Sunday 2 August 2015

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)]




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.]





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.]






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…






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






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







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








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.





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.)





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”.





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.





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.





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])






Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday 1 August 2015

Lost in Translation (albeit of the author’s / artist’s own making*… ?)

This is a review of Moomins on The Riviera (2014) (at Saffron Screen)

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

1 August

This is a review of Moomins on The Riviera (2014), as seen at Saffron Screen (@Saffronscreen)




The following little comment tells one that one was not exactly in, say, the league of the unstinting values and quality of Sylvain Chomet’s L’Illusionniste (The Illusionist) (2010), or of Studio Ghibli (e.g. Spirited Away (2001)), with those of Moomins on The Riviera (2014) :




Roughly speaking, one rated its various aspects thus :

1. The opening sequence (with Snuffkin, voyaging) – charming, inventive, and beautiful*

2. The voices – one really only takes issue with Moomin's**

3. The characterization**

4. Much of the generality of the animation***

5. The music (which is too often more like Muzak ?)

6. The story – few surprises in store



Little things to note (in no particular order) :

* You do look good without the stripes, too – the thinly disguised homoeroticism of a little dog, who thinks that he only likes cats (but has never approached any), whom Moominmamma helps by painting another dog to look like a cat (which is fine, until he is near water)

* Paying for things : sometimes this is an issue (e.g. when The Snork Maiden has to win cash at the casino to buy her bikini (and other outfits – and conveniently has a huge amount left over, just when needed by the plot), but elsewhere Moominmamma buys that paint (or Moomin hires a boat) without any means of payment

* Mymble (voiced by Alison O’Donnell) is flirtily fun, readily falling in with the idea of Stockholm Syndrome and fancying the pirates (who are so manly), but she (and they) are written out of the film when The Moomins sail off (even if Little Myy stows away) – just dealt with by a throwaway line at the end about how she missed Little Myy and so could not enjoy the pirates

* Many names of oriental origin appear in the voluminous animation credits – accounting for all those people, seen in silhouette at the outset of being on The Riviera (and then occasionally later), wearing conical hats ?

* The unexplained bag of creatures, collected and kept until the escape from the Keystone-Kops like mass of policemen, seem to correspond with the outlandish words from the Moomin books : Moominmamma, indeed, says (of The Grand) We simply don’t fit in – everything is simply too outlandish

* Moomin (innocently ?) does not seem much bothered where The Snork Maiden spent the night of the ball, only to see her with flashy Clark Tresco…


End-notes

* Arguably, to fit the storyline (and, really, the clue was in the title : Moomins do not belong on The Riviera, even if Tove Jansson did translate her own quirky characters there (their quirkiness, and her creativity, is there when we start the film, with Snuffkin…)), this lushness of life is to show that the grass was not greener (even if it was only The Snork Maiden’s celebrity interest, arbitrarily entertained, that ever suggested that it could be).

(Admittedly, Moominpappa quickly styled himself De Moomin to fit in (saying, of The Grand Hotel, It looks a bit big – or maybe I’m too small…) – and became florid in his fabulation – which (as she heard, and fell in, with all this) did not quite accord with Moominmamma’s naive desire to have us believe that she thought them to be literal guests, rather than paying ones.)

** Voiced by Russell Tovey, we have a highly tetchy and jealous Moomin (about the motor-boat : It can go to blazes, and so can you !), paired with a flighty / ambitious Snork Maiden (and no Snork) [although, according to http://moomin.wikia.com/wiki/The_Snork_Maiden, ‘She is very loyal to her friends and somewhat emotional’])



*** The lack of imagination, and detail, in the animation cannot simply be laid at the door of having to show the Riviera as a shallow, one-dimensional place*, because, although there are variations in the levels of detail / richness in the picture-frame, so much of the film fills space with animation that is just simple action (or loops of action) against an unmoving background, e.g. Moominpappa ascending the stairs with Marquis Mongaga at his mansion : it feels very much like a stop-gap for the eye-pleasing quality of the opening scenes (with their deft touches of real magic).




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday 31 July 2015

Passing the salt : Sharing the vision of Sebastião Salgado

This is a review of The Salt of the Earth (2014)

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

31 July

This is a review of The Salt of the Earth (2014)



For The Salt of the Earth (2014) (#TheSaltOfTheEarth : the official web-site is TheSaltOfTheEarth-Film.com), it was a real pleasure, for a change, to be in Screen 2 at The Arts Picturehouse (@CamPicturehouse (the intermediate size of screen)). Even more so to be able to see Sebastião Salgado’s photographic images, projected on a screen of this size, and appreciate their quality.

A recommendation from Jordi Torrent (@nycjordi) – as well as this one from Mark Cousins (@markcousinsfilm) – had ensured that one would have to make time to see Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado’s (his son’s) film :




Yet seeing Salgado’s photography (as one can judge that Cousins must partly be saying) was only a fraction of the experience, for, in his gentle words of commentary, in clear, beautiful French, there was a double pleasure for the ear : both to understand what he had seen (and how, with his camera, he had been able to let us see it), and to hear the poetry that was such an element of his description. In fact, it was hardly mere description, which might have added but a little, but an immensely enriching illumination of his artistic vision, which brought us into experiencing his work more deeply :

Whether, with Wenders, leafing through loose prints (or unbound pages from his books of photographic collections), or speaking as they were shown full size on the screen, Salgado feels like a kindly but serious relative, earnestly talking us through the time that he spent with the people whom they show, so that we can relate to them (or, in later work, to broader scenes) : there is compassion in the way in which he helps us understand his work, from the individual histories of those dying* (or dead) in Sahel (1984–1986) to those Trying their luck in the combined wonder and horror of a Brazilian gold-mine (his first allusion to Dante’s Inferno** ?), in a country where coffins are for rent. (We see a body simply lying at the bottom of a grave.)






One could not have imagined that there would be such power to be had in hearing Salgado as we looked at his photographs, and it is at the centre of what gives the film its strength (alongside voice-overs, of a more explanatory nature, from Wenders and Juliano Salgado), and makes it a living creature : not for the first time, one likens it to the afternoon at CRASSH in Cambridge (@CRASSHlive, The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities), when we had the unknown factor of Murray Perahia, talking The Doric String Quartet (@doric_quartet) through playing the Cavatina of Beeethoven’s Strinq Quartet in B Flat Major, Op. 130, and where we found 1 + 4 = > > 5 to be true.

Only a little eerily (because not aiming at the uncanny, but rather causing us to hesitate as to whether we were really seeing this), it is in commenting on the place by the church in Brazil (where, other than coffins being for rent, many items are on sale) that, for the first time, Salgado’s face appeared to emerge from an image : face and image had, of course, been graded as to texture and tone to match, so that he appeared within it, and it was a telling effect – sparingly used – to show how he had participated in the life that he has photographed.


Likewise, of course, and worthily of a film about Salgado’s photography and life, the cinematography (by Hugo Barbier, and Juliano Selgado) is excellent. Not that (and one would not want it to be) it is mimetic of the former, except as to its quality, if only for this simple reason, which Salgado gives right at the beginning of the film, when he is being observed, sitting at the top of a high point in his native Brazil, looking out, and taking photographs :

The premise (too little realized, and of which he reminds us) that, because – especially at this level of artistry – one is drawing with light (the exact meaning of the word ‘photography’), a number of photographers, put in front of the same scene, would produce several different ways of picturing it.




At the risk of seeming to say too much more about the how, rather than the what, one must mention Laurent Petitgand’s music, which, as one would expect from such a film, is subtle and is fully assimilated into the work itself : at first, what sounded like cello and quiet pulsing from an electric guitar, and then, when Salgado is with the Yali people of Papua New Guinea (in 2011), there is also a little percussion, and a hint of piano.

Then, at a tender moment***, when father (Sebastião) is leaning on son (Juliano) to be steady to try to get some shots of walruses (as the latter accompanies the former to come closer to his life and work), gentle xylophone****. Throughout, the scoring is absorbed / integrated into the film as a whole (with its employment of aspects of sound-design, with distorted chimes, echo, metallic timbres).


As to Wenders and Salgado, the film begins where the former began knowing about the latter, with the scale of those shots from the gold-mine (one of which was what Wender first saw**), and with Salgado telling us about this place, and us seeing him in Brazil, and then on location in Papua New Guinea, candidly photographing people who, amidst what appears to be their celebration / ceremony, look at images of themselves on the screen of his camera. Using photographic portraits, Wenders takes us through Salgado’s early life, student times*****, move to Paris with Lélia, and their decisive choice for him to leave his background in economics (and a post with The World Bank) and devote himself to professional photography, a career that has brought us significant titles, of which the principal ones are :

[The] Other Americas (1977–1984)

Sahel : The End of the Road (1984–1986)

Workers (1986–1991)

Exodus (Migrations) (1993–1999)

Genesis (2004–2013)


At the same time as following, in sequence, the making of these publications (the last two titles belong, respectively, to the second and third lives / planets / movies to which Mark Cousins refers (in his Tweet above)), we have Lélia, supporting Sebastião’s work, and bringing up their sons Juliano and Rodrigo – a far cry from the dramatic notion that a recent film wants to bring us of a photographer of world events / situations (an unfavourable memory of which was evoked by some stages of his career : better points of connection can be found in In A Better World (Hævnen) (2010) and [at least in portraying civil war / genocide] Half of a Yellow Sun (2013))) :




Whether telling us about the courtoisie of gorillas, and how they will welcome one (if one respects their terms), or of a dead cicada, being incorporated into a tree, Salgado is always making observation about the world.

However, about mankind (and following Workers (subtitled Archaeology of the Industrial Age)), he says (from seeing what happens in the former (supposedly civilized) Yugoslavia) We are extremely violent : indeed, his final experiences in Rwanda (having seen previously how Hell was taking the place of Paradise) led him to see it as the edge of darkness (and to retire from taking images of this aspect of the world).

(At an earlier time, perhaps, he had been able to take heart, travelling 300 to 400 miles on the back of a truck (from Sahel ?), in two men, friends, who were pretending that it was a Sunday afternoon. Yet, as an economist who could see how governments were starving the people whom he saw, he knew early that their suffering was not un problème de portage.)




In passing, where the film ends has already been alluded to*****. In talking about Salgado’s time with the Yali people, it has likewise been mentioned that they looked at his images (not seeing a sinister taking of their souls), and he later says, about taking a photographic portrait : the subject makes an offer to you, to take a glimpse of that person’s life.

In putting Salgado, talking (or silent, reflecting), on the screen, Wenders breaks with ‘the industry standard’ of how to shoot an interview, and puts him right in the centre of the frame. Salgado is offering us a glimpse of him, and, by being filmed in this setting / lighting******, Wenders / Juliano Salgado and the crew graciously accept his offer.


End-notes

* Often, we are informed, as a result of cholera, from the massive weakening caused by diarrhoea (and the resultant dehydration) and then being susceptible to other infections.

** And a photograph from where was his first point of connection with Wenders, when he bought a print of it, and then another, which hauntingly hangs over his desk, of a woman (the fourth image on this web-page).

*** One is reminded of some of Sokurov’s films, such as Father and Son (2003) (and Mother and Son (1997)).

**** Later in the film (but chronologically earlier, as it is in Kuwait in 1991), with Salgado’s compulsion to spend time alongside fire-fighters from Calgary – and partly, as he tells us, damage his hearing from the sheer sound – the volume of the soundtrack, and its presence, are necessarily greater. (Translated, Salgado calls this scene, with around five hundred oil-wells that had been set on fire when Saddam Hussein's forces withdrew, A giant stage, the size of the planet.) Further on, there is glockenspiel, but cello (sometimes with tremolo, and also using echo) is a mainstay of Petitgand's score.

***** We hear what Salgado’s father, calling him Tiao, says about his son when younger, and we see where the family farm is, and what has happened to it, as soil erosion has been caused by farming the land with cattle, leading to a lack of plant-life to hold back the flow of water. (Later, we see the relevance, with the founding of the Instituto Terra, and the planting of more than two million indigenous trees.)

****** In the hide, before father and son drowsily succumb to sleep (and after the polar bear has frightened away the walruses), Salgado says, about the bear on the endless shingle, that it does not make 'a well-framed photo', because there is no action, anything. The set-up for filming Salgado's face precisely makes it a well-framed image, respectful of him : who he is, and what he does.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Thursday 30 July 2015

Female directors' short films : LSFF and The Guardian at Festival Central

Short films from London Short Film Festival in conjunction with The Guardian

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

30 July

This programme of seven¹ short films at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, was from London Short Film Festival (@LSFF) and presented in conjunction with The Guardian² (@guardian / @guardianfilm)





Whether it mattered that all of the films had been directed by women, taking these four³ in turn... :


Zima (Winter) ~ Cristina Picchi

One of two films (in the whole programme) to show the vastness and coldness of the Russian lands, this one had a much better soundtrack, employing sound-design that uses low-frequency electronica, broadcast speech, and the sound of the wind, and which complements, and so strengthens, the effect of the visual element :

Occasional narration tells us of the deprivation of living within The Arctic Circle (when ‘the polar day’ is dominated by darkness), and of levels of cold that make one not wish to venture out and check the gauges at the weather-station, but the approach of Zima (Winter) is principally visual : slow pans, scenes of snowy streets reflected or from above, and full, static shots of ships, etc. Or ice-fishing on Baikal Lake, with sound captured of being underwater to accompany the threatening tales of what happens to the unwary who venture there…



Across Still Water ~ Ruth Grimberg

This is not a film that imagines that an adult audience needs its story laid out from the start : it dares to have us knocking around in an underground space at the beginning (where elongated, protective bags are in evidence, but are we clear that they do not contain hunting equipment ?), and running through shots, by the water (and using natural light ?), of night-fishing, before a scene where John is talking to his mother in her kitchen.

His disability, or its nature, escaped us, but now – and with scenes of practising casting in daylight – we realize that what can be reached with a rod symbolically is a sort of measure of it. Across Still Water, in its pace and editing, has a considerable sense of still, and space, in which to contemplate what we now see. And the dark, and the moonshine, of the final scenes by the water serve as metaphor, as John comes to the point of saying to his friend Gonna have to swallow and do it in the end.



Gan-Gan ~ Gemma Green-Hope

A film that includes incredibly fast sequences of montage to imply the vitality of and variety within a deceased grandmother’s life, interlaced with personal narration about the film-maker’s and her times together. Full of repose, when the fast-flicker takes its times to subside, and a melding of word and image that defies one not to be impressed by it.



An All-Encompassing Light ~ Chloe White

We guess at what that light was, for our Korean-born narrator in Japan, but we do not guess that he and others in his position will have been discriminated against for having witnessed it (as if he had not already faced discrimination because of his race) : this comes out of his involved, but calm, recollection, contained in a film that gradually takes us beyond a house, and a man emerging from it, to the life that led up to, and reasons to remember, 6 August at 8.15 a.m. (An anniversary which, he tells us, was still being marked twenty years ago, and whose being forgotten encourages him to relate what he had never planned to tell.)

With excellent music from Thomas Carrell, which ebbs and flows as with waves, the film is careful in pace, and in mixing imagery from then and now. At the centre of the memories, the emotional, but measured, telling of his mother’s warm tears on his neck : of the pus from where he had been burnt, and the infection, and the maggots, which cause her to tend him, but to wish him Hurry up and die for fear – wrongly so – of what his later appearance would be.



End-notes

¹ Originally wrote 'eight', but cannot count !

² Whose story-led films of up to fifteen minutes we were encouraged to find at theguardian.com, and which, we were told, are intended to build up to a film per week.


³ The full programme was :

1. Zima (Winter) ~ Cristina Pecchini

2. Not as old as the Trees ~ Jessica Sarah Rutland ??

3. Memoirs ~ Susan Aldworth

4. Across Still Water ~ Ruth Grimberg

5. Sleepers’ Beat ~ Anastasia Kirillova

6. Gan-Gan ~ Gemma Green-Hope

7. An All-Encompassing Light ~ Chloe White




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Monday 27 July 2015

Big glasses to Big Eyes

This is a Festival review of Iris (2014)

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

28 July

This is a Festival review of Iris (2014)

Having seen Iris (2014) at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2015, one was struck straightaway by how it is a lesser account than Advanced Style (2014) of the phenomenon of not just #irisapfel, but these other women, becoming a style icon later in life – is that why it is only now on UK release (when there seems to be relatively little more to say about the film) ?


We admire Iris Apfel's obvious flair, but her acquisitiveness - though hardly unique - makes her hard to like much... pic.twitter.com/yZV32HrFx1
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 27, 2015


At first, one just put the following simple paragraph in the round-up of events (without intending a piece that would end up in Seen at Sheffield : Doc/Fest films with full reviews) :

Iris (2014) (Odeon Screen 8) – unlike with Mavis !, a film that was not exactly awash with humility, although Iris Apfel is a great encourager and collector with definite tastes and flair, and where doing a deal – having justified the concept of haggling in its appropriate place – seemed part of the thrill of the chase in remorseless acquisitiveness (although tempered by giving archive material, both temporarily and permanently)


Now, however, as the wheels of publicity are pushing this big imagery of Iris Apfel from film-posters and trailers – though, really, when one has seen a few outfits with an excess, in size and number, of necklaces / pendants, and bangles / bracelets, one has a pretty good guess at how she will dress next – it seems germane to ask a few more things :


Iris Apfel


* Maybe Apfel was an inspiration, too, to Ari [Seth] Cohen to write the book on which the film that Lina Plioplyte made is based, but one does not have to root around in Advanced Style to find what makes it a story worth telling (please see below) : not just true-life feature films, but documentaries, not only need stories that are substantially factually true, but that have a truth about them as to why they need to be told*






* By contrast, Apfel’s story is very static, consisting essentially of having had a big break of being asked [or did she offer ? (one forgets)], by someone who knew of her private collection, to display some costumes (and, inevitably, accessorize them) when an exhibition fell through – true The diva is indisposed stuff (where the understudy gets to shine and be loved)





* Yes, the exhibition was the first of its kind, and it has led to other breaks, but that is the essentially recognition late in life territory of the other film, except that we are not forced to have just Apfel as our focus – her collection of couture may be well chosen and curated, but that, apart from stories of her husband’s and her days and expertise in interior design (where only the cognoscenti knew them and what they did), and seeing them together now, is all that the film, over and over, is about


Tziporah Salamon


* It is not just that Advanced Style can be multi-stranded in a way that, for the reasons given, Iris is not (though that is not to say that a way of reanimating the rather plainly presented material could not have been employed), but that, for women such as Tziporah Salamon (http://www.tziporahsalamon.com), it is all happening in the time of the film for her and others to be invited to appear on covers (rather than for us to be told that it happened for Apfel, and to see her do others, and make what are not new kinds of appearances in the fashion world)



* And, in those whose endorsements are quoted on the poster (please see above), we notice not cinema reviews, but that they are from lead fashion magazines Marie Claire and Elle UK (as well as Red Magazine)...


End-notes

* And Iris feels more like a Big Eyes (2014) amongst documentaries, in that, however remarkable the story may be, does that per se make it one that needs to be, or benefits from, being told as a piece of cinema ?





Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Sunday 26 July 2015

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 !




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