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)

Virunga (2014) Q&A with director Orlando von Einsiedel (@virungamovie)

Virunga (2014) Q&A with director Orlando von Einsiedel

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

22 October (updated 24 October, and link added to @virungamovie's Facebook Q&A)

* Inevitably, contains 'spoilers' (if you can have them with a documentary...) *

Virunga (2014) Q&A with director Orlando von Einsiedel

An account of when Virunga (2014) came to The Arts Picturehouse (@CamPicturehouse) for a Q&A with its director Orlando von Einsiedel, hosted by your very own Agent Apsley (@THEAGENTAPSLEY), on Sunday 12 October 2014

Looking forward, now that I have the right Vimeo link, @jojonata @BarbSaferWales, to hosting the @virungamovie Q&A at @CamPicturehouse !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 6, 2014

Prologue

To get a better idea of the appearance of the film (than, otherwise, on a simple 15.6” laptop screen), the Marketing Manager of The Arts Picturehouse (APH / @CamPicturehouse) cudgelled his 50” Internet-connected t.v. into displaying it (via that private Vimeo link) so that The Agent and he could watch in preparation.

Then, for various reasons (not worth going into), the copy of Virunga (2014) that needed to be screened had to come by the agency of Orlando von Einsiedel, its director, when he arrived on Sunday afternoon… Yet, thanks to the skill and dedication of APH’s wizard / chief projectionist, Joe Delaney, this impediment in no way stopped the film looking stunning in Screen 3 (at Festival Central) in a very short time !

@THEAGENTAPSLEY of course! @virungamovie @gorillacd blows any H'wood thriller out of the water, rangers, filmmakers Emmanuel are my heroes!
— Claudia Fucigna(@yoclaudini) October 9, 2014

As will be seen, there had been some build-up on Splatter, which may have helped account for a very pleasing turn-out at APH, not least for a Sunday matinee.


Introductory matter

After a convoluted greeting, involving how the audience had forsaken the outside to come inside to see more of the outside, we started with a mention of other recent films to consider, also either set in or relating to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and three of which had screened at Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest / #CamFF) :

* Blood in the Mobile (2010)

* War Witch (2012) (it won the audience award in 2012 for best feature film)

* Black Africa, White Marble (2012) (which was the winner of the audience award in 2013 for best documentary)

* Sixteen (2013) (seen at Bath Film Festival* (since when, pleasingly, more than 100 page-views))


There was, just as importantly, an exhortation – since, as was stressed, we were watching a film in a cinema – to look at it for its cinematic qualities, and to ask questions on those first (before turning to substance or content). In other words, aspects such as feel, look, editing / cutting, camerawork, music ahead of what Virunga is about…

If for no better reason than that many a documentary’s Q&A can be prone to rush away with discussing whether what the film ‘presents to us’ is right or wrong**, rather than considering how it conveys its messages – as a product in the often highly constructed medium of film. (One recent example (at APH) was that for Return to Homs (2013), which skatingly considered this question in the host’s initial enquiries, but scarcely went near it again [whereas The Agent, for one, thought it a highly relevant one].)


Getting back to that Tweet about Hollywood now, the way in which the film builds on – and has the appearance of – a film drama had partly been where the injunction to look at the elements of its construction started. As a friend, who had been at the screening, later said :

I thought it was helpful getting people to think about ‘form’ before watching, as the content was so emotive.

[£10 to him for saying that !]

In fact, that motive had not been consciously identified as a reason for approaching the Q&A in this way, but – as it is usually part of film-making to set out ‘to say something’ – it had certainly been inherent : a matter of not getting carried away with the What before considering the How – and the Why.


Opening business

Over the closing titles, the song ‘We Will Not Go’ (music and lyrics by J. Ralph) is reprised, which is excellently performed by Salif Keita, Youssou Ndour and Fally Ipupa (along with, according to IMDb, J. Ralph ?) :

The opening question – directed to the audience, not to Orlando (but with his agreement, as the song had only recently been recorded) – was whether they had liked it, and they indicated that they had. (As to the other films, when this was next checked, only a couple of people had seen them in each case.)

Orlando was then keenly welcomed back to the front, and began by outlining how he had come to make the film (his first of feature length), essentially summed up in this quotation (taken from IMDb, and whose latter part was quoted later in the Q&A) :

The thrust of the project was to try to tell the story of the rebirth of the eastern Congo because there'd been a period of stability for a few years, and I came across the story of the park's brave rangers. And I thought their story was a sort of metaphor for the wider rebirth of the region. Within a few weeks this new civil war started, and I found out about the oil discovery. So I ended up making a very different film.


As Orlando came on to tell us, he had been aware of those films from Congo (which had come to Cambridge at Film Festival time), and had wanted to be able to say something different about the country and its situation. Yet, as he went on to say, just as the process of making / editing a film changes what it is or could be (please see next paragraph), so had events since they had arrived on the ground in 2012.


Form

As to style, Orlando was asked first about ‘the history of suppression and exploitation’ (a description with which he had agreed), which is succinctly summarized in footage and facts that are presented near the start of Virunga***. We learnt that the summary had not always been part of the film, but that it had been found essential, because, without it, people later proved not to be following what was going on.

The tick-over of that summary, with its teleprinter-style captions / titles, seems to set the pace and feel for the film, so Orlando was asked whether that aspect of how it looked had always been part of the conception of how it would appear, or only arrived at in editing. (Before the Q&A, it had been established that it was quite consciously a form of presentation that one might see, say, in the Bourne films.)

If you don't watch documentaries, @virungamovie has all the pace, punch and intrigue of a spy film - except about the real @gorillacd's fate
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2014

Orlando explained that there had been a desire to maintain interest, so that people would be engaged to watch, and that a drama editor [Masahiro Hirakubo] had especially been brought in to work on this aspect (although Orlando did not specify at what stage, or at exactly whose behest).

He agreed with the proposition that what we feel is rooted in what we see through four people – the two rangers of Virunga National Park (André [Bauma] and Rodrigue [Mugaruka]), its chief warden (Emmanuel de Merode), and the foreign journalist (Mélanie [Gouby]), who had already been on the ground for eighteen months – and that the crew had taken time to acclimatize to the developing situation, both with the British-registered oil company SOCO and the rebels of M23.

The Agent’s comment was that the interviews and other footage with the four principals seemed to have been shot in a plain, unforced way. Orlando also remarked on the remarkable work and person of André, acting as parent to the orphaned gorillas cared for at the centre at Rumangabo, and how André’s character had endeared him to those who met him through the film at screenings [such as at Tribeca Film Festival, as pictured at IMDb].

A woman in the audience commented that she liked the music (scored by Patrick Jonsson) – asked if she could characterize it, she said that it suited the film. Then, no one (least of all Orlando) understood The Agent’s remark that there was a smudged quality to some of the music, which thereby failed to convey this [unvoiced] message : there is a sound used in the mix that makes the texture seem to be stretched / distorted**** (almost as if the natural world, and what it means, is being erased)…

Orlando, though, spared everyone's awkwardness by proceeding to talk briefly about other qualities in Jonsson's score, for example the fact that he had used a large variety of musical instruments, some of them indigenous to this part of Africa.


Content

Regarding the statements by SOCO included at the end, and the film’s closing slides about SOCO’s continuing activities, Orlando said that the public declaration made about SOCO’s intentions had been put in context by a leaked e-mail (to which he referred), which suggested that making the declaration had been out of expediency. (However, he did not quote from the e-mail directly, or have its text to hand.)

One questioner wanted to know why some of Mélanie’s covert filming had been re-created, to which Orlando replied that buttonhole cameras are very hard to direct and that it is not uncommon to end up with footage of tablecloth, which they had decided was best substituted, in this case, in the interest of not detracting from the accompanying audio. As he had already indicated before the Q&A started, he stated that they had provided equipment to Rodrigue and Mélanie to further the procurement of evidence that both Emmanuel and his team and she already desired to obtain.

Another questioner asked whether Emmanuel de Merode is, as claimed in the film by opponents of the interests of the park (and so of Emmanuel), a member of the Belgian royal family, to which Orlando answered that he is (in some minor way), but that he had been brought in because he was external to the existing situation in Congo.

Perhaps in the same way, The Agent suggested (in relation to Tony Benn : Will and Testament (2014)), Benn’s hereditary peerage had been used against him politically to question his qualification for speaking for the working classes. (In the film’s covert recording, we had seen a bribe given to Rodrigue, heard cynicism about whether the staff of the park could really care for the animals (rather than just holding out for a better offer before withdrawing protection of Virunga), and a racist attribution of a kind of blood-lust to the Congolese people.)


A number of people who attended clearly knew of the situation (or even Virunga National Park itself in one case), and some of them, and others, commented on it or the power of Virunga. The Agent referenced Anthony Baxter’s film A Dangerous Game (2014) (his follow-up to You’ve been Trumped (2011)), where Donald Trump is permitted to have a golf-course built on the Aberdeenshire coast (in the constituency of Alex Salmond MP), despite the fact that the dunes where it is situated constitute part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) :

Orlando expressed hope that the fact that Virunga is a World Heritage Site, and that the desired mining and drilling activities are unlawful under Congolese law, can be brought to bear, along with gathering attention through the film (please see below).


Closing matter

At the very close, Orlando gave several means by which people could support Virunga National Park (@gorillacd), including spreading news of their reaction to the film on social media, giving financially to the park (through the web-site), not divesting from portfolios with interests in oil companies, but putting pressure on SOCO through them, and by signing up for updates through the web-site at www.virungamovie.com.

Since the film is being distributed via Netflix from 7 November, one can only assume that it does not have links with the oil or mining business that it would compromise. It is to be noted that Leonardo DiCaprio is also on board with the film, listed as one of its (executive ?) producers.

Many who had not asked questions came to speak to Orlando in the short time before his taxi back to Cambridge station.


To any whose questions (and Orlando’s responses) have not been recollected here, many apologies – hosting a Q&A makes one have eyes to the time, where the next question will come from, and everything about the moment, and can militate against taking in too much, beyond in outline, of what is actually being said. But Tweet @THEAGENTAPSLEY, and that can be remedied by editing in the material !

Orlando has also been interviewed by scene creek

STOP PRESS : Now see the Facebook Q&A here
NB no responsibility of any kind is taken for the views expressed in, or content of, the wholly external web-page to which this is a link


End-notes

* A film that was made with the resources and other support of the film-school in Bath, and which concerns a former child-soldier (played by Roger Nsengiyumva), adopted and living in the UK (with Rachael Stirling’s character).

** Or, which are separate (if often connected) questions, whether the film-maker has rightly or wrongly represented ‘the facts’ and / or rightly or wrongly employed these very tools of the medium, e.g. colouring one’s impression of footage that was shot without audio by the use of music and / or sound-design…

*** Some aspects of the historical summary are disputed by a user on IMDb in a review there headed Beautiful and brave film spoilt by historical inaccuracies. Orlando had answered, when asked, that it had not been easy to decide, in terms of facts and footage, what to include.

**** An effect, in fact, used by composer Ant Neely in the score to Sloane U'Ren's and his Festival film Dimensions (2011).

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

Accented to good effect

This is a review of Pride (2014)

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

21 September (updated 19 October)

This is a review of Pride (2014) (which screened at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (#CamFF), but was seen later)

Ours will be a pint of @PrideMovieUK (4.1%) from Moonshine Brewery please. Solidarity and cheers :)X pic.twitter.com/PKfXuZPrDn
— Arts Picturehouse (@CamPicturehouse) September 15, 2014

At a greater remove (or distance) than when we first saw The Full Monty (1997) or Brassed Off ! (1996) (with, respectively, Tom Wilkinson (steel) and Pete Postlethwaite (coal) – and both films, perhaps, made in anticipation of New Labour coming to power in May 1997 ?), various film-makers have returned to the political struggle that was fought out, on the ground and in people’s lives and homes, between British Coal (in full (according to Wikipedia®) the British Coal Corporation) and the NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) :


In addition to Pride (2014), we have had – at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (@Camfilmfest / #CamFF) – Still the Enemy Within (2014) (write-up to come of a Q&A soon...), about the struggle to save pits / collieries, and references in Tony Benn : Will and Testament (2014), quite apart from the equally political We Are Many (2014) (dealing with the Stop the [Iraq] War campaign).

Yet the major influence on the content, look and characterization of Pride, and which had four screenings at the Festival, is Dancing in Dulais (1986) (NB, possibly through format issues / successive copying, the image-quality is not always good), where, in their own film, we see, for example, now identifiable members of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, we hear how and why Lesbians Against Pit Closures broke away, and we can listen to the real Mark Ashton explain the affinity with and solidarity for the miners’ position that led to LGSM (words / sentiments that are used in the film).


What Pride has done, however, is to seek to be maybe too entertaining / too comedic, whilst at the same time wanting to educate us about what happened (although, of course, that leaves us free to seek out material such as that contained in Dancing in Dulais for ourselves, if we want to look beyond the film) – to be too independent of the facts, when needed to drive the plot, but otherwise being close to them, so that there feels to be a compromise :


* Paddy Considine (Dai) has a free stage, and not so much as a heckle, in which to allow his words to reach out – yet it is supposed to be (so we have just been told) a potentially difficult crowd, but he does nothing special to begin with that would have made them accept him

* A mirrored Tom-Jones-like display of exuberance* has the standoffish miners won over in five minutes – both this one, and that with Dai, seem unnecessarily easy victories, if one really wants to build tension that is later released

* The opposition to LGSM’s involvement (is this just an invention to give the plot a turn ?) being focused on a trio of evil-minded people (members of one family) – as if, at one stage anyway, dazzling dance movements had converted everyone else to miners, lesbians and gays working together (as long as no one knew about it ?)

* Bromley / Joe (George Mackay) and Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer) having a conveniently similar impulse, which gives the latter the occasion to tell the former what he needs to do with his life to make a real difference (on this day, we are made to focus on following a personal story, ignoring the relevance of what is happening to the battle that both men had been helping to fight – please see below)

* When the Gay Pride march in 1985 at the end turns out to have a greater significance, the film again serves its purposes by having us believe in surprise (as against planning and knowledge, which could have explicated the national NUM repercussions of events typified, for us, by our visits to The Dulais Valley)


Of course, we can accept these things for the sake of the fact that this is not a documentary, but is trying (albeit in an often comic way) to show LGSM’s story (and, within it, Joe’s, Mark's and Gethin's steps for maturity and independence), and how the miners and they influenced and affected each other for the better – and because, unlike Tom Hardy’s wandering attempt in Locke (2014), the Welsh accents, and performances, seem pretty good from the likes of Considine, Bill Nighy (Cliff), and Imelda Staunton (Hefina).

Snow, The Severn Bridge from unusual angles, and the local scenery complete the establishment of Wales as one locus, with London as a second, and make for the necessity to demonstrate that physical separation*** has effects – the aspect that is most clearly drawn out in the film. When those from the locii do combine, we see them receiving welcome, hospitality, and invitations to participate in social activity, and so engaging with life in the other locus.

In that it partly concerns workers' rights, Pride (2014) reminds of Made in Dagenham (2010), but the latter is as amusing, but more telling.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 16, 2014

Pride occupies a very different space on the continuum from Made in Dagenham, which, although also a film of positivity, feels closer to what Ken Loach is doing both in The Spirit of ‘45 (2013) and, arguably with even more political effectiveness, in Jimmy’s Hall** (2014). Dagenham also dares conflate several real people in the one figure of Sally Hawkins’ character of Rita O’Grady, whereas Pride, almost with veneration, chooses instead to give us mostly real individuals amongst the miners, their families and the supporters from LGSM :

Pride’s approach roots the story in actuality, so (in Dancing in Dulais) we hear marchers for Lesbians Against Pit Closures singing the chant ‘Every woman is a lesbian at heart’ (which the film locates on a minibus trip), and Dulais shows us the actual vehicle donated to the miners (and the caption / heading ‘Dulais wears our badge on its van’)).

However, it then means that the artificial ploys cited above by which Pride’s script gives rise to dramatic movement rely on non-historic developments : so, although LGSM’s film acknowledges that there was trepidation from the community before the first visit, it then asserts that, as Ashton had hoped, barriers were broken down between people who had both been oppressed by government and the police (probably not because one gay man amazed them with his prowess…)

That is a key message, and the fact that The Labour Party Conference (although it had debated them before) then officially embodied support for gay and lesbian rights shows that the links made between the striking miners and LGSM proved a commonality in their causes.

Nearly finished, a review of Pride (2014) - good, but maybe too busy making sure that it covers various points to cohere as a story ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 22, 2014

That said, at maybe too many times, it feels as if the film both has its cake and eats it, for it does not even outline in its written closing statements about Ashton and some of the others what the outcome was, in South Wales and other mining areas, for the NUM and its members – maybe Pride’s makers wrongly assume that everyone knows that part of the story (for it concentrates, in its ending, with the encouraging side, that of miners, gays and lesbians getting to know and value each other beyond The Dulais Valley) ?


End-notes

* Which one could object to both as an early deus ex machina that invokes Billy Elliot (2000) (another film that combines the miners’ strike and personal development), and as stereotyping the talents and interests of gay men (which ABBA capitalized on in ‘Dancing Queen’ ?).

Yet, according to what we hear in Still the Enemy Within, the apparent delay to LGSM's being welcomed, at the Onllwyn Welfare Hall, was actually only a momentary, hesitant quietening on their arrival - followed by a round of applause...

** Reviewed here.

*** The film cannot even resist having Gethin (Andrew Scott), again prompted to do so as Joe is by Mark, being shown visiting his mother, then rushing us on, only to return to the fruit of that contact at a testing time… That may have happened, but the film generally both wants to give the message that things can change, but rarely to show that happening in a credible way (with Gethin, we are not even shown that).


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

The lady's not for turning ! or, Saying when you are wrong

This is a Festival review of Tony Benn : Will and Testament (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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14 September

This is a Festival review of Tony Benn : Will and Testament (2014), which was shown at Festival Central (The Arts Picturehouse : @Campicturehouse) in Screen 1

at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday 6 September, and followed by a Q&A

Tony Benn, even when just fighting with the limitations of the law, and of parliamentary practice, to become the MP that he had been elected to be by the constituents of Bristol South East (a ward that later disappeared in Bristol South), has a fascinating story to tell, one which, in this respect, had been so often trivialized at the time as a rich boy believing that he could possibly speak for the ordinary people.

This film deliberately does not rely on other people to narrate Benn’s story, as some documentaries would (as if for taste of variety in the telling*), for, when someone is speaking about what happened, it is Benn himself. (Apparently, he had been wary of anything being shot that might be seen to be eliciting a reaction through sympathy, wanting to stand rather on his words and his record.)

Director ‘Skip Kite’*, answering a question from the auditorium, said that it had been his decision that it was best to hear just from Benn himself (and rhetorically asked why, when one could listen to Benn, one would want to have someone else talking about him) – just as had been getting Benn to read his choice, for Benn, from Auden and Shakespeare (Benn’s family had been surprised, because he was not a reader of poetry), filming him in Southwold (and other places where he had given public talks), and, most importantly, the staging of much of the filming :

When not filmed in his actual kitchen (we were informed in the Q&A that it had been the only part of that property then capable of being filmed in), Benn spoke in what was also confirmed to be a film set (at Ealing Studios), with enlarged front pages of newspapers on one side, hanging as if they were military colours. Though in fact – more often than not – they reminded us (as they gently changed around and became updated) of the scurrilous way in which he had been treated and represented in the British press.

No one watching Tony Benn : Will and Testament can doubt that he was prepared to stand up and be counted for what he believed. *Certainly, his life and work had been an encouragement to the creative team that was represented at Festival Central, who had united under its director’s assumed name of Skip Kite : they all said how much they had learnt from Benn and valued meeting him in making the film, but how every meeting unfailingly had to start with ‘a cuppa’ !

Without venom or great resentment, Benn told us how there had been times in his family life when the doorbell was rung at regular hours throughout the night, and his wife and children were followed in the hope that they might make a mistake or otherwise let something awkward slip. He well knew that, when he was dubbed in the press The most dangerous man in Britain, his principles would not be easily contended for, and, of course, he became a convenient target for people’s class and political animosity. Yet in later life, when we saw him after his record-breaking Commons career (back at Parliament, for a cuppa), he was almost rueful about being viewed as a kind, grandfatherly figure… but still believing himself to be ‘dangerous’.

It also shows that, whatever one thinks of what Benn said or represented, one can – as much of the publicity for the film suggested, e.g. on the film-poster – consider his integrity apart from his politics and policies. Talking factually about how he had asked what a mark was on the pavement, when being shown around Nagasaki and having been directed to it, he said that he had been told that a child had been sitting there and been vaporized by the A-bomb : he had clearly been moved by this experience, and it lay at the root of his conviction of the evil of nuclear weapons.


Tony Benn : Will and Testament does show his remarkable will, that of paying the cost of contesting what he thought morally wrong – for example, whatever one’s beliefs about the rights and wrongs of The Miners’ Strike might be (in 1984 to 1985, and a theme of several Festival films this year), one can scarcely doubt that he meant it when he said how proud he was to appear at the annual gala at Durham Cathedral or pictured on a miners’ banner (and alongside heroes such as Keir Hardie and Aneurin Bevan).

Wanted to make it to @EnemyWithin1984 at @camfilmfest, but - as ever - so much choice, bi-location not perfected, yet saw @TonyBennFilm...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 13, 2014

Likewise, when Benn says that he came to realize that he had been wrong in government to work on setting up nuclear-powered power-stations in the UK, because he had failed to appreciate that plutonium, the principal by-product of uranium fission, would be used to make warheads for more nuclear weapons. Several times in the film, he says that he had had to admit that he had been wrong, and that he thought it only right to do so.

That said, a comment on Michael Foot’s leadership and how the dimension of his CND stance at the 1983 election** helped (along with the jingoism of the recapture of The Falkland Islands from Argentina under Margaret Thatcher) lead to another term of Thatcher government could have been elicited, but appeared passed over.

And, surprisingly, one Festival regular said that he would not attend the screening because of its subject, and one guesses that it must likewise have attracted, or kept away, those with leanings to the left or, respectively, lacking them, thereby giving rise to an audience that was generally interested in Benn and how he was to be portrayed :

Was, I think, appropriately dressed for Tony Benn: Will and Testament. Encouraged. #CamFF pic.twitter.com/JPMtWG4mMz
— Lilith Cooper (@Coops_LJ) September 6, 2014

To those not interested, whether because not holding left-wing views or not wanting to follow their history through a major figure, one has to suggest that they are mistaken in not watching this film. It has much to say about humanity and what makes life worthwhile, whether Benn’s shock at the death of his brother Michael in the Second World War, and his love for, and loss of, his wife, Caroline Middleton DeCamp (to whom he proposed within ten days, because she was otherwise returning to the States) – or his saying that what mattered to him most about Concorde, when he was Minister of Technology, was the people who built it.

@THEAGENTAPSLEY Thanks! appreciate the review! best Tishand the Film team :-)
— Tony Benn Film (@TonyBennFilm) September 15, 2014

End-notes

* Let alone on t.v., where people pretend to remember what their first thoughts were about x (where x could be anything from children’s programmes to a giant of British comedy), when one guesses that they have seen it since, and that they have been ‘guided’ as to what their recollected response was, typically We had never heard anything like it….

** According to Wikipedia®, the party had the lowest share of the vote since 1918 (though some appear to blame the SDP for splitting the vote and letting the Tories in).


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