THE HIGH GREENERS COME HOME

Exposed was at Hillsborough Park last month to witness Arctic Monkeys first Sheffield soiree in over five years...

It’s going to be some summer for homecoming gigs in Sheffield. We’ve already seen Def Leppard pack out the Leadmill and Bramall Lane in May, Pulp will be taking to the stage at Sheffield Arena next month and Self Esteem is set to close out the summer with a headline slot at Rock N Roll Circus in Don Valley.

But there was always one show looming head and shoulders above them all – two key dates at Hillsborough Park that have inspired a multitude of column inches, plenty of fevered ticket scrabbling and some serious setlist speculation since their announcement.

The Arctic Monkeys were back in town, and Sheffield turned out en masse in the sunshine to show some love for their prodigal sons.

Of course, a hometown show for a band of their stature wasn’t just going to appeal to South Yorkshire residents. Dedicated fans from across the globe descended on the Steel City to be part of the 70,000 who’d snapped up tickets to catch the High Green icons across two balmy nights in S6.

This was particularly evident upon stepping into The Grapes on Friday, a place renowned for hosting the first Monkeys gig, and hearing the various accents and languages reverberating around the packed pub. The jukebox played the band’s seven albums back to back while, overlooking the assembled throng of pilgrims, a framed shot of Alex Turner with a quote from a 2013 NME interview fittingly proclaimed “We’re a long way from T’Grapes now”.

Exposed had tickets for the Saturday show, arriving just as Liverpudlian alt-rockers Mysterines finished what sounded like a lively set. Even with over two hours to go until the headliners arrived, Hillsborough Park was positively snided with gig-goers looking to make the most of the glorious sunshine, lending a decidedly ‘festival weekend’ feel to proceedings and adding nicely to the building atmosphere.

During a typically brash and hook-laden set, veteran Swedish rockers The Hives helped ramp up the excitement to optimal levels. Kicking off with recently released earworm ‘Bogus Operandi’, the band lent heavily from their back-catalogue of hectic rock and roll ditties including standout crowdpleasers ‘Main Offender’, ‘Hate To Say I Told You So’ and ‘Tick Tick Boom’. Ferocious, infectious and with rambunctious frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist displaying the sort of convivial crowd interaction that some would relish from the evening’s headliners, The Hives did what they do best: deliver a faultless live experience that brought big grins to the face of the gathered masses.

By now, the crowd were loosened up nicely, to put it mildly, and the eruption of noise when Messrs

Turner, Cook, Helders and O’Malley arrived could well have travelled five miles up Penistone Road and echoed around the suburban estates and playing fields of High Green, where their friendships were forged and foundations laid for one of the world’s biggest modern-day rock bands.

Prior to the show, setlists were a hot topic of conversation. Word had got out that first album favourite ‘A Certain Romance’ had opened the previous evening, which no doubt would have down a treat once again with a crowd very much seeking to revel in nostalgia just as much as (and arguably a fair bit more than) celebrate the band’s more recent offerings. A customarily laconic opening gambit from Turner and Matt Helders’ thunderous drums led not into the melancholic jangles of ACR but into the frenetic, hell-for-leather riffs of ‘Brianstorm’ – a high-octane assault on the senses which set the bar high indeed.

It rarely dipped below excellent. Now seasoned experts with two decades’ worth of experience in these arenas, Turner effortlessly took the audience on an immersive journey detailing irate ice cream men, metaphorical arcade machines, risky seating arrangements and lairy doormen in Sheffield city centre.

There were some comments on both evenings regarding Turner’s apparent lack of interaction with the crowd. It’s perhaps natural that some may have expected a few heartfelt messages or a steady stream of colloquial banter at a ‘back to their roots’ show, and you could argue that a little goes a long way in that respect. In my opinion, however, the band could’ve halted proceedings and chaired a live Q+A on the legacy of the ‘Ole in the Road’ if they pleased, but the sense of connection that most were seeking is best delivered through the music: snapshots of eras from a band that have grown and matured and experimented and shapeshifted almost continuously, and one that many in the city have held close to their hearts for the best part of two decades.

It’s genuinely difficult to pick standouts across the 21-song set. Whether we were scranning tacos on the moon or back in our kitchens circa-2005 with mardybums, each song was bellowed back towards the stage, into the faces of companions or simply up towards the sky with eyes closed, drinking in what felt like a very special, very Sheffield occasion.

That said, the unbridled scenes of collective joy on show when they saw out the encore with ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ and ‘R U Mine?’ will stay with me for a long time. That’s what these nights are all about, and it certainly put a spring in our step as we joined the crowds sloping back down Penistone Road towards town.

After the 30th edition of Sheffield DocFest 2023 came to a close, this year’s winners were announced during the awards ceremony at Sheffield Theatres.

The popular documentary film festival, which took place 14-19 June, saw international and UK delegate attendance rise by 17% compared to 2022. More than 2,550 delegates from more than 60 countries attended the five-day event, where they could view 37 World Premieres, 20 International Premieres, 10 European Premieres, 47 UK Premieres and 8 retrospective films, from 52 countries of production. It was the festival’s most innovative documentary offering yet, which, in addition to films, included a theatre production, live podcast events, premieres of TV series and virtual reality exhibitions.

More than 190 industry representatives from 93 companies and 19 countries took in-person meetings with selected projects and talents over the course of the festival market days.

Sheffield DocFest, in partnership with Showroom Cinema, will continue to engage with the documentary community in Sheffield with the monthly DocNights screening Programme, which is dedicated to championing the work of documentary filmmakers and bringing documentary cinema to audiences all year round.

Honouring films that best display strong artistic vision and courageous storytelling, The Grand Jury Award for the International Competition was awarded to In the Rearview directed by Maciek Hamela (Poland, France, Ukraine, 2023) – a film documenting the first days of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.

The jury, Kim Longinotto, Rodrigo Reyes and Vinay Shukla said: “As jurors, we are both deeply honored and keenly aware of our privileged position. We would like to take this moment to ask: what is the meaning of the art of non-fiction today? Crafted with intimacy and delicate respect, we as a jury were stunned by the brilliant simplicity of this film – passengers upon a universal odyssey of survival and exodus.”

The coveted Audience Award was presented to Your Fat Friend, directed and produced by Jeanie Finlay (USA and UK, 2023) and producer Suzanne Alizart.

The film had its international premiere at the 30th edition of Sheffield DocFest on the 15th June 2023, and both director Jeanie Finlay and protagonist Aubrey Gordon were in attendance for a special post-screening conversation.

The film follows the rise of Aubrey Gordon from anonymous blogger (Your Fat Friend) to NY Times best seller, hoping to influence a paradigm shift in the way that we view fat people and the fat on our bodies.

Jeanie Finlay said of the accolade: “To bring a film home to Sheff DocFest, a festival that I have been coming to and showing films at for 20 years, has been incredibly emotional and meaningful. Our international premiere at the Crucible Theatre was an experience I will remember and treasure for the rest of my life. This is my ninth feature film, my most personal yet. I thought I had made a film for myself, so to receive the audience award is so wonderful.”

FULL COMPETITION PROGRAMME AND WINNER INFORMATION:

International Competition

Honouring films that best display strong artistic vision and courageous storytelling. This award is Academy Award accredited.

WINNER - In the Rearview - Ukraine, Poland - Maciek Hamela – 2023 (International Premiere)

INTERNATIONAL FIRST FEATURE

COMPETITION (supported by Netflix)

This competition honours the future of non-fiction film and celebrates promising new talent.

WINNER - Q - USA, Lebanon - Jude Chehab – 2023 (International Premiere)

INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM COMPETITION

This Academy Award, BAFTA and BIFA-accredited award honours the best creative approaches in documentaries under 40 minutes.

WINNER - The Takeover – USA - Anders Hammer – 2023 (World Premiere)

YOUTH JURY AWARD

This award is selected by some of the UK’s most passionate young documentary lovers.

WINNER - Anhell69 - Colombia, Romania, France, Germany - Theo Montoya – 2022 (UK Premiere)

TIM HETHERINGTON AWARD

Photojournalist and filmmaker Tim Hetherington was committed to humanitarian and social concerns throughout the world. This award recognises films that best reflect his legacy.

WINNER - 20 Days in Mariupol – UkraineMstyslav Chernov – 2023 (UK Premiere)

INTERNATIONAL ALTERNATE REALITIES COMPETITION

This programme combines advances in technology with creativity and imagination to find new ways of exploring non-fiction. The Alternate Realities Award honours the best innovative non-fiction work.

WINNER - The Man Who Couldn’t Leave –Artist: Singing Chen (UK Premiere)

AUDIENCE AWARD

The DocFest audience cast their votes at participating cinemas and venues for their favourite films and works.

WINNER - Your Fat Friend - USA/UKJeanie Finlay (2023)

EXPOSED’S RESIDENT DOCHEAD, MARK PERKINS, ROUNDS UP THE BEST OF THE ACTION FROM THE 30TH EDITION OF SHEFFIELD DOCFEST.

One strand that changes, develops and improves every year is the Alternate Realities exhibition, held in the Site Gallery, which will still be there for a few weeks after the festival closes. Storytelling with media other than film is now a well-established feature of DocFest. Some installations use immersive VR headsets and headphones, but others just use TV screens or images projected inside a dome. I was most affected by The Man Who Couldn’t Leave, where creator Singing Chen takes us inside Taiwan’s notorious Green Island Prison, to tell a harrowing story of a political detainee who never escaped.

Sky Documentaries were at the festival for their third year of promoting their own films. Two of these were The Good Fight Club, the first of a four-part series, and an ambitious stand-alone film, The Right To Fight. Each fighter in The Good Fight Club has a different reason for taking up ‘cage fighting’ or Mixed Martial Arts, and Jack Retallack does a superb job of drawing out their stories. In The Right To Fight, Georgina Cammalleri expertly tells the almost unknown story of the women who attempted to break into that most macho sport of all: competitive boxing. They had to battle for acceptance in a sport from which they were legally barred, and we hear of the sacrifices they made, both in and outside the ring.

The Body Politic is a portrait of Brandon Scott, Baltimore’s youngest-ever black mayor, who tries a new approach to try to bring change to a city ravaged by over 300 gun deaths every year. Director Gabriel Francis Paz Goodenough follows him as he endeavours to effect change in the face of the Republican state governor’s ‘lock more of them up for longer’ approach, which clearly isn’t working.

Once upon a time, Documentaries had titles like The History of Paint, or How Liverpool Cathedral Was Built. They were hardly designed to entertain as well as inform, and certainly not to engage a broad audience in a range of contemporary social issues.

But all that has changed.

Documentaries are now mainstream, with big players such as Sky, Prime and Netlifx regularly churning out their own, all designed for prime-time viewing.

I’m never more proud of what this city can achieve than when DocFest hits town. Over the six days of film screenings, live podcasts, alternate reality installations, talks and interviews with filmmakers and producers, the scope and depth of its achievements astonish me year after year. Post-Covid, the event is back to attracting a global audience and is one of the top documentary film festivals in the world. I feel privileged every time I attend, as I have the chance not just to watch films, some of which are national and international premieres, but it provides the opportunity to meet some of the people who make them. Everything you see and hear comes from life itself. Nothing in the Marvel or DC Cinematic Universe comes close to being as entertaining, moving and engaging as the films showcase here. I was often in tears, sometimes with laughter, but at other times not, as I experienced some harrowing stories which will live with me forever.

Just about everything I mention here was available to everyone, not just DocFest delegates, and if you didn’t manage to get there this year, make it your mission to go in 2024 and I promise you won’t be disappointed.

This being 2023, much of what we see is the product of lockdown and covid; that unique time in all our lives. For some creators, it was the opportunity to edit footage, often unfinished, into a film, and there were several of those. Others saw the pandemic as the catalyst for the film’s creation, and this was never more so than in the film Handle With Extreme Care. Patrick Ginnetty and Bowie Alexander made a revealing and often funny account of life(!) in a New York mortuary, which struggles to cope with the sheer number of deaths at the height of the Covid crisis. One employee even has to prepare his own father for a final farewell. The events they are all dealing with are on an epic scale, and the film manages to capture how they deal with this trauma whilst getting on with their lives.

If you’re looking for charm and beauty told with a ‘direct cinema’ approach➢

➢where the two women in the film are allowed to gently tell their own story, with no narration or explanation, go and see The Castle. Martin Benchimol tells the story of Justina, a domestic worker, who has lived in an Argentine castle since she was 5. The now-deceased owners have left it to her, on condition she doesn’t sell it. She lives there with her teenage daughter, who, understandably, now has ambitions to leave.

Music documentaries are often a sure-fire hit. Wham! was a joyous celebration of their surprisingly short career, with a follow-on Q&A which included Andrew Ridgeley; but Let The Canary Sing, Alison Elwood’s exploration of both the personal and the public life of Cyndi Lauper, topped it for me. Cyndi was - and continues to be - a major campaigner within women’s and LGBTQI+ spheres, not least with her re-purposed song, ‘Girls Just Wanna Have FunDamental Human Rights’. The film features one of my DocFest highlights: when she duets with Patti Labelle on ‘Time After Time’. It’s as powerful of a performance as I have ever seen on film, with two singers reaching almost unbearable heights of both power and quiet subtlety in one song. Astonishing.

David Harewood and Rose Ayling-Ellis were two fascinating interviewees, particularly Rose, as she gave us an insight into her forthcoming film, Signs For Change, a documentary made using British Sign language. It was noticeable how many events at DocFest were made more accessible for hearing-disabled delegates, which is hopefully another step forward towards inclusivity being something that just becomes part of the fabric at all such events.

One aspect that I always like to champion, and never more so than this year, is the Film-Maker Challenge, where six early career filmmakers are given the task to make a film during DocFest. Everything was filmed on one day, in Sheffield, under the guidance of Kevin MacDonald, with all six films screened on the final day. The films themselves were all superb, and from a purely personal point of view, they provided me with an opportunity to see my hometown through the eyes of others. I learned about a hairdresser on Abbeydale Road (not Sabino), took a boat trip on the River Don as it slowly flowed through the centre of town, and in my favourite, by Rosie Baldwin, I watched as an artist sketched volunteers who happened to be shopping on the Moor for free, and saw their reaction to his artwork. I’d love to see these made more widely available, as together they all formed a lovely essay in tribute to the people of Sheffield.

OK, time for my round-up of the best of the festival. All purely personal and not definitive in any way, (I only saw around a fifth of the films on offer!).

The Gullspang Miracle

Do whatever it takes to see this remarkable film. If ever a true story could be called stranger-than-fiction, this is it. It begins when two sisters happen upon someone who they are convinced is their older sister, who they were told had taken her own life decades earlier. At this point, the two of them recruit filmmaker Maria Fredriksson to help unravel what on earth is going on. What follows is a strange, often hilarious family drama. There is true crime, deception and loss, with a narrative that never once goes in the direction in which it seems to be heading.

20 Days In Mariupol

Ukrainian filmmaker and journalist Mstyslav Chernov joined us live from Ukraine at the start of this film, reporting from the war zone, wearing body armour, to urge us to spread the word about the contents of this film. That in itself was remarkable, and what followed was not an easy film to watch. Several people in the audience felt they had to leave. One fainted. Quite simply, it shows the brutal, barbaric and senseless siege and invasion of the city of Mariupol, filmed by a crew who refused to leave with all the other journalists. Sheltering in a hospital, with no idea if they will survive, they continue to film, hoping their witness to this war atrocity will be seen by the world.

Your Fat Friend

A worthy Audience Prize winner, Jeanie Finlay filmed writer Aubrey Gordon over six years as she finally revealed herself publicly after writing and posting essays about fatness, hate and discrimination directed toward fat people. It is a masterclass in gentle documentary storytelling, which charms and seduces us throughout the film.

The Greatest Show Never Made

We only got to see part one of this three-part Prime documentary, but I am desperate to see more. In 2002, reality TV was relatively new and incredibly popular. Six young people were recruited to take part in a reality TV show, with £100,000 on offer as the prize. They left jobs, homes and partners, and travelled to film the show, without knowing that it was all a hoax. The show didn’t exist. The participants are still searching for answers, and we can only guess at the reluctance they must have felt to agree to become involved in Ashley Francis-Roy’s film, after being so hurt and deceived previously. What really happened we can only guess for now, until the remaining episodes are streamed on Prime.

Hummingbirds

This was the first film I saw at this year’s DocFest, and it remained a firm favourite throughout. Two friends hang out over one summer in the border town of Laredo, Texas. They talk as the weeks and months ahead seem aimless and uncertain. In terms of a story, that’s pretty much it. But over the course of the film, we learn about their lives, their fears, their immigration and right-to-work status, sexuality, gender identity - in short, everything that shapes their lives. The film slowly becomes a testament to the power of friendship and the uncertainty of youth.