Visions of the Baltic

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

2 October

The more that I think about the first in the sequence of Estonian short films, Maggot Feeder (2012), the more that I believe that I have seen it before somewhere, somehow… (Probably on the screen in the bar at Festival Central, which had been showing a loop of clips.)

Not that it matters, because it said things to me with the stark beauty of its story-line, the Doctor-Who-like horribleness and ferocity of the maggots*, the faces of the man and the woman, motile behind the forms that contained them, and (again from science fiction) the stacked pairs of eyes of the spiders – inevitably, given the subject-matter, the frozen setting, I was reminded of the exquisite brutality of Far North (2007), but this film ended with blossoming, fecundity, to replace the sterility of the man’s reign (over the woman and the creatures whom he bloodily kills).

A perfect fable of stagnation, destruction and renewal, inventively brought about in animation and foley where every squelch of blood and slurp of lightly stewed flesh was telling. A good way into another transgressive world, that of My Condolences (2013) :


Without giving away the big twist, the delight of a crooked family, running a covert business, and how they respond to an outsider in their guilty midst. What better plan to hit on, worthy of Fawlty Towers in its bonkersness, than devoting a page in the illicit journal of their activity to the wording of a tribute to a fictionally deceased neighbour ?

The stranger joins in with their desire to express their regrets, and is asked to assume the position of scribe and author, resulting in excruciatingly amusing awkwardness, because the family members continue to fear detection…


Olga (2013) has already, vaguely, been accounted for, as well as the errantly provided Happy Birthday played with the conceit that Marilyn might sing to Mr Jesus on Christmas Eve, and that Mr Jesus is a robot with a rival : it did not have much to say, from what I saw of it.


In Triangle Affair (2012), cats, people with arms for heads (who, amongst other things, clean windows and cycle as a trio along high-wires), and trams converged spectacularly, overshadowed and overseen by chalk-wielding birds (crows ? Krähen in German / chalk, la craie in French ??), who are perhaps also the architects of this elaborate, futuristic city.

Maybe, though, they have bored of its having a function, and wish to subjugate that function to their desire to have fun (or to destroy) : crows and Kafka (which means ‘crow’ in Czech) and Prague…


Finally, Villa Antropoff (2013) uses animated full-frontal cleavage, sexual acts and drug use to parody the interests and attitudes of New Rich Russians, a freedom to be expressive since Estonia is no longer a satellite state, in the Baltic, of the Soviet regime.

Not unlike Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, one can prove to have outlived one’s popularity, if one’s actions are taken to excess, and it is then on to the next party ! (Oh, and a black man, whose home coast has nothing but debris on it, manages to crash the party, maybe in search of the same, but is not kindly received, but surely no denigrating stereotype here.)


End-notes

* Though, of course, maggots turn into flies, outside fairy-tales.


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

Festival walk-outs

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

25 September

Last night was a mistake - I had intended to see Leviathan (2012), and only realized, too late, that it was not a short prefacing it, but Roland Klick's Deadlock, which had few takers.

Not in itself indicative of anything, but it was not the film that I had wanted to watch, I didn't want to go into the other film after the beginning and catch up, and I was not engaging or in the mood to engage with a dubbed film.

This afternoon, the staginess of Absolute Beginners (1986) was the turn-off, a film that I had always thought would prove, as I had gathered, to have relatively little to say and say it with scant subtlety. The enforced cheeky jollity of a Soho on a stage-set did not chime with my mood, and Patsy Kensit dancing sexily did not persuade me that I wanted to see more of a film with an Alfie-type voiceover, but none of the charm, that I could see, of how Michael Caine plays it : compared with his world, this seemed naive when pretending to be knowing, so I walked at around 30 minutes.

And, yesterday again, the Estonian shorts - I had been compelled by Maggot Feeder (2012) and My Condolences (2013), but Olga, in her car-park, did not have that effect. Even though I knew that it was building slowly to something, coffee called, and, as I guessed, I was not back before the end. It meant that I missed the beginning of the next shown, which had in fact been intended to be The Birthday (2011), but what was shown (and this explained a lot) was Happy Birthday, an animated skits on Jesus and robots.

That's all so far...


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