell out, but also:

* Black Butterflies has been lifted out of the German strand into the main listing of features

* Gerhard Richter: Painting has been moved out of the screen that it was in (Screen 3, the smallest) into Screen 2 (the middle-sized screen) for the screening that I booked

* Dimensions, for which there was little choice when I came to book (and had to, because the other screening gave rise to a clash), has also sold out


A useful feature to keep an eye on, and it would be even better if a section of that web-page gave an alert when tickets are selling fast for a particular film or one (if more than one) of its screenings...

Not yet the festival

Saying that, to-night's special science showing of Enigma had all the hallmarks of the best festival events:

* A packed screening

* An introduction from the front

* A talk By Dr James Grime (pictured), infomed by a demonstration, about what we were about to see in terms of what the Enigma machine was, did and why it was important to decode its messages and who worked out how to do it

* The film itself, which was rather more implausible thriller - complete with the unlikely prodigious agility and speed of a Cambridge mathematician who did not look in shape - pinned onto the background of the workings of Bletchley Park than any meaningful story

* A chance to ask questions about the accuracy of details in the film, the set-up at BP, and the Engima machine, as well as to photograph it and even press a key and see a different letter light up, still working 75 years on!

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Booking tickets

4 September

A film (or event) booked for every day of the festival - 15 to 25 September, based at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, but venues elsewhere - and including the opening and closing films.

Twenty-five tickets so far, and others to be decided on, nearer the time - or on the day. The Blue Festival Pass, giving 30% off the Picturehouse members' ticket-prices, is proving very handy and cost effective, and even entitles to free tea and coffee at the bar!


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