Planning Cambridge Film Festival 2014 : #CamFF - Work in Progress

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

24 August

Soon on the blog, @THEAGENTAPSLEY's Festival Planner (content sometimes more in hope than actuality)... #CamFF pic.twitter.com/K6SqxCu7KP
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 24, 2014

Thursday 28 August

6.00 Peter Sellers : The Early Shorts (1957) : Emmanuel (90 mins) - Catch one film before...

7.00 The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq (Opening Film) : Screen 1 (93 mins)

10.00 Magic in the Moonlight (Opening Film) : Screen 1 (97 mins)


Friday 29 August

12.30 Night Moves : Screen 1 (90 mins)

4.00 The White City (2014) : Screen 2 (running time not advised) If not on Sunday at 1.30...

6.00 Children of No Importance (Lamprecht) : Emmanuel (95 mins)

9.15 Cherry Tobacco : Screen 3 (97 mins)

11.00 House of Wax (Retro 3-D) : Screen 2 (86 mins)
or - when announced
11.00 TBC : Screen 3 (?? mins)


Saturday 30 August

11.00 Peter Sellers : The Early Shorts (1957) : Screen 3 (90 mins) - To catch the others...

1.30 Life of Crime (2013) : Screen 3 (94 mins)

4.00 I Believe in Unicorns (2014) : Screen 3 (80 mins)

6.45 Free Range / Ballad on Approving of the World (2013) : Screen 2 (104 mins) But if it drags...

7.30 Ida (2013) : Screen 1 (80 mins)

10.00 In Order of Disappearance : Screen 1 (116 mins)
or - decide on the night
10.30 Inferno (Retro 3-D) : Screen 2 (83 mins)
or - decide on the night
10.15 TBC: SCreen 3 (?? mins)


Sunday 31 August

1.30 The White City (2014) : Screen 1 (running time not advised)

4.00 Oh Boy (2013) (German) : Emmanuel (88 mins)

6.30 Home from Home (2013) (German) : Screen 1 (225 mins) But if it falters...

8.45 War Story (2013) : Screen 2 (90 mins)


Monday 1 September

1.30 A Most Wanted Man (2014) : Screen 1 (121 mins)

4.00 Four Corners (2014) : Screen 1 (114 mins)
or - decide on the day
4.00 In Order of Disappearance (2014) : Screen 2 (116 mins)

6.30 Under Milk Wood (1971) (Dylan Thomas 100) : Screen 1 (88 mins) If not on Tuesday at 1.00...

8.30 Finding Fela (2014) : St Philip's Church (119 mins)
or - decide on the day
9.00 Before I go to Sleep (2014) : Screen 1 (92 mins)
or - decide on the day
10.00 Love is All : 100 Years of Love and Courtship (2014) : Screen 3 (70 mins)


Tuesday 2 September

11.00 Under Milk Wood (1971) (Dylan Thomas 100) : Screen 1 (88 mins) If not on Monday at 6.30...

1.00 M : Screen 1 (1931) (117 mins)

3.30 Last Call (2013) : Screen 2 (91 mins)

6.00 How I Came to Hate Maths (2013) : Emmanuel (110 mins)

8.30 Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy (2013) : Emmanuel (127 mins)


Wednesday 3 September

1.30 Iranian (2014) : Screen 1 (105 mins)

4.00 Eastern Boys (2013) : Screen 1 (128 mins)

6.30 Stations of the Cross (2014) (German) : Screen 2 (104 mins)

9.00 Tasting Menu (2013) : Screen 2 (85 mins)

11.00 Short Fusion : Life Lessons : Screen 2 (79 mins)


Thursday 4 September

11.00 Night will Fall (2014) : Screen 1 (75 mins)

1.30 Le Jour se Lève (Daybreak) (1939) : Screen 1 (93 mins)

4.00 German Short Films (German) : Screen 1 (~70 mins) (all 2013) Will have to miss the end to get to...

6.00 Still the Enemy Within (2014) : St Philip's Church (112 mins)

8.30 Under the Lantern (1928) (Lamprecht) : St Philip's Church (129 mins)
Stay for this - or head to Festival Central for...
9.00 We Are Many (2014) : Screen 1 (104 mins)


Friday 5 September

1.00 We All Want What's Best for Her (Tots volem el millor per a ella) (2013) (Camera Catalonia) : Screen 1 (105 mins)

4.00 People on Sunday (Lamprecht) : Emmanuel (73 mins)

5.00 Energized : Screen 1 (91 mins)

8.30 Hosting Q&A for A Curious Life (no date advised) : St Philip's Church (78 mins)

10.30 The Mad Magician (Retro 3-D) : Screen 2 (72) If possibly back in time...


Saturday 6 September

1.00 Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (Lamprecht) : Screen 3 (74 mins)

2.30 Fiction (Ficció) (Camera Catalonia) : Screen 3 (107 mins)

5.00 Amour Fou : Screen 1 (96 mins)

7.30 Tony Benn : Will and Testament : Screen 1 (running-time not advised)
Not likely to finish in time for...
9.00 West (Lagerfeuer) (German) : Screen 2 (102 mins)


Sunday 7 September

1.00 Othello (Otel.lo) (Camera Catalonia) : Screen 2 (69 mins)

4.00 A Poem in Exile (Camera Catalonia) : Emmanuel (77 mins)

5.30 Set Fire to the Stars (Dylan Thomas 100) : Screen 1 (90 mins)

8.00 Surprise Film : Screen 1 (?? mins)


All of the above translates here into what was actually seen / missed and done...


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

What is Catalan cinema ?

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 June (updated 20 August)

What is Catalan cinema ?

[Now, in 2017, with its own sequel : What more is Catalan cinema ?]

Update : click here to go to outlines of three Catalan films
at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 and links to reviews

In advance of the 34th Cambridge Film Festival (#CamFF via @camfilmfest), and also of a screening at London’s ICA (@ICA) on 27 June of El bosc (The Forest) (2012) (a film that had its UK premiere when shown at last year’s Festival¹ – as did three other Catalan films), here is a little look at where films like this come from – geographically, temperamentally, and emotionally…

Catalan cinema : Does it fit descriptions such as Sassy / Sexy / Surreal / Sensuous / Subversively ritual, and bathed by the Mediterranean ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 12, 2014

Some may know that Barcelona, the second largest city in Spain, is the capital city of Catalonia – though it’s really, in Catalan, Catalunya – but forget Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) for giving you any more than an architectural montage to emulate that of Manhattan (1979) (or be a precursor to Woody Allen’s love-smitten depiction of Paris at Midnight from 2011…)²


But it probably may help little more to think of the inevitable Gaudí, let alone Juan Gris’ connections or – with the Catalan form of Gris’ adopted name and a birth-right to Barcelona – Joan Miró. Maurice Ravel (French, but with a Basque-Spanish heritage of a birthplace in territory somewhat distant from Catalunya, but likewise where France adjoins Spain), may give us some feel of Spanishness at times, but perhaps the quirky figure who provides a way in to this cinematic tradition is Salvador Dalí.

This blog-posting began with five ‘S’ key-words, and Dalí truly, as the phrase has it, ticks the boxes for all of them – and, with the infamous collaboration with Luis Buñuel in Un Chien Andalou (1928) (not forgetting L'âge d'or (1930)), is rooted in cinema. Dalí may have moved away from what Buñuel became a celebrated master of, but his showmanship and theatricality resembles aspects of film familiar, say, from the great Italian directors, and it is hard to believe that he has not been an inspiration in his home region.


Overview of Cambridge Film Festival's 'Catalan strand' in 2012 and 2013

Looking personally to the 2014 Festival (#CamFF), there is full confidence in Ramon Lamarca that he will have found and curated some powerful and challenging films, no doubt examining the nature of reality, or of the little-appreciated conflict that is The Spanish Civil War (Guerra Civil Española). As well as ending the life of poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, and providing the substance of Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, it not only tore Spain apart (with the help of General Franco’s allies in Germany and Italy), but has laid down a seam that underlies the history of Spain in our postmodern era, and which film-makers in Catalunya have been especially open to explore :

Directors such as Ken Loach, working with screenwriter Jim Allen in Land and Freedom (1995), have brought a British perspective on seeking to fight pro-fascist Nationalist forces, but Jesús Garay’s Eyes on the Sky (Mirant al Cel) (2008) delves less into the politics and the pointlessness of brother against brother, but rather, and very movingly, into the ‘visceralness’ of what it means to tick down to something that changes individual lives for ever : although Garay is from Santander, not Catalunya, again this is in the very North of Spain.

Set in the civil war like his film, but from the point of view of a landowner with pro-fascist leanings (or, probably more accurately, inherited anti-communist feelings ?), The Forest (El bosc) (2012), through its embodiment of place and with its vivid special effects, evokes another world, another dimension, from the perspective of which professed love and care can be examined, and in and through which a transformational and redemptive influence can operate. Similarly, in a way in the post-war period, and with packed Festival screenings, Black Bread (Pa negre) (2010) hits us right at its close with a boy’s realization of what his true position in life has been.

On another level, and in Venice, we again have finding the truth in The Redemption of The Fish (La redempció dels peixos) (2013), as Marc (Miquel Quer) tracks down his past, and is seduced and misled by the shapes, shadows and reflections of La Serenissima : so many of these films revolve historical and familial disputes and allegiances in a rich and productive way. In V.O.S. (2009), we have that theme translated into the playful and malleable notion of relation and relationships, in and out of making a film that crosses the barrier between ‘life’ and ‘film’ in a way as inventive and thought-provoking as Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). And, but one might need to read further with the links below to reviews on this blog, The Night Elvis Died (La Nit Que Va Morir L’Elvis) (2010) teases apart the layers of reality (not least with its quiet homage to Paris, Texas (1984))…


Here (out of the eleven films shown in 2012 and 2013 - UK denotes UK premiere) are links to this blog’s reviews of most of the films (with @THEAGENTAPSLEY's tag-lines, and additional key-words) :

2012 – Black Bread (Pa Negre) (2010)

A naturalistic, but haunted, story of a child’s perspective on betrayal, sex and anger

Civil war – Childhood – Respect – Reprisal – Poverty – Loyalty


2013 (UK) – Eyes on the Sky (Mirant al Cel) (2008)

Movingly mixing documentary, acting, and faux-documentary to dig into past pain

Bombs – Barcelona – Dante – Time – Heights – History


2012 – The Body in the Woods (Un Cos Al Bosc) (1996)

An unfolding with turns, twists and unprincipled practices

Sexual orientation – Investigation – Murder – Disguise – Corruption – Desire


2013 (UK) – The Forest (El bosc) (2012)

An account of a civil war through how the hated better-off classes fared

Magical realism – Twisted love – Collectivization – Other worlds – Symbolism – Unreal feast


2012 – The Night Elvis Died (La Nit Que Va Morir L’Elvis) (2010)

Finding the truth, when it is well hidden, by intuition and insight

Mental-health stigma – Friendship – Corruption – Blood – Unreality – Amnesia


2013 (UK) – The Redemption of the Fish (La redempció dels peixos) (2013)

Connectedness and disconnection, reality and illusion, in Venice

Contact – Closeness – Deceit – Truth – Reflection – Ripple


2012 – V.O.S. (2009)

A film within a film – or is one as real as the other ?

Acting – Film-making – Real time – Couples – Attraction – Meta-textuality


2012 – Warsaw Bridge (1990)

The whirl / ennui of yet another publishing event, and what it leads to

Connections – Publishing – Society – Glamour – Politics – Water


End-notes

¹ It had two screenings, at the second of which the film’s director, Óscar Aibar, was in attendance and answered questions.


² For one thing, Penélope Cruz (easily the best part of the film, and whose deserving an Academy Award (for María Elena) was undeniable) and her now husband Javier Bardem (by no means the worst), although Spanish, are not from what (since 1978) has been an Autonomous Community or ’nationality’ within Spain.

For another, according to the trivia of Wikipedia’s web-page for VCB, Allen had funding for a film to be shot in Spain, and so adapted a script that he had written years before, which was set in San Francisco : judge for oneself what Catalan (or even properly Spanish) feel one has from the film – and, more importantly, whether the character of Juan Antonio (Bardem) resembles a convenient stereotype of Mediterranean mores (to drive the plot in a rather Jamesian, ingénues-abroad way)…



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