EIFF 2013: Avanti Popolo →
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EIFF 2013: Leviathan →
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EIFF 2013: FRANCES HA →
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EIFF 2013
The longest running film festival in the world, The Edinburgh International Film Festival, finally kicks off this week.
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.
Review: 'In The House'
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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.
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).
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.
Feature: Roman Polanski's 'The Tenant' →
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Freitags #8
On Saturday we went to see The Lyceum’s production of Shelagh Delaney’s play A Taste of Honey. There were some fine performances (particularly from Lucy Black, who plays Jo’s witty yet neglectful mother), but we left the theatre unconvinced: this was a fairly entertaining piece of work, but it didn’t have the freshness and resonance we had been hoping for. If anything, it reminded us how convincing Tony Richardson’s film version (from 1961) really was:
Far from being the gritty, ‘kitchen sink’ drama it is often (and lazily) described as, the film manages to be a sharp and at times extremely funny portrait of how fragile relationships can really be. A talented and underrated writer (check out her other play The Lion in Love and her collection of short stories Sweetly Sings The Donkey), Shelagh Delaney was clearly a massive influence on the young Morrissey:
A Taste of Honey runs at The Lyceum until Saturday 9th February.
Influential (arguably, post-)punk band Wire announced late last year that they have a new album coming out on 25 March, entitled Change Becomes Us, on their own Pink Flag label. Their semi-namesake The Wire also reports that a ‘huge’ book - Wilson Neate's Read & Burn: A Book About Wire - is to be released the same month. Special bundles of the new album and book can be pre-ordered in a variety of combinations on Pink Flag’s webshop. There’s a preview of the new record, and a reminder of an old classic, below.
We’re sure you’ve all heard about the trouble that HMV has found itself in recently, and while it looks like it may yet survive, there’s been little mention of the fate of a shop beloved of many music and cinema fans – Fopp. A chain of music shops that began as a market stall in Glasgow in 1981, Fopp was bought by HMV in 2007 after rapid expansion led to them closing down. There’s a campaign on Facebook calling for the survival of Fopp, and its reinstatement as an independent chain (if that isn’t an oxymoron).
We might be suffering from intermittent reader’s block, but we are determined to carry on with our Ulysses challenge. We’ve put up with the unbearable Buck Mulligan, listened to Stephen Dedalus’ philosophical and political meanderings, and we are now getting to know ‘Ulysses’ himself, Leopold Bloom. We’ll keep you posted about our thoughts. In the meantime we’ll leave you with Paulo Coelho’s scathing attack, and this rather amusing (and in some ways reassuring) blog from The Spectator. Feel free to drop us a line to discuss the above article, the book or to join our challenge.
Freitags #7
Time's a funny thing isn't it? it seems like hardly any time at all since the last brace of Freitags, and here we are again. It certainly doesn't seem like six years since the last album from (Aidan Moffat's pseudonymous electronica project) L. Pierre was released (Dip), but it's most cheering to see that the follow upThe Island Come True will be released on Monday through Melodic. The Quietus has a glut of articles related to its release, including an interview with the bearded bard, a stream of the album and an outstanding piece of writing from editor John Doran.
Stills and the CCA are co-hosting ECONOMY, a group exhibition focusing on the impact of global capitalist on our daily life. We are particularly interested in Stills' Film Lounge programme, showcasing work by Michael Glawogger (Austria), Francesco Jodice (Italy) and Maria Ruido (Spain).
Speaking of film, we are very excited about The Glasgow Film Festival. The festival only started in 2005 and had been growing steadily ever since. The full programme was announced yesterday - we have a staggering 368 events, 57 UK premieres and 6 world premieres to keep us entertained this February. The highlight for us could be Souvenirs of Serge, a documentary charting the relationship between Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg. The film will be followed by a performance from Jane, who will be interpreting a few classics penned by the Gallic genius/provocateur. We are also attending a screening of Carl Dreyer’s stark and extremely powerful The Passion of Joan of Arc. A classic that deserves to be seen in a good cinema, and that cinema happens to be Glasgow Cathedral, a rather perfect setting. The GFF opens on 14th February with French comedy Populaire: we will be keeping an eye on it on a daily basis and report anything we find of interest. Watch this space.
Last year's Counterflows was a multi-venue event dedicated to underground music and art that occurred in Berlin, London and Glasgow simultaneously. The 2013 line-up for the Glasgow edition has just been announced for April and it's looking pretty special already. Particularly noteworthy are appearances by Peter Brötzmann and Loren Connors, but the most exciting announcement may well be that the ever-enigmatic Jandek will be playing with the superlative Richard Youngs and Alex Neilson at Stereo (Youngs and Neilson having backed Jandek at his first ever gig in 2004). See you down the front.