Brighton's Cine-City 2006

Bringing me right up to date with my festival attendance, and also heralding an almost unheard of four consecutive days of updates on this blog, is Cinecity, Brighton's film festival. I discovered this festival by accident last year (just happened to be in Brighton when it was on) so decided it was a decent candidate for a little trip this year.

The first film I saw on the Friday night was Nick Broomfield's new semi-documentary drama GHOSTS, which weaves a tale of tragedy and exploitation based on the true story (though again, I don't know how much) of the group of Chinese cocklepickers that ended up drowning in Morecambe while working late at night.

Although a drama, the film presents plenty of facts and raises plenty of issues, tackling why these workers were doing such labour in these conditions and illustrating the obstacles of racism, illegal gangmasters, etc.

It's a pretty powerful account of a very serious problem but I also imagine it's a little too depressing for widespread tastes, and won't be helped by the subdued, fly-on-the-wall filming approach. The only attempt to lighten the mood seems to be some buffoonery on the part of one of the villains of the piece, but placing such comic antics in the middle of such a serious story lessens the impact of the tragedy and very real trouble that lie at the heart of it.

My next film was to be a late night screening of SHORTBUS - yeah, that film I managed to miss in Cardiff - but due to a lapse in planning on my part, which I'm not going to go into here, I couldn't actually make it to this one. Again.

Saturday afternoon saw the GET ANIMATED event showcasing the talents of a lot of young animators via a bunch of short animated films, many of which were in competition. The prize went to an amusing short about a granny taking on some street thugs but to be honest there were better entries than this. If there's one thing to take from this event it's that there are an awful lot of talented young animators out there working with a range of styles - that can only be good for the future of the industry, providing someone is actually there to support them.

TINY COLOUR MOVIES was the next event, a combination of film and live music. John Fox (he of Ultravox fame) became fascinated when viewing a collection of old super-8 movies owned by a private collector and promptly ran off and recorded new electronic music inspired by them. Here, for the first time, we saw the films themselves accompanied by John performing the music live. It was an interesting experience that lends a whole new depth to forgotten, seemingly unimportant pieces of film from the lives of ordinary folks - and the music was top class.

I'd have ended Saturday night with a late showing of a new print of the Rolling Stones movie SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL but alas the same poor planning from the night before also afflicted me on Saturday night and I had to give it a miss. Oh well. I wonder if it's as good as GIMME SHELTER? I must pick up the DVD some time.

I finished the brief trip with Sunday's screening of TEMPTRESS MOON, a Chinese film that was showing as part of a strand of Shanghai-related films and events (each year the festival holds a special look at one particular film - last year I got to see the eighties animated oddity VAMPIRES IN HAVANA).

Like so many modern Chinese films, it looked radiant - but this tale of a family and its troubles at the end of an era in Chinese history was too long and jumped between characters too often for my liking.

Despite the festival being held at various venues, all the events I had tickets for (attended or otherwise) were at the Duke of York's cinema, which I must sing the praises of. This year, as last, I was impressed by the venue, the atmosphere, the staff and just the general aura of the place. It's only got the one main screen but it's a lovely cinema and if you're ever in Brighton I urge you to take a trip there.

I did discover that there are nicer times of the year to be there however, as sitting in the auditorium having been soaked through by an unexpected shower isn't quite so enjoyable.

That's all the festivals up to date now - but I am going down to London this weekend to see Ennio Morricone (legend!) in concert, which I'm sure I'll tell you all about next week. I imagine I will find some time to check out some movies at the National Film Theatre too, so watch this space.