EIFF 2007

Ah yes, I knew I'd forgotten something. The Edinburgh International Film Festival 2007. It took place in August, so obviously I wait until almost October before I start writing about it. I saw a lot of films and, let's be honest, nobody's that interested in a festival that finished ages ago, so I'll be brief with each film.

My first viewing was INTOLERANCE, a very long and very old silent movie directed by movie pioneer D.W. Griffiths. It's a sort of apology for his landmark but racist BIRTH OF A NATION, and it tells of three separate love stories in three time periods. It featured the writing of Anita Loos, to whom this year's retrospective was dedicated, hence the film's inclusion here. The verdict? It's tough to sit through three hours of this stuff (time has not been kind) but there are undeniably still things to admire. Most notably, the scenes of ancient Babylon are absolutely breathtaking, no matter when the film was made. I really feel sorry for the guy who provided the live musical accompaniment on the piano though - he must have really wanted a break by the time he'd finished.

HIS PICTURE IN THE PAPERS and THE SOCIAL SECRETARY were two more (shorter) films written by Loos which again had their moments (both of them were rather more light-hearted than the hefty INTOLERANCE) but again, are very much of their time.

The first of the new films I saw was the Japanese film ARIA, in which a man still grieving over the death of his wife goes on a road trip with a colleague and a mysterious woman. I'm not going to say any more than that because the joy of the film lies in its mystery. It's never made explicitly clear who the woman is, though there are many potential candidates; the film is to be absorbed (and be absorbed into) rather than watched. It's all about mood, it's beautifully shot and you really need to see it. As far as new movies go, I got off to a good start.

The next one was TRADER'S DREAMS, a German documentary about people all over the world trying to make their living on eBay. The film brings out a lot of issues and emotions as it looks at people using eBay because they're desperate, using it simply to make a living, using it to exploit/help (depending on your viewpoint) people who haven't really entered the internet age. Despite all this though, the most interesting parts to me, and I mean this in a car crash sort of way, were the scenes focusing on the eBay phenomenon, which basically involved lots of Americans going mental in an eBay-organised stadium-sized event. How odd.

The next film I saw was also a documentary and slightly more entertaining and interesting, though also even more disturbing. CRAZY LOVE is about a man who got so insanely jealous that he hired some goons to through blinding acid into his girlfriend's face. For this horrific act, he went to jail. When he eventually got out, they got back together and married. It's a bizarre story and I couldn't decide whether it merited a full length film or just an episode of Jerry Springer.

More from the Anita Loos retrospective (alcoholism tale THE STRUGGLE - better than the other retrospective films so far but as far as old movies about alcoholics go, it's not a patch on THE SMALL BACK ROOM) was followed by another new film, JOSHUA.

JOSHUA is the next in an ancestral line going back to THE OMEN and ROSEMARY'S BABY and sees a small boy being very smart and evil-like and weird things happening to his parents, possibly as a result of their having another child. It's not an out and out horror film as such, but still delivers on the chills and suspense and is a satisfying thriller that will probably suffer from being in the shadow of other more famous evil kid movies.

Talking of odd kids, BILLY THE KID was one of the more popular films at the festival. This documentary follows a young man with a disability over the course of a few days, offering insights into his school life, love life, personal life and generally what is going on in his mind. It's a valiant attempt to tell us something about judging people but rather than becoming overly preachy it wins us over by virtue of the titular character, who comes across as a charming, funny and likable (though undeniably short-tempered at times) person. He certainly seemed to win over the audience I was with.

Next was Quentin Tarantino's DEATH PROOF. This is Tarantino's half of his tribute (together with Robert Rodriguez, who came up with PLANET TERROR) to trashy exploitation cinema of the 1970s. It was released in the states as GRINDHOUSE, and featured both films stitched together with bits cut out, damaged prints, fake trailers, etc. to fully replicate the grindhouse experience. Sadly it bombed in the US so the powers that be have decided to split it into two films. The first to see a release here is Tarantino's half.

Sadly, it looks like it would have been better in its original form. I've not seen the original cut so I don't know for certain, but this version with footage restored feels too long. People talk about Tarantino's skill for natural dialogue, but to me it was too natural, i.e. it was just dull. Lots of women sitting about talking about stuff without ever really saying anything interesting - I could get that by walking into a pub and sitting down next to some drunks. It doesn't necessarily make for good cinema.

Anyway, the story involves a villainous, er, villain called Stuntman Mike, who stalks such women and then kills them with his death-proof car. Typical slasher stuff. The film is rescued however by Kurt Russell, who plays Mike, and is clearly having a ball. The film explodes into life whenever he is on screen, but sadly fades away again whenever he isn't. An enjoyable ride, but I really want to see GRINDHOUSE even more now.

I should also add that while Tarantino wasn't there to promote it, Zoe Bell (stuntwoman turned actress who stars in the film) was on hand to do a Q&A at this, the film's UK premiere, and didn't disappoint. As well as being an extremely accomplished stuntwoman, she's also a very charismatic and funny young lady who was a lot more fun to listen to than most of the characters in DEATH PROOF.

My EIFF round-up will continue shortly...

Stranger Than Fiction 2007

The Irish Film Institute

So I'm finally back to blogging. My EIFF summary will be forthcoming, and only about a month late, but in the meantime, here's what I saw at Stranger Than Fiction, the documentary film festival I attended in Dublin at the weekend.

I kicked things off with a double bill of made-for-TV documentaries relating to Ireland's fight for independence in the 20th century. The first of these, GET COLLINS, was about the intelligence network set up and used by Michael Collins in his fight against the British (and their attempts to thwart him). It was paired with NOW OR NEVER, a portrait of the relationship between Eamon De Valera and Winston Churchill, focusing on their clash over Ireland's neutrality in World War II. Both films are fascinating insights into a period of Irish history which greatly interests me, with GET COLLINS being the slightly better of the two.

Irish filmmaker George Morrison should be forever enshrined in Irish cinema history for his stunning documentaries MISE EIRE and SAOIRSE?, which rescued old newsreel footage of the period between the "failed" Easter Rising and the civil war a few years later. Here he premiered his new documentary film DUBLIN DAY, in which David Norris walks the streets of Dublin tracing the journey that formed James Joyce's Ulysses. I confess I've never read the book (it's on my to-do list) but as a lover of Dublin I found the film to be enchanting, working wonders to produce a beautifully shot vision of the city with very little budget. Norris and Morrison were present for a discussion after the screening, and it was a joy to hear that the 83-year-old Morrison is currently working on another film. Meanwhile, I'm currently reading Dubliners by Joyce. I'll get round to Ulysses one day.

MOSNEY is the tale of a former Butlins holiday camp north of Dublin that is now used to house asylum seekers during the limbo in which they have arrived but are yet to learn their fate. The contrast between the once happy holiday destination and the grim purpose it now serves makes for interesting viewing, by turns depressing and uplifting in quick succession.

When I went to Hot Docs in Toronto earlier this year, I passed on going to see HELVETICA. A documentary about a font? No thanks. However, it seemed to be quite popular and garnered some good reviews so when it popped up at the Irish Film Institute at the weekend I elected to go and see it. To say it's a film about a font doesn't really do it justice, since it's concerned with many aspects of graphic design and the thoughts that go into such things. Nevertheless, it's still not a subject that sounds particularly interesting, so full marks to the filmmakers for actually making it interesting, illuminating and fun.

The Gaelic language film IMEACHT NA N-LARLAI [FLIGHT OF THE EARLS] received its premiere at the IFI on the 400th anniversary of the events it portrayed. The Earl of Tyrone, along with many other members of the Irish elite in Ulster, took flight to Europe where the Earl embarked on a quest to seek assistance in raising an army to get rid of the English. His pleas were unsuccessful, they never returned to Ireland and the Plantation of Ulster was to follow, forever changing the face of Ireland. For this documentary, gorgeously shot on location in some parts while making theatrical use of a small soundstage for the rest of it, features re-enactments of the events (starring Stephen Rea, also in attendance, as the Earl) balanced against three history scholars discussing the story. It was a fascinating enough story to begin with, but the dramatic gravitas brought to it by Rea made the entire story seem less like a history lesson than simply one of the saddest stories I've ever seen.

JACK DOYLE: A LEGEND LOST presents a brief biopic of the Cobh boy who grew up to become a boxer, actor, singer and ladies man and never quite made a perfect job of any of them. Gambling, womanising, drink, disease... it all conspired to leave the man who should have been world famous a mere footnote in the grand scheme of things. The story of the flawed sportsman, movie star, etc. is nothing new, but nobody's life quite encapsulated the archetypal story like Doyle's. It's a story that this documentary captures perfectly.

Still on the subject of boxing, SAVIOURS is a no-budget film about a boxing club in Dublin and focuses on the aspirations of three young boxers in particular and what the club and the sport means to them. I'll be honest, I really don't like boxing, so that side of things put me off a little. All the same, the film is a sometimes touching insight into the lives of three young hopefuls and what a club like this brings to local communities.

Next up I took in a couple of films by documentary filmmaker Roger Graef, a special guest at this year's festival. The 1981 film A COMPLAINT OF RAPE, originally an episode of a BBC documentary offering a fly-on-the-wall look at the operations in a major police station. The attempts by two policemen to persuade a woman to drop her rape accusation is still gobsmacking today - at the time it ended up changing the way the British police handled such matters. This incredible piece of filmmaking was followed up by one of Roger's more recent projects, MURDER BLUES, in which gun culture among young black youths in Britain is investigated by following the investigation into a shooting of a father over an argument about a car. It's an intriguing look at detectives in action but is as interesting from a human perspective, being both tragic and uplifting at the same time.

LOSERS AND WINNERS followed a Chinese company's project to dismantle a German factory and ship it to (and rebuild it in) China. The differences between the two cultures are interesting enough and give rise to a lot of humour, but I couldn't help feeling that the film never really had any idea what it was trying to achieve or say. Sometimes the action of just pointing the camera and letting things happen results in magic; here it just results in an interesting but soon forgettable story.

A VERY BRITISH GANGSTER is a disturbing look at a criminal organisation in Manchester that does not spare the gritty details but also offers a look at the kind of poverty that leads to the activities the gang indulge in. In following the leader around as he goes about his business, investigative journalist Donal MacIntyre reveals just how dangerous a character this man is but also how charming he can be and, in a rare moment in the film, how human he is.

The short film competition threw up some good short documentaries, notably LOSING MYSELF: ANNIE, a brief look into the memories of an elderly Scottish woman; BIG MASSIVE PROTEST, in which a young filmmaker organises a protest group for hire; THE MEMORY BOX, an animated look at the plight of immigrants in Ireland; and 13 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS, about a young Polish girl suffering from cystic fibrosis. If my memory serves me correctly, the last two films I mentioned won the two prizes that were on offer.

Gregory Greene's ESCAPE FROM SUBURBIA is the latest in a long line of eco-documentaries that call for some kind of action to be taken before we do irreversible damage to our society. Unlike a lot of the other scaremongering films however, Greene actually shows some of the alternatives that are available instead of our petrol-based lifestyle. Instead of scaring but offering no solutions, Greene puts his money where his mouth is but the danger is that the film is therefore positive enough that anyone who sees it might just think it's not worth worrying about (instead of, for example, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, whose apocalyptic scenario tries to terrify people into action).

A WINTER'S JOURNEY is about the attempts of a young man trying to become a professional opera singer. There's lots of singing and lots of training, but ultimately what could have been a very good 45-minute documentary is padded to feature length by too many uninteresting scenes of people sitting around talking to each other about singing.

Not a great film to finish with, but I ran out of time there and had to fly home.

Coming soon... my long overdue roundup of the films I saw at the Edinburgh International Film Festival!

Almost back in action

The computer issues have now been sorted, but no sooner is that done than, wait for it, I'm off to another film festival (Stranger Than Fiction, the documentary film festival held at the Irish Film Institute in Dublin).

So perhaps next week some time I'll get back to updating the Freakpit. I will, after all, have all of the aforementioned festival films and the 40+ films I saw at EIFF to write about.

(MJP: I've sent you another email!)