Short films at Festival Central (1) - Long Distance Information (2011)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

28 November

* Contains spoilers *

Director / writer : Douglas Hart

Curiously enough, a 75-minute play of this name was directed by Stephen Frears in 1979 as an episode of Play for Today.

Be that as it may, because looking for the dates of these shorts has unearthed other exact or similiar matches on IMDb, it adeptly explores the characters' assumptions and ours about what is happening, and it is often what we - or they - hear, or imagine that they hear.

We are straight into the film, with Alan Tripney's head seen sideways on a stained piece of wood, and the sounds, as he rouses, of a raised Scottish male voice from below. Tripney makes clear both that he is used to this, and that he despises the man.

We begin to make assumptions about who this man is, where Tripney is, and, eventually, what he is doing when he picks up the phone and - unusually enough - literally dials a number, from memory. (As to how long the number was, marks off for not paying attention, but I had thought him pissed off enough to be ringing downstairs, although it was unlikely that he would know the number.)

In the meantime, we have been introduced to Peter Mullan, exercising his tyranny (and not seeing how it is received by Caroline Paterson) from a chair that bears a passing resemblance to the one in Tripney's room, and refusing a suggestion that he should watch The Queen, so we believe that we know where we are, for his cantankerous reign is conducted firmly, but not by shouting.

(There is, though, a feeling that Paterson just lets him think that his assured condescension rules the roost, and that asking him about the Christmas broadcast was done to irritate without him realizing.)

Once he stirs himself to answer the phone, there is just about a conversation during which Tripney and he talk to each other, though it is clear that they have nothing to say, and that the one question that gets asked - why the son isn't there - would have been better not asked. And then these males have it all turned on their heads, and the stunned response that comes from them is, seemingly, their pride jolted too much for their ease.

I'd gladly see this again, this time to see how it builds to an end. All three principals are excellent, with Tripney seeming like a son who would have such a father, but the accolade must go to Mullan, for embodying him.


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Short films at Festival Central

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

28 November

Aline Conti presented six short films last night, some as short as five to seven minutes, which had been presented as an organized sequence under the umbrella The Joy of Six (which is also what a group of Cambridge poets have been calling themselves for many a year) by Soda Pictures and New British Cinema Quarterly.

In conversation with Conti first, and then answering questions from the floor, Dan Sully and Chris Croucher, the director and writer / producer, respectively, of the last two films, were present. They seemed to think of the choice 'a mixed bag', and, when asked, would not have been wished to be placed anywhere else in the running order.

That said, I thought that what connected the films was that they were all psychological in nature, and it was quite an anxious feeling to go where each was leading, and that few, except perhaps Friend Request Pending (2011), gave you an unnecessarily clear sense of who people were and what they were doing.

To do justice to each film, I will have a posting per film, to which the items in the listing below link (all now live - 3 December):


1. Long Distance Information (2011) (7:42)

2. A Gun for George (2011) (17:22)

3. Scrubber (2012) (20:56)

4. Man in Fear (2011) (10:50)

5. The Ellington Kid (2012) (5:00)

6. Friend Request Pending (2011) (11:58)



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