Keswick Film Festival

Feb 21, 2016Feb 20, 2016 / Stephen / Leave a comment

Long before I joined the Friends of Hyde Park Picture House committee I got involved with Keswick Film Club and their annual film festival. I grew up near Keswick in the Lake District and the film club played a big part in enlightening me on the wonders of art house cinema.

Now in it’s 17th year Keswick Film Festival starts on Thursday and runs through until Sunday. There are 29 films spread across themes such as Best Of The Fests, highlighting popular films from other festivals such as The Assassin (2015), The Wolfpack (2015) and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2015). The Jazz theme includes a 35mm screening of Round Midnight (1986), one of the more authentic and affectionate presentations of the jazz world on the silver screen. Four films look at Memory in different ways including Imaginaerium (2015), a gothic fantasy based on the music Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish and described as a visual and aural spectacle. Another film dealing with Memory is Karen Guthrie’s The Closer We Get (also showing at the Picture House on Tuesday 1st March). Described by Mark Kermode as “a poignant examination of the bonds of family love”, Karen will be at Keswick to introduce and talk about her personal film.

Two other female directors will also be at the festival with their films. On Friday, British novelist Helen Walsh’s The Violators (2015) is “an intriguing directorial debut with a class-crossing tale of teen ennui” (Variety). Lapse Of Honour (2015) from Rayna Campbell is a gritty urban drama based in Manchester’s Moss Side and sees MOBO nominated rapper Lady Leshurr makes a seamless move into film. There are 13 other films at the festival directed by women and many more F-Rated films featuring significant roles for women both behind and in front of the camera.

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Le Mépris France / Italy 1963

Feb 12, 2016Feb 12, 2016 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

Sunday 14th February – 3.00 PM

A film by Jean-Luc Godard is always an occasion. Readers may not think that he is necessarily one of the cinema greats: but he is certainly one of the most fascinating filmmakers working in World Cinema. This film hails from the 1960s, the period when he delighted, confounded and upset audiences and critics alike. The starry cast, Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance and Michel Piccoli, may suggest a relatively mainstream story, but, as ever, Godard both subverts and innovates.

Importantly the cast also includes the veteran filmmaker Fritz Lang. This is a film about cinema set in the world of filmmaking. Lang is directing a version of The Odyssey. Whilst the film does not literally transpose the plot of Homer’s epic poem, there are intriguing parallels with the triangle at the centre of this film.

The Aegean locations were filmed by the talented Cinematographer Raoul Coutard and they look great. Watch for the beautifully executed tracking shots. There is excellent mise en scène and editing: the latter by Agnès Guillemot and Lila Lakshmanan. There are a series of exemplary shot / reverse shot that have been much copied, including I would think by Michael Mann in Heat (1995).

The film has been restored and transferred to digital. One would expect it to look good and it has the original 103 minutes running time and the French release soundtrack [with subtitles]. It was filmed in Technicolor and on Franscope, 2.35:1. The last time I saw it I loved the sound and visuals and was fascinated as the cast presented this tragic tale.

Carol on 35mm

Feb 5, 2016Feb 6, 2016 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

Saturday February 6th at 5.30 p.m. and Sunday February 7th at 4.30 p.m.

This film has received much critical praise and a number of award nominations. The main focus has been the acting of the leads, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. But the supporting cast are excellent. Edward Lachman’s cinematography [shot on Kodak Super 16 stock] should really benefit from the definition and luminosity of 35mm. There is splendid production design by Judy Becker and fine editing by Affonso Gonçalves. And in an age when music scores are often overdone Carter Burwell strikes the right balance between drama and underscoring. This is director Todd Haynes’ best film since Far from Heaven (2002). That was a fine revisiting of a film classic: this is a really intelligent adaptation of a great novel.

The film follows the book fairly closely but also introduces significant variations. These seem to me to be well judged additions that suit the cinematic treatment. If you are seeing the film again then you can enjoy the very fine sequence that opens the film and which is then revisited near the end. It has great mise en scène but the beautifully judged camerawork and editing adds to the characters and dramatisation. It also seems to be a homage to a classic British film drama.

Carol is screening as part of a series of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer cinema. Also check out Tangerine (USA 2015) showing on Thursday 11th at 9pm.

Taxi (Tehran) Iran 2015.

Feb 1, 2016 / keith1942 / 1 Comment

Thursday February 4th at 6.30 p.m.

A welcome innovation, a ‘Tuesday Wonder’ being repeated on a Thursday. And this is a film to see or see again. This is a distinctive film in so many ways; for starters the entire production crew consists the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi: with the exception of Massoumeh Lahidji, who prepared the French sub-titled version: [the alternative title appears to be to avoid confusion with the earlier films of that title] .

The film, like at least two earlier Iranian films, is set in a taxi circling Teheran. The driver is Jafar Panahi and sited on the dashboard is a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. There is a some additional footage shot on cell phones. The rest of the cast are non-professionals, unidentified to protect the innocent. The car, a friend informed me, is a Peugeot 405, built under licence in Iran.

What we see and hear, along with Panahi, are a man who works as a free lancer [fairly conservative] and a woman teacher [liberal]: a man injured in an accident and his wife: there is a man who distribute videos, some at least illegal: two women carrying a gold fish to a well/shrine: Panahi’s niece, who is also making a film: an old school friend who has a story of his troubles: and a lady with flowers who is a suspended lawyer. Some of them recognise Panahi, some apparently do not. There are also, outside the car, a fruit seller, a CD seller, various passers-by, medical staff, and [finally] two black clad men on a motorcycle. Most of the characters in the car talk as only Iranians can talk.

The film is fascinating, witty and deeply subversive. It offers a rich mine of stories, observations, complaints and the varied tapestry of Iranian urban life. The ending, following the appearance of the motorcycle, is very smart.

Of course, Panahi has form. He is currently suspended from filmmaking, but managed the equally impressive This is Not a Film (2011). This time his latest film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival: few film awards carry greater kudos.

Panahi has had a long and productive career. This film references a number of his earlier films. The ones I picked up were Offside (2006), Crimson Gold (2003), The Circle (2002) and The White Balloon (1995). The latter includes another recurring Iranian motif, gold fish.

Reviews tend to pick up on the way that Panahi has subverted the repressive and very conservative regime in Iran. But equally the film gives testimony to the rich variety of Iranian culture, including a long tradition of quality films. It says something about the dynamic qualities of this society [usually ignored by the West] that it can produce so many fine art works.

Zarafa France, Belgium 2012.

Jan 12, 2016 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

On Saturday 16th January – 11.30 a.m.

Good news, this animated film gets a rerun screening. The version on show may have the original French narration dubbed into English. A friend, who saw the film in the dubbed version, recommended it highly. Since then I have been waiting for an opportunity to catch it.

The title refers to a giraffe, in fact an actual giraffe offered as a present in the early C19th to the French king by the Viceroy of Egypt. The actual hero of the tale is the young Sudanese Maki, who also meets or tangles with slavers, pirates and the Turkish army. He and Zarafa have to cross the desert and pilot their way to France.

This is a tale from the colonial era, but by and large it is the Europeans who are represented negatively. As well as adventures the film offers humour and emotion.

It is another fine example of relatively traditional animation techniques:

“Using a wide-ranging colour palette that shifts from the warmer hues of the Sahara desert to the colder, sadder blues and greys of old-time Paris, Lie and his team provide a pared-down animation technique that recalls classic Disney, albeit with a rougher, at times abstract touch (especially during the Egypt-set sequences).” (Hollywood Reporter)

The screening promises to be a real treat following in the footsteps of the films by Sydney Chomet [Les triplettes de Belleville, 2003 and L’illusionniste, 2010].

Note the film starts promptly at 1130 – more good news, apparently no adverts.

The Forbidden Room Canada 2015

Jan 4, 2016Nov 21, 2020 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

Tuesday 5th January at 6.00 p.m.

This the latest film from the Canadian artist and filmmaker Guy Maddin. Maddin is a distinctive and unconventional filmmaker. His films do not offer straightforward narration and are full of ambiguous symbols. A reader on IMDB confessed to giving up on the film after an hour. It helps if you have some idea of what the 130 minutes of screen time will offer.

IMDB identifies a set of Trademarks in Maddin’s work

Trade Mark (5)
Films often imitate the visual look and special effects of the silent film era
Plots usually involve a series of complicated, entangled, unsuccessful love stories
Often uses motifs of sexual repression and errant perversity
Characters frequently suffer from amnesia, forgetting even their own marriages and loves
Many of his films are set in a mythologized version of his hometown of Winnipeg.

At least the first three of these appear in The Forbidden Room. Maddin has also arrived in the UK to promote his film. In an online interview is the following:

“Still, The Forbidden Room is an experience worth having on the biggest screen you can find, as this is a film designed to overwhelm. …

“I’m glad you said ‘too much’ because I wanted the movie to be too much. You know, I have regrets about my ten other feature films because I always wish they were shorter; I feel I just called them finished a bit too soon and often a few months later I wished I could go back into the editing room and trim them, tighten the screws. The director’s cuts of all my movies would ironically be much shorter rather than longer. But this one, editing it was a counter-intuitive experience because I really wanted viewers to feel at the end that they had been washed up, panting on a far shore having just barely survived drowning in a narrative tempest.”

The phrase “narrative tempest” is probably the neatest summary of The Forbidden Room that you’re likely to find. … Maddin layers stories within stories within stories, pulling us ever deeper into a labyrinthine world that encompasses flapjacks, vampires, volcanoes, skeletons, moustaches, advice on the correct method for having a bath, …

All of this could be described as very Maddin-esque, but the roots of each story contained within The Forbidden Room actually lie in lost artefacts from cinema’s past. For the past couple of years, Maddin has been working on interactive work Séances. The project has seen the filmmaker collecting the titles and sometimes the plot synopses from films that are no longer extant and re-enacting them in his trademark frantic, surreal, hyper-stylised fashion. “

So possibly a challenging evening. But on past experience it will be rewarding and worth the effort. And it is worth noting that this is a film to be seen in a cinema and there are likely to be few opportunities to do that.

It’s a Wonderful Life USA 1945

Dec 16, 2015Dec 16, 2015 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

From Friday December 18th until Thursday 24th.

This classic film comes round every Christmas. Some of the audience revisit an old favourite; some taste its pleasures for the time. After over six decades of success one would think that there is nothing left to say or write about this film. But, just as it finds new fans, it also stimulates fresh insights and comments. With an unusual stance Sandy Irvine in Picturing a Planet in Peril (Introducing Green Issues to Film Studies in Splice Volume 3 issue 2, Spring 2009) writes:

“Take, for example, the popular evergreen It’s a Wonderful Life by Frank Capra, released in 1945. The major driving force in environmental destruction is simply human overpopulation, and George Bailey [James Stewart] and his wife [Donna Reed] generously contribute to the population boom by parenting four children, instead of just ‘replacing’ themselves with two (indeed, in real life, actress Donna Reed was a mother of four).”

This aspect possibly escapes most members of the audience. And I am sure that you can enjoy the film and not worry about population during its screening. There is an unexpressed assumption here. That George should follow in his parent’s virtuous footsteps: not just by taking on the Building and Loan Society, but also in only fathering two children: in their case George and his brother Harry (Todd Karns).

I have to confess that I would have been hard put to name the four Bailey children. I looked it up, Janie Bailey (Carol Combs), Pete Bailey (Jimmy Hawkins), Tommy Bailey (Larry Simms), Zuzu Bailey (Karolyn Grimes). However, I could name Clarence’s (Henry Travers) favourite book, Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. And I could identify one of Uncle Bill’s (Thomas Mitchell) pets as a squirrel.

So if you have a new insight over the coming week why not post a comment?

Open Bethlehem Palestine, UAR, UK, USA 2015

Dec 14, 2015 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

Tuesday 15th December 2015 at 6.30 p.m.

A Palestinian Film Festival has been running in Leeds since November, opening with a screening at the Leeds International Film Festival. The final film is Open Bethlehem (aka Operation Bethlehem) screening this coming Tuesday. It will be nice to finish with the full cinematic experience. The film records the writer and director Leila Sansour’s journey to revisit and explore the town of her birth and upbringing. The town is not only under Israeli occupation but is a meeting point of cultures and conflicts involving the communities and the religions of this region. The conflicts has been exacerbated by the construction of the ‘separation wall’ by the Israeli state. Sansour’s film records a rather novel response to this situation. It seems she shot about 700 hours of footage and the result was something different from what she had expected. The film is in English, and in colour and runs for 90 minutes.

Spectre UK / USA 2015.

Dec 9, 2015Dec 10, 2015 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

From Friday December 11th.

So James Bond arrives on Friday. I don’t think I have ever seen a Bond at the HPPH before. However, it appears that this film is only distributed in a 2K DCP [or on Imax] so it should look and sound just as good as elsewhere on the cinema’s screen and sound system. Bond films are usually entertaining, and recent ones have all included spectacular action sequences.

Daniel Craig is, for me, the best Bond since Sean Connery. I shall miss Judi Dench though. And Léa Seydoux and Monica Bellucci presumably did not have to make the same sort of effort they put into their more serious characterisations. I wondered if Christoph Waltz was able to resist being funny.

The production team should provide quality. We have Sam Mendes, John Logan and Neil Purvis directing and scripting, and they are all experienced in this genre. I thought Skyfall (2012) was pretty well done, though the ending and goodbye to Judi Dench was too drawn out for me. This new film is five minutes longer.

Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema worked on Interstellar (2014), visually stunning. Editor Lee Smith worked on Inception (2010), extremely well put together. Whilst Production Designer Dennis Gassner also worked on Skyfall. And they had an extremely large production crew working with them, many of them experienced in the genre. The composer Thomas Newman has also provided the score for Bridge of Spies (2015).

My most serious reservation is the return of Spectre. I never found that organisation convincing. Though it was always nice not to have to suffer another film with anti-Soviet plot and characters: a tradition continued in the aforementioned Bridge of Spies. And just an aside, if you want to see really good chess on film watch Satyajit Ray’s The Chess Players (1977).

Carol (UK, USA 2015)

Nov 24, 2015Nov 21, 2020 / keith1942 / Leave a comment

Opens Friday November 27th

This film promises to be a real treat. The two stars, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, have already received plaudits for their performances. The film is directed by Todd Haynes, one of the most talented filmmakers working in the USA. His Far From Heaven (2002) was a memorable and intelligent re-visiting of a classic by Douglas Sirk. And the film is adapted from a novel by Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt (1952). Highsmith is an enjoyable and stimulating writer. Her novels are replete with a real sense of irony. Moreover, her novels adapt so well to the other media. The BBC offered a series of fine radio adaptations of her five Ripley novels in 2009 and repeated these in 2014. Then there are the films – all the ones I have seen have been good but the outstanding ones are probably The American Friend (Der amerikanische Freund 1977) directed by Wim Wenders and Strangers on a Train (1951) directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Haynes was quoted in the LIFF Catalogue where the film was the closing screenings,

“When we think of our love affairs, our most memorable ones are those that put you on the side of the weaker and desiring subject. Stories about marginal women are more interesting than films about men: they contain the limits of social burden: women’s lives are more burdened by society, in the choices they make, as they carry on the institutions of the family, satisfying men.”

This promises to be a real treat. It opens on Friday and is screening most days of the following week.