#UCFF's reactions, by Tweet, to I Am Greta (2020)

#UCFF's reactions, by Tweet, to I Am Greta (2020)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

18 October

#UCFF's reactions, by Tweet, to I Am Greta (2020)

Very nice to be with a goodly crowd at @Saffronscreen, including families with children, to see I Am Greta (2020) : hoping for a courageous presentation of a girl denied her childhood by something far more important !

And just very nice to be here again :)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 18, 2020

Two quotations to take from what Greta Thunberg says in #IAmGreta :

* Humanity sees nature as a bottomless bag of candy

* I don't want to be a person who says one thing, and does another

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 18, 2020

It is sensitively scored by Rebekka Karijord and Jon Ekstrand**, and edited so that we stay with emotions of someone (Greta's father Svante included) who believes strongly in what needs to be said, yet also wants to have her routines and life at home back and not to be there.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 18, 2020

We see more by staying with her emotions, and how an unswerving focus on what she's meant to be doing and when sometimes has to be tempered by a father who knows her intent, but has to remind her of not riskily overlooking the need to eat (or of trying to have every word perfect)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 19, 2020

** But it would have been good for the credits to list the instruments (was that a cello, or an electric cello ?).

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 19, 2020

As does Grossman's having been with Greta Thunberg's school-strike outside Sweden's parliament from the start (which he told Monbiot was done on a tip-off [presumably from Peter Modestij, on whose idea and concept the film is said to be based ?]), and of seeing the reaction grow.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 19, 2020

Straightaway, having seen that it is brought to us by @Dogwoof*, one could relax in the knowledge that one's expectations are going to be met.

* Along with other great films such as Leviathan (2012) [https://t.co/wBDR0QxqkN] or Bombay Beach (2011) [https://t.co/FHtXxegzvB]. pic.twitter.com/nX7U2HKfd5

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 18, 2020

Postlude :

I hate it when people insist you should be optimistic when the whole world is going to hell in a handcart.

But being positive is another matter and i think it is important we do try and do that and not be ground down by the negatives - after all that is the plan!!!

— Peter Beresford (@BeresfordPeter) October 22, 2020

#FridaysForFuture !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 22, 2020

Regarding the question of hope, do colleagues, reviewing the film at TAKE ONE, seem to have missed the point of what Greta Thunberg is doing and why ?

Lovely to welcome you back. https://t.co/6WDxUB1FpS

— Saffron Screen (@Saffronscreen) October 19, 2020

Thank you for those words - we do so love our goodly crowd.

— Saffron Screen (@Saffronscreen) October 19, 2020

Looking forward to your visit soon https://t.co/euxYTxQNNa

— RoystonPicturePalace (@RoystonPictureP) October 19, 2020

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

Outline for a proposed film : Dario - or The Mandrake Consignment

Outline for a proposed film : Dario - or The Mandrake Consignment

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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16 July

Outline for a proposed film :
Dario - or The Mandrake Consignment

'Reap what ye shall sow'

For Rosy and Brent

1. Luigi Mandragora and Nancy Hope meet at a performance of Verdi's Otello, and, talking during the interval, become friends : she is in Verona for a year during her degree (Italian and French), and he is older, and did not go to university, but has already established himself in business, buying and selling rare recordings

2. They are close, but never lovers - something holds her off, even at romantic operas in The Arena, and she never quite trusts Maria Argenta, Luigi"s mother, who was widowed early, after the birth of his younger brother Dario (away, in London, at The Guildhall)

3. Nancy and Luigi write to each other when she returns to the family home in Suffolk (where she sings in a church choir), before completing her degree

4. Several years on, Luigi is visiting Dario in London (who chose to stay there, despite giving up on becoming a professional singer) and, to see Luigi again, Nancy (who has never met Dario) is invited to a party that he is throwing in Luigi's honour

5. Nancy works for a company in London that makes travel arrangements for musicians, and Dario works in music publishing

6. Unknown to her, Luigi and Maria (who is also visiting, but not in evidence at the party) contrive for Dario and her to meet (of which Dario is also unaware), and bewitch them both with love-potions

7. The effect is such that they abandon their wontedly cautious behaviour and disappear to the roof-garden, where they kiss and pet heavily, then return to the party separately

8. As the party continues, so does the effect of the love-philtres, and Dario (having told Luigi how struck he is on Nancy) manages to ask Nancy privately to stay the night, who, without her usual level of reserve, agrees

9. One of the last to leave, Luigi has seemed to slip out of the party and to have brought back a chilled bottle of a quality Italian sparkling wine for Dario (and Nancy), but, in fact, he gets the bottle from Maria, and lets her in (to hide in the roof-garden ?), when he returns, the bottle will knock Nancy and Dario out soon after they take it to bed, and, when Maria has seen that they are unconscious, she will let Luigi back in, who rapes Nancy to orgasm while she watches / listens next door, afterwards emptying away all but a small rresidue in each glass (and leaving the empty bottle as if the couple had consumed its contents)

10. FF through a montage or other telling of Dario being mortified that he does not remember the vigorous love-making, without protection, that proves to have made Nancy pregnant, and that, although she does not have any conscious memory of that first time, she seems never to find him or his love-making exciting, and yet they marry and stay together because of Lucia, with the distant attentions of her grandmother and apparent uncle, except for family visits

11. The suggestion that, although they are a couple out of duty, they do not even find themselves blessed by Lucia (or vice versa), and that, not just through teething, etc., they have never been able to rely on undisturbed sleep, and that they move to be near Nancy's parents to have their support with childcare and a detached property where tensions with neighbours no longer arise

12. Yet they repeatedly happen, when Lucia pesters and pesters to be allowed to play in the garden, but invariably wreaks destructive wonders on it, as soon as anyone's back is turned (which behaviourally mirrors their life with her in microcosm), so that Dario finally fences off the garden and gives Lucia her own patch of the garden near the house, where nothing that she plants is not soon uprooted or trampled on - until three seeds that are given to her by Nancy's old choir-master for Lucia's at Christmas, all of which, now oddly assiduous, feeds and waters into vigorous life, as ahe approaches her seventh birthday

13. Lucia's screams and rages at night have finally subsided, but Nancy and Dario, driven mad by a shrieking of unidentifiable origin at night, have resorted to heavy-duty ear-plugs at night, which means that they are unaware that, after arriving on an early flight, Maria and Luigi have been greeted by Lucia on her birthday and proudly shown her three established plants - which so repulse and horrify Maria, at some gut level, that she wrenches them out of the ground, unaware of their shrieks, and that first Luigi, and then Lucia, fall down dead behind her, and we see her, as if at the end of Mozart's Don Giovanni reached for by arms and pulled down, through the patch of soil, and into Hades


ENDS


© Copyright Belston Night Works 2020


However, Rosy [#UCFF's esteemed editor at TAKE ONE] then gave these notes... :

Gender flip all the characters and I’ll exec produce. And don’t come back to me with a Considine attitude.


[In obedience to which dictates [which assuredly reference #UCFF's Q&A comments on Paddy Considine's Tyrannosaur (2011)], we then derived version 2.0...]

NB Now superseded by version 2.1 - fully corrected, and with preliminary ideas for casting

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

'Thoughtful' violence in Drive (2011) and You Were Never Really Here (2017) - or the principal elements of film noir ?

Responding to 'Thoughtful Violence in Drive & You Were Never Really Here'

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

Lines of thought sparked off by 'Thoughtful Violence in Drive & You Were Never Really Here' [Nancy Epton, writing for TAKE ONE]

Driver (D) and Joe (J) are, as one recalls, [capable of] being exploited

Drive says little or nothing why D does 'jobs' outside his mechanic's, etc., duties or does not seek better reward (from Shannon)

Allusively, Lynne Ramsay shows us much more about J, but both are film noir

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 25, 2019

* Ah, but I's car has over-heated - and she has shopping, and her son...

* The lift again, and her apartment

* The immediate dialogue :

I : So, have you just moved to LA ?

D : No, I've been here a while.

I : You're just new here [the building] ?

D : H'mm, m'mm.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2019

When Standard (Oscar Isaac) has been beaten up, and D finds B and him, he hears - as a man already hooked - the story of the mushrooming protection-money, and the job at 'the pawn shop in the valley' :

D has even driven B and I

Afterwards, I feigns not to know what S has told D

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2019

A whole other debate opens up, when one takes the nobility of the cause into account in cases of explicit revenge, as to whether the violence is justified, e.g. The Villainess (2017) [https://t.co/5OwELtTujd], or Tarantino's stylized fountains of blood in Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003).

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2019

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

The #UCFF Tweets about Cargo (2017)

The #UCFF Tweets about Cargo (2017)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2018 (25 October to 1 November)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

25 October

The #UCFF Tweets about Cargo (2017)

Take One, the Cambridge Film Festival's official publication, has released their Festival Review. Come by the Arts Picturehouse and pick one up! pic.twitter.com/T4CyuWDumx

— Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest) October 25, 2018

April McIntyre’s (@AprilMcIntyre’s) review for TAKE ONE is here…

One suggests that, although it owes not a small amount to Manchester by the Sea (2016), Levaiathan (2012) [the trawler one], and Cassandra's Dream (2007), it's a film that works on the level of gestures, not even episodes - we can't believe that a guy just starts driving lorries.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 25, 2018

But - there's a but - he's only really driving a lorry so that he witnesses what he sees for the moment that will riff on Fire at Sea or The Breaking Point... but with a very tenuous 'moral' choice.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 26, 2018

* How much are we re-visiting The Brothers, from British t.v. (1972 to 1976), let alone The Breaking Point (1950) ?

* Are some scenes of violence just extraneous to the story, or even convenient pegs to hang it on ?

Especially strong acting, though, by Chiel Vande Vyvere !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 13, 2018

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

Some #UCFF Tweets and a link about The man who killed Don Quixote (2018)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2018 (25 October to 1 November)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

25 October

Some #UCFF Tweets and a link about The man who killed Don Quixote (2018)

It was rather wasn't it! Thanks for coming. https://t.co/qoWbcsXtbd

— Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest) October 25, 2018

Of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018), it obviously isn't in three acts - but they'd be Terry Gilliam, playing with Fellini's 8½, him riffing on Scorsese's After Hours (1985?), and giving us his own Time Bandits...

Opening Night at @camfilmfest ! https://t.co/u6WXbGtLWW

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 25, 2018

However, if you're interested in some of those titles and *not* rooted to The West Country from 25 October to 1 November, you'll also find a dozen of them at @camfilmfest 2018 :

For example, Terry Gilliam's The Man who Killed Don Quixote (2018) is #CamFF Opening Night Film... https://t.co/3PW25JqzmQ

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 6, 2018

More, by way of a comment, on Rosie Applin’s review for TAKE ONE (@TakeOneCinema)…

At #Shakespeare400, we hear Don Quixote extolled on @BBCRadio3's The Verb :

A novel that founders in endless Così-fan-tutte-like stories ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 22, 2016

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

Pre-Festival reviews of films in Camera Catalonia II (for Cambridge Film Festival 2015)

Three more films in Camera Catalonia (for Cambridge Film Festival 2015)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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2 September

Three more films (for one, The Agent cheats) in Camera Catalonia (for Cambridge Film Festival 2015)

For the fourth year, Ramon Lamarca has curated Camera Catalonia screenings (films with a connection in language, themes, directors or actors with the autonomous Catalan region within Spain*), and it is a pleasure to have worked with him – and with the kind help of the producers of the films – to prepare pre-Festival reviews this year : Ramon is thanked for his generous assistance and encouragement (as in 2014).

The titles are links to full-length previews of three further films from Camera Catalonia at Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (@camfilmfest / #CamFF) (and the links to the first three reviews are here, in the first posting) [rather than re-invent the wheel, one has linked to the review by Nashwa Gowanlock for TAKE ONE (@takeonecinema / www.takeonecff.com)] :

* Héroes Invisibles (Invisible Heroes) (2015)

* The Long Way Home (El camí més llarg per tornar a casa) (2014)

* Traces of Sandalwood (Rastres de sàndal) (2014) [a link to Nashwa Gowanlock's TAKE ONE preview]

The films can be seen as follows, and the title, in each case, is a link to the booking-page for that screening**

NB Except for the first screening of Traces of Sandalwood, which is at The Light cinema (@lightcambridge), all screenings are at The Arts Picturehouse (@CamPicturehouse).

Thursday 3 September

3.30 p.m. The Long Way Home (El camí més llarg per tornar a casa) (Screen 3)

Wednesday 9 September

6.45 p.m. NB At The Light cinema Traces of Sandalwood (Rastres de sàndal) (Screen B)

Thursday 10 September

1.00 p.m. Traces of Sandalwood (Rastres de sàndal) (Screen 2)

6.00 p.m. The Long Way Home (El camí més llarg per tornar a casa) (Screen 2)



Friday 11 September

3.30 p.m. Héroes Invisibles (Invisible Heroes) (Screen 3)

End-notes

* Please read further about the region and its cinematic style in What is Catalan cinema ? [with 1,800+ page-views, though now in need of being updated].

** Notes on screenings :

NB The allocation of films between the three screens at Festival Central (and elsewhere) can always change (as can, if one is coming from a distance for a specific film, the programme as a whole) : if the audience for a film scheduled for Screen 3 (the smallest screen, around half the capacity of the largest, Screen 1) proves greater than expected, it may end up being swapped, so there could be a change in the exact time of the screening, too.

In the programme (that is a link to the where the PDF file can be consulted / downloaded – printed copies are available at Festival Central and all good local outlets), some slots are also kept blank, so that popular screenings can be repeated : announcements are on Cambridge Film Festival 2015's (@camfilmfest's) web-site, as are alterations to the programme (or the allocation between screens).


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

For posting 1111, a portal-page to the TAKE ONE interviews...

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

17 October

Interviews conducted for, and published by, TAKE ONE, a Cambridge-Film-Festival-based – and mainly on-line (http://takeonecinema.net / @TakeOneCinema [formerly www.takeonecff.com]) – publication [except at the time of Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest / #CamFF)]

In Saffron Walden : was one an amazing present (from another) ? - and, with the other, does that have to be 111 IKC ? pic.twitter.com/njhUbl3mOO

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 1, 2015

An accreting series of links, by order of interviewee's name (date of publication is in square-brackets, and the film-title links to the IMDb (@IMDb) web-page for the film) :


Claudio Zulian [23 September 2015] :
Interview with Claudio Zulian – Anthony Davis spoke to Claudio Zulian, the creator of the film BORN, which screened at this year’s Cambridge Film Festival. [BORN follows the 18th century adventures of coppersmith Bonaventura, his sister Marianna and the rich merchant Vicenç, in the disappeared neighbourhood of El Bornet in Barcelona.]

Born (2014) ~ bornfilm.org ~ @Bornfilm

Daisy Hudson [14 January 2017] :
Half Way – We spoke to Daisy Hudson whose documentary chronicles her family’s devastation when they find themselves at the mercy of the housing crisis. [HALF WAY chronicles the experience of a family of three women trapped in a homeless limbo.]

Half Way (2015) ~ halfwayfilm.co.uk ~ @halfwaydocu

Desiree Akhavan [20 September 2018] :
Interview with Desiree Akhavan – Anthony Davis spoke to Desiree Akhavan at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse recently after the screening of her film THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST. He began by asking whether she had been influenced by ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST or GIRL, INTERRUPTED…

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018) ~ CamPostFilm.com ~ @campostfilm

Dunstan Bruce [17 October 2014] :
A curious life – We spoke to Dunstan Bruce at Cambridge Film Festival this year about his documentary A CURIOUS LIFE, which follows the winsome Jeremy 'The Levellers' [@the_levellers] Cunningham on a trip down memory lane via squids, folk-punk festival mayhem and the Battle of the Beanfield

A Curious Life (2014) ~ acuriouslife.co.uk/Blog ~ @a_curiouslife

Hammudi Al-Rahmoun Font [9 January 2015] :
Font's Othello – Anthony Davis spoke to Hammudi Al-Rahmoun Font about his entertaining and provocative Catalan adaptation of OTHELLO, screened at CFF2014

Otel.lo (Othello) (2012) ~ otello.cat ~ @otel_lo

Ken Loach [6 June 2014] :
In conversation with Ken Loach – Ken Loach visited the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse with his new film JIMMY’S HALL; Anthony Davis spoke to him about journalistic vitriol and corporate propaganda

Jimmy's Hall (2014) ~ http://www.facebook.com/JimmysHallFilm ~ @JimmysHallFilm

Laura Rossi [17 October 2014] :
Interview with Laura Rossi – Anthony Davis spoke to composer Laura Rossi about her experience writing music for BFI Silent Film JANE SHORE (1915), currently touring the UK

Jane Shore (1915) ~ http://www.laurarossi.com/janeshore/ ~ @thelaurarossi

Magali Pettier [28 August 2015] :
Addicted to Sheep – Anthony Davis spoke to Magali Pettier, farmer’s daughter and director of ADDICTED TO SHEEP, which follows a year in the lives of two sheep farmers.

Addicted to Sheep (2015) ~ http://www.addictedtosheep.com ~ @addictedtosheep ~ @MagaliPettier

Mar Coll [27 September 2014] :
[Appended to Rebecca Naghten's] review of We All Want What's Best For Her (2013) – Anthony Davis spoke to director Mar Coll after the screening, focusing on the mental-health-related themes in the film. (An extract of the interview follows.)

Tots volem el millor per a elle (2013) ~ http://www.totsvolemelmillorperaella.com ~ @Totsvolem_peli

Marc Quinn / Gerry Fox [23 July 2015] :
Interview with Marc Quinn & Gerry Fox [Although there is now a link to the full interview] – On 23 July the Arts Picturehouse screened MAKING WAVES, a documentary in which Gerry Fox records one year in the life of Marc Quinn. The film delves into the nature of creativity, following Quinn across the globe. Shortly before the post-screening Q&A we spoke to director Fox and subject/artist Quinn about his notorious “shit-head”, his bromance with Fox and the film’s examination of Quinn’s Warhol style “assembly line of art workers”.

Marc Quinn : Making Waves (2014) ~ http://www.marcquinn.com ~ @_MarcQuinn

Raf V. [11 February 2018] :
Vlogumentary joy with Rafael V. – In his 2017 documentary JOY, vlogumentary maker Rafael V. asks what it means to be happy – where can we find joy ? A few months on from the film’s release, Anthony Davis caught up with Rafael to discuss his personal approach to cinéma vérité, reflect on what he learned from making this film, and find out about his next project.

Joy (2017) ~ youtu.be/tp1AVRoS77Q ~ @variousgiraffes

Toby Amies [6 November 2013] :
Interview with Toby Amies – Filmed predominantly in his cave, haven, call it what you will, of a council flat, Toby Amies’ touching portrait follows ageing maverick Drak [self-styled Drako Zarharzar] as he goes about his everyday life, or rather his every second. Anthony Davis spoke to Toby Amies following the screening at Cambridge Film Festival.

The Man Whose Mind Exploded (2012) ~ http://itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/the-man-whose-mind-exploded/id894744010 ~ @DrakoZarharzar ~ @TobyAmies

William Fowler [12 October 2012] :
Interview with William Fowler – Following the collection of works, featuring or directed by Bruce Lacey, that he brought to the 2012 Cambridge Film Festival, I spoke to William Fowler, who is Curator of Artists’ Moving Image at the BFI (British Film Institute [@BFI])

The Lacey Rituals (1973) ~ http://www.brucelaceyexperience.com

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

Film Festival frenzy (#CamFF 2015)

Recollected in tranquillity : Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (#CamFF)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

27 July

Recollected in tranquillity :

The bustle that was Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (#CamFF)

Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest / #CamFF) is just around the corner from putting on its big show again – amazing to think that, when one first attended screenings there, all the programming was for a one-screen cinema, and one almost took for granted getting to see the new Woody Allen early…

As the Festival gears up for the thirty-fifth time (that’s where, behind the scenes, the frenzy comes in !), no less, a little moment to reflect on last year…


* Well, one was seeking to promote the Camera Catalonia (Catalan) strand, by providing reviews ahead of the screenings : a double pleasure, first to do so, and then to see how – beyond the confines of 'a screener', watched on a laptop – the full potential of the image blossomed in proper screenings

Composer Ethan Lewis Maltby, on the far right, during the Q&A for Fill de Caín (Son of Cain) (2013) (with Ramon Lamarca next to him, and director Jesús Monllaó)

* Relatedly, meeting and interviewing three Catalan film directors – and happening to take two of them punting on the Cam (and even giving one a punting lesson)

Punt pupil (and film director), Hammudi al-Rahmoun Font

* Plus lovely Festival photography from Tom Catchesides (@TomCatchesides) and David Riley (@daveriley) ! (That as well as being with the winning team of Catalan curator Ramon Lamarca, and intern-cum-interpreter Cristina Roures)

Ramon Lamarca and Mar Coll at Festival Central – image courtesy of Tom Catchesides

* The chance to watch both screenings of some Festival favourites at, and see especially how Kreuzweg (Stations of the Cross) (2014) (but also Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy) (2013) repaid renewed attention

* The coffee, the chats, the news – in passing, as one dashed to different screenings – of other viewings, and the celebrated insanity of the TAKE ONE (@takeonecinema) crew (and of a Vine into which we were all cajoled, which was later banned (Not me, guv’ !)…)

* Meeting Dunstan Bruce (@dunstanbruce) for a fun, late-night TAKE ONE interview about A Curious Life (@a_curiouslife), his film on The Levellers (@the_levellers) (with a microphone-wielding editor in chief hiding under a table ?)

Dunstan Bruce

* With Screen 1 in gala mode, the warmth and energy in a film tribute to the late Tony Benn, Tony Benn : Will and Testament (2014)

* Warmth and energy of a different kind in, having guided one of the Catalan directors there, Festival regular Neil Brand (@NeilKBrand), with Jeff Davenport, playing to Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday) (1930), an early picture credit for Billy Wilder

* And, of course, the expected preview of the new Woody Allen, Magic in the Moonlight (2014) (and the brief delight of a vocal from Ute Lemper) – a tetchy role for Colin Firth that also made some people unnecessarily sceptical of historical fact that men of his age married women of the age of Emma Stone ?

* Closing-night party ? No, sorry, one does not know anything about that !



See you at Cambridge Film Festival, daily during the eleven days from 3 to 13 September !


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

Mathematics for the Million (after Hogben) ?

This is a Festival review of How I Came to Hate Maths (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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8 October (Tweets embedded, 15 December, 22 April 2015)

This is a Festival review of How I Came to Hate Maths (Comment j’ai détesté les maths) (2013)

Amazon sellers hit by nightmare before Christmas as glitch cuts prices to 1p http://t.co/IV29NIiUK8
— The Guardian (@guardian) December 14, 2014

Except as far as the first part of the film is concerned, the title How I Came to Hate Maths is somewhat misleading*, for we actually spend much time with people who are studying, or employed in, higher-level mathematics…

Contrariwise, some seem to have complained that the film is not what it does not seem to try to be, which is a sweeping account of how mathematics affects our lives and what mathematicians might be like : one, in particular, with an unusual dress sense and a striking scorpion fashion-accessory (pictured below), speaks very potently about what mathematics is and what the prize that he has gone to India to be awarded means to him.

Cédric Villani, who won a Fields Medal in 2010

He, and another Frenchman, who teaches the subject, both also touch upon (as the start of the film does) the changes in presenting it that brought about what the appropriate generation would know as The New Maths, when textbooks such as that of the Midlands Mathematical Experiment were being used (for some reason, Sarah Dillon, in her review for TAKE ONE, seems to interpret this development as a specifically French one). The film makes clear that The New Maths was not, as it might be in another subject, a change in emphasis or on techniques used to understand concepts, but redefining, at much greater length, such things as what one might mean by a straight line.

What is equally clear was that there were winners and losers, in, respectively, those who related to this approach, and those who found themselves excluded by it, but also that the change itself is still not viewed, all this time later, as having been self-evidently right, but having been partly influenced by forces and paradigms outside what is essential about mathematics itself. For those who get to study mathematics in depth, those matters may be less material, and it is with them that we spend most of the film.

Some mathematicians have religiously defended maths as being on the arts side, as if to defend it from being tainted by the sciences (by not being seen as creative). One mathematician, however, was keen to stress how studying the patterns created by dripping honey onto toast, as both one moves in relation to the other and the speed of the falling material changes, is actually relevant to laying cable on the sea-bed, so that it falls smoothly and does not make those convolutions.

Maybe we duplicated our attention unnecessarily in seeing two ‘retreats’ / summer schools for mathematicians (please see comments below as to whether the film could have been ‘trimmed’), in one of which they even made seating plans so that each person sat at table with every other person at least once (hardly a higher-level mathematical task since, once a program had been devised, the names could just be slotted in each time) – and maybe it would have been nice to have heard more interesting comments from those working for organizations such as Google® than appreciation of the topology of a favourite (commissioned ?) sculpture…

In reviewing the film, Sarah Dillon takes issue with the time devoted to high-speed (or quantum) trading, as if this is somehow peripheral to the subject of mathematics, although a former academic mathematician, Jim Simons (who set up Renaissance Technologies), is at the heart of what has been happening with computer-driven decision-making. Dillon claims that :

The film loses its pace when it moves away from this world [that of ‘higher-level mathematics research’] in order to address the role of mathematics in the global financial crisis. Whilst this is clearly an important contemporary moment in the story the film is telling, the film spends too long on it – cut by about fifteen minutes it would have been a good end to an otherwise perfectly balanced piece.


Just on the figures and with a run-time of 110 mins (and, as remarked elsewhere, The Queen’s Building at Emmanuel College does not, in its lecture-theatre, have the most comfortable seating in the world), that would mean cutting it to around 95 mins. However, Dillon must be mistaken in thinking that the film’s financial focus took it this much out of her ideal proportion – for, although she may have had a stopwatch on it, fifteen minutes would seem more like the total ‘spend’ on that topic, not the amount by which it could have been shortened. The Tweet embedded now at the top of this review is meant to suggest further why such things matter to us all...

Market Turbulence: Wall Street’s Whipsaw Week Shows Global Economy’s Flaws http://t.co/TqSvkKPzql
— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 10, 2014

That said, as long as one credits the meaning of the world economy, and that global trends ought, because governments subscribe to its having significance, to be allowed to crush the lives of millions who are not at fault, quantum trading in commodities, futures, etc., will continue to have the potential to cause chaos. Couple that with the incident that occurred on 6 May 2010, which has been trivially called The Flash Crash (and which no one in the film seems to be able to explain in detail), and it must be right to question what high-speed trading has led us to, and what it might lead to again : in something of the order of 30 minutes, 10% was lost from the value of the Dow Jones, only to be gained back within the day.

Trader charged with manipulation that contributed to 2010 "flashcrash" http://t.co/aIT7M2alOC pic.twitter.com/aWm2Ydypiw

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 21, 2015

Some human decision-makers would have ‘held their nerve’ and traded their way out of the position, others, seemingly along with the automated trading that was going on at phenomenally high frequencies, would have ‘cut their losses’ – and all over what, as no one even identifies market insecurities as being responsible to so-called positions collapsing? These are the Modern financial instruments, and does not a film about mathematics fitly ask some questions about this, when mistakes in super-string theory, not even mentioned, do not damage people’s pension-funds ?

People who like to talk about Google sometimes speak of its algorithm (as if that explains anything, when there are countless algorithms in how it is put together, not just one). With trading, we are essentially talking of the effects of one program going through the contingencies, which have been dictated by the program-steps, over and over at enormous speeds, coupled with that other programs doing the same, each at the same time, and in a process of not necessarily predictable feedback, shifting their stances / responses. Possibly a massive game of crying wolf, such as unautomated trading could also give rise to, but where one could never go back to who cried it…

The calm tone of acceptance of Wikipedia®'s article also makes for alarming reading !


Post-script

For his Movie Evangelist (@MovieEvangelist) blog (up to Day 9 of 11 so far in writing up the Festival), Mark Liversidge wrote this review, which, at two paragraphs, is rather on the short side :

Although Mark is certainly right that it is a kind of anthology, in that it begins with maths teaching and rarely, if ever, returns, one has to ask Where (in the film) is it suggested, let alone stated, that it intended 'to come close to helping those in the “normal person, hate maths” understand why maths is so cool to those of us in the other camp' [word missing, but Mark divides the world in two : 'those people like me who are good at it and enjoy it, and normal people who hate it'].

But what if the film actually is what it says, an anthology of reasons (such as high-speed trading) to hate maths, not like it... ?


For there was also, as well as implicating mathematics in the minutiae of trading, mention of how those algorithms had been written to automate lending criteria - although it was less that automation was inappropriate, but that human oversight both of the parameters, and of the resultant body of lending within a portfolio of risk, was defective.


Unless (as some will boldly still have it) one discredits such banking as one of the factors in this world economy of ours, the point is likewise : another instance of giving over the task of making decisions about risk to a program, and not seeming to check it or its ongoing performance, as if computers will necessarily do what we would have wanted.


End-notes

* And it is far from obvious that it conveys the same message as the original French title, Comment j’ai détesté les maths.


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