Erika Sella

Gothic - The Dark Heart of Film

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The BFI have recently unveiled their next big project, a voyage into the dark heart of British film that will encompass over 150 titles and 1000 screenings, a number of special events, DVD releases and an educational programme. Revolving around four main themes (Monstrous, The Dark Arts, Haunted Love is a Devil), GOTHIC will explore how much-filmed characters like Dracula, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Frankenstein made an impact on audiences in the UK and abroad, introducing them to taboo subjects along the way. 

Courtesy of Janus films/BFI

Courtesy of Janus films/BFI

We are particularly excited about Philip Glass' take on Jean Cocteau's 1946 film La Belle et La Bête, which will take place on 10th and 11th August (part of the Edinburgh International Festival). The Filmhouse should also reveal a series of screenings and events; for further details keep checking these pages. The BFI are also stepping into the art world: working in conjunction with the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, they will launch the Witchcraft and Wicked Bodies exhibition (opening on Saturday 27th July) - it features works by Albrecht Dürer, Francisco de Goya and William Blake, as well as pieces by 20th century artists like Kiki Smith. 

The GOTHIC season runs from August 2013 to January 2014. To keep up with BFI updates sign up to their newsletter.

Ben Wheatley's 'A Field in England'

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Ben Wheatley is back with A Field in England: having loved his twisted and very funny previous offering (Sightseers), this was a film the staff at Blasted were very much looking forward to.

And what a release it was – in a unique and brave move, the film was simultaneously in cinemas, on television, as well as being available on DVD and VoD. A pretty successful strategy,  according the numbers recently released on the Screen Daily website.

Image courtesy of the BFI. 

Image courtesy of the BFI. 

A Field in England is, in the words of Wheatley, an attempt at making a 'wilfully strange […] midnight movie'. As I watching the film in Edinburgh's Cameo cinema last Friday, I was reminded of the Panic Movement films (Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo in particular): it is a psychedelic period drama that is not afraid of playing with form and perceptions.

On a very basic level, it is the story of four men who finds themselves abducted by an alchemist during the English Civil War. The film starts slowly, the script feels a little opaque, and not much is explained – it is easy to see why a viewer could quickly get frustrated. Indeed, A Field in England is not a work that will ever have mass appeal, but if one is willing to stick with it, it has some pretty wonderful rewards. It is shot in a glorious, at times almost ravishing, black and white that glorifies texture and lines (something that we maybe wouldn't expect from a psychedelic film); with its mix of traditional folk music and menacing synth/ambient sounds, it is also very interesting on an aural level. Like many of the 1960s/70s 'midnight movies' Wheatley mentions, this film is formally rather daring – we have a character singing traditional ballad Baloo My Boy straight to camera, and the narrative is disrupted by little tableaux where the characters are very still, and create an effect that is almost painterly. This is without mentioning the 10-minute 'bad trip' sequence near the end; although at times it verges on visual cliché, it is something powerful, and not necessarily all that easy to watch. Ultimately though, A Field in England doesn't take itself too seriously; as in Sightseers, moments of humour (and of, quite literally, toilet humour) abound. It should also be noted that he protagonists are all played by actors who are known to the majority of the public for comedy, with Reece Shearsmith and Michael Smiley pulling particularly striking performances. It has to be said that character development is not the film's greatest strength, although the multi-layered aspect of the script could definitely benefit from multiple viewings.

Ben Wheatley has put together something rather unique a possible quite divisive; for all its indulgence, A Field in England is a film that defies genre definition (as far as period dramas go, its closest relative is perhaps Brownlow/Mollo's monochrome docudrama Winstanley) and makes a virtue out of  representing  sheer madness and chaos.

A Field in England is available on DVD on VoD.

Official trailer for Ben Wheatley's upcoming film "A Field In England". More info on the official Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/AFieldInEnglandUK Experience the trip on cinema screens, Film4 Channel, Blu-ray & DVD, Video On Demand, all from 5th July. England during the Civil War. A small group of deserters flee from a raging battle through an overgrown field.

EIFF 2013

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The longest running film festival in the world, The Edinburgh International Film Festival, finally kicks off this week.

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Artistic director Chris Fujiwara delivers his second year, with a program that promises rich pickings. With 125 new features showing, the festivals boasts some big names; Sofia Coppola returns with The Bling Ring, a portrayal of celebrity-obsessed youth culture (based on the real-life story of a group of teenagers robbing Hollywood homes), Noah Baumbach builds on the wonderful The Squid and The Whale with Frances Ha, a bitter sweet comedy about a young New Yorker who is forced to review her lofty career ambitions.

There is also plenty of room for home-grown films: Edinburgh-based film-maker and critic Mark Cousins is back with A Story of Children and Film, a playful cine-essay on the relationship between childhood and the seventh art; Transgressive North's artistic director Jamie Chambers makes his debut with Blackbird, a captivating tale of belonging and loss set in a small village in the South West of Scotland.

As always, there are also intriguing retrospectives. This year the EIFF celebrates the work of neglected French director Jean Grémillont; audiences will also get the chance to re-discover the diverse ouvre of Brooklyn-born Richard Fleischer (Tora! Tora! Tora!, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea).

 

The 67th Edinburgh International Film Festival runs from 19th to 30th June.  Tickets are on sale now. The festival brochure is available here.

 

Mark Cousins' 'What Is This Film Called Love?' + Q&A at the Filmhouse this Thursday

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It’s important to take a breather after the stress and strain of a ‘big job’ - even a prolific workaholic like Jean-Luc Godard decided he needed to work on a smaller project after the the challenge of working on the big budget Cinemascope epic that was Le Mépris.

Mark Cousins may not appear to have much in common with Godard, but like the Swiss director, he completed a mammoth  (15 and ½ hours long, and 6 years in the making) guided tour the history of cinema, the superlative The Story of Film: An Odyssey. Passionate, always engaging and clearly in love with the seventh art, Cousins is a rarity amongst modern-day film critics.

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His latest work, What Is This Film Called Love?, was ‘made for £ 5.80’ and shot over 3 days in Mexico. A meditation on the nature of happiness, it seems like a very personal film - a world away from the academic approach of The Story of Film (Cousins himself noted that he never used the word “I” in the commentary). It also features music by Blasted favourites PJ Harvey and Bernard Hermann.

You could do much worse then get down to Edinburgh’s Filmhouse on Thursday at 18.15 and see it for yourself, and maybe even ask the man himself a few questions.

You can read more about What Is This Film Called Love? here, and you can also follow Mr Cousins on Twitter.

Found Footage Festival

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When I was a student at Glasgow University, I found an abandoned box on the pavement near my flat on West Princes Street. The box contained notebooks, gig and cinema tickets, and lots of photographs. I was of course  immediately fascinated my with my new treasure and tried to join dots and build a story around those discarded fragments. Who were those people? Why had the box been chucked?

Although a bit less dreamy, the spirit behind the Found Footage Festival is in a similar vein. Founded in 2004 by Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, the festival is essentially a comedy event that features VHS tapes gathered at second-hand shops, flea markets and jumble sales. The videos are often comical (a highlight of the current tour is a 1996 tape that teaches viewers how to care for their ferret), and sometimes very weird (I am personally intrigued by The Sexy Treadmill Workout).

http://www.foundfootagefest.com A small sampling of some of the weird and wonderful found footage on display in the brand-new Found Footage Festival touring show, coming to your city in 2012.

The FFF has been growing steadily for the past 9 years, and it easy to see where its charm lies. It is a celebration of how bizarre the everyday lives of ordinary people can be. Those VHS tapes are, in the words of organiser Nick Prueher, "A more truthful representation of who we are as a people than the greatest films of the last 75 years".

The festival is currently touring the UK, so catch it at  Edinburgh's Cameo Cinema at 9pm on Wednesday 20 March or at Glasgow's Grosvenor Cinema at 9pm on Thursday 21 March.

Follow @FoundFootage on Twitter and YouTube.