#400 Erkenningsnummer P708816
OCTOBER 7, 2015 \ nEwswEEkly - € 0,75 \ rEad morE at www.flandErstoday.Eu currEnt affairs \ P2
Politics \ P4
Migration & investMent
Flanders’ minister-president delivers annual September Declaration, emphasising migration challenges and new investments \4
BusinEss \ P6
science stand-up
innovation \ P7
You might think scientists are long on brains and short on humour, but the Bright Club comedy night says otherwise \7
Education \ P9
art & living \ P10
Beautiful Beanies
The founder of LN Beanies handmade knitwear has opened her own shop and provided 300 women in Peru with fairwage jobs \ 10
Keep calm and film on
ghent film festival takes British cinema out of Hollywood shadow ian mundell Follow Ian \ @IMundell
With new and classic film and a day devoted to British movie music, the Ghent Film Festival puts the spotlight on an industry that, according to organisers, sorely needs rescuing from the long, long shadow of Hollywood.
“T
he British are coming!” declared Colin Welland when he accepted his Oscar in 1982 for writing Chariots of Fire. Well, not quite. In the decades since then, British cinema has remained in Hollywood’s shadow, and it often struggles to find an audience, both at home and abroad. This is one reason why the Ghent Film Festival has chosen to put it in the spotlight this year, with a programme of new art-house films, a selection of classic movies and a day devoted to British film music. “We want to show that the UK has a very dynamic film industry, even if you read reports in British papers and film magazines that are very critical of it,” explains Patrick
Duynslaegher, the festival’s artistic director. Britain is a more controversial choice than last year’s focus on France. “Most people wouldn’t ask why we were doing a focus on France because in film buff circles, France is widely accepted as having one of the greatest cinema traditions in the world,” Duynslaegher continues. “I think Britain has great film, too, and has had great periods in cinema, but these are less well known to the general public.” The festival’s British section features 11 recent films by new or largely unknown directors. In making the selection, Duynslaegher set out to confound expectations that British cinema would be all about costume drama and gritty realism in the style of Ken Loach or Mike Leigh. “We also wanted to show another kind, a British cinema with imagination, which is more flamboyant and less realistic.” Carol Morley’s The Falling, for example, is a dreamy film about an epidemic of mass hysteria and fainting in an English girls’ school in 1969. Then there is Max Sobol’s You
(Us) Me, a very dark comedy about a love affair between a serial killer and a suicidal girl (pictured above). But the strangest of all is probably London Road, directed by Rufus Norris. This began life as a series of interviews with people living in a community affected by a notorious murder case. Those transcripts were then turned into a stage musical at the National Theatre in London, then into this musical film, shot in realistic settings with Olivia Colman (Broadchurch) and Tom Hardy (The Drop) in leading roles. “It’s a very surprising film,” says Duynslaegher, “and a little bit daring in the sense that you have to adapt to it, and you have to accept that unusual way of telling a story.” The Ghent Film Festival is likely to be the only time we’ll see these films on the big screen in Belgium. Only two films from the British section will see local distribution: the grimly realistic 45 Years by Andrew Haigh and wartime costume drama A Royal Night Out by Julian Jarrold. British films also feature in some of the festival’s other continued on page 5