Issue 3: The 2017 Cambridge Film Festival Review

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THE CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW 2017

Issue 3

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THE FOREST OF LOST SOULS INSIDE:

VIRTUAL REALITY From the womb to the WW1 trenches

REEL WOMEN

Sci fi, animation, documentary and more PLUS

NEWS

REVIEWS

INTERVIEWS

A WARDS

VIRTUAL REALITY AT CFF Emma Hughes, coordinator for Limina Immersive, speaks to Toby Miller of Bums on Seats When cinema first started they were very much using theatre techniques. It was pretty much theatre on screen, and it wasn’t until they invented editing that Georges Méliès really made cinema what it is today, and it became a medium in its own right. I think that’s what we’re still discovering with VR: what it can do, the possibilities, the potential. Everyone’s experimenting. Nobody knows what they’re doing – the boundaries and rules haven’t been set yet.

The first VR film showing at CFF is WONDERFUL YOU. It’s an incredible interactive piece that explores the development of the senses when we’re babies in the womb. You use a controller and get to choose which senses to explore, and when, and in what order. You can interact with the baby, and play around with the touch and the smell and taste to see how it reacts. So you guide your own experience.

Then we have on the next day a pairing called WORLD WAR 1: ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE. This comprises two different VR experiences shown back to back, and we see WWI from two very different points of view.

Finally we have SECOND DATE, created by Jennifer Lyon Bell. In this one you’re a fly on the wall observing two people on their second date on a beautiful boat in Amsterdam - and seeing where it goes. There are only a couple of cuts; other than that you’re in one place and you choose where you’d like to look, and watch the narrative unfold.

Even though you can experience VR at the same time as other people, you can come out with a completely different experience. I think that’s really wonderful and unique about VR, and it does mean you can go back to experiences more than once, choosing to edit it in your own way!

There’s so much buzz around VR tech at the moment, and the content can get lost in that. So it’s very important to keep in mind that you’re creating for an audience, not just creating for the sake of making something in VR. If you’re making something in VR you’ve got to have a purpose for using that medium, and you’ve got to use it effectively. That doesn’t always mean having to make everything so that the audiences have to look everywhere.

I’ve seen really amazing VR experiences where everything is focussed in front of you even though it’s a 360 medium. So I think it’s really important to keep the story in mind, and make sure that’s what drives the work - but also make sure you’re using VR in an effective way and know WHY you’re using VR rather than film or theatre.

“There’s so much content out there, and it’s growing every day.”

VR is really kicking off in terms of platforms of story telling. There’s so much content out there and it’s growing every day. It’s really versatile: I’ve seen things that are based on 360 video, or mixes between CGI and live footage, and it really is such a platform for experimentation at the moment. Every month we’re seeing hundreds of new things come out.

Both Raindance and Encounters film festivals have a VR strand, and now Cambridge is jumping on the bandwagon. So it definitely goes to show it’s working! People are coming, film festivals are picking up on it and we’d love to take advantage of that and bring it to other arts venues and make it more accessible. The trouble at the moment is that it’s hard to get everything shown because not many people own a headset. So events like the Cambridge Film Festival are a perfect opportunity for people to come and try it out!

WONDERFUL YOU: WORLD WAR 1: SECOND DATE:

21 October 22 October 23 October

The Virtual Reality programme has been curated by Catherine Allen, founder of Limina Immersive.

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Visit https://cambridge105.co.uk/category/podcasts/bums-on-seats/ to listen to the full interview and other Festival coverage.

Free Screenings:

THE BEST OF REEL WOMEN

Reel Women is a film curating collective which showcases works by female filmmakers. We do this by holding regular free short film nights in Cambridge; the Best of Reel Women programme is a small sampler of our favourite films from past events. These short film nights not only bring more female made content to Cambridge audiences, but also help to raise awareness of the gender inequality within the film industry.

However, as recent exposés make explicitly clear, this inequality goes far beyond questions of representation and funding; it extends to insidious systematic abuse and harassment of women. While celebrating female filmmakers and screening their work is very important, Reel Women wants to ask the question: “What needs to be done to change the industry and make safe and fair working environments for all?”

- Jenny Clarke, co-founder

STRYKA, one of the shorts screening for FREE at 13.00 on Mon 23rd and 14.00 on Tue 24th in the Moving Cinema, Parker’s Piece Forty-four minutes, an eclectic mixture of styles, and a lot of talent. were all under 18.

The first film on the Best of Reel Women roster is THE BELLOWING BLUE (2015), by Caroline Apichella. A single minute in length, it consists only of footage reused from ITN Source, as part of the 2015 ITN Source Short Film Competition (which it ended up winning). It’s an interesting piece, with a subtle narrative emerging from the editing. The meaning of that narrative is open to interpretation, but the smoothness of the construction makes it a relaxing watch.

To whet the animation appetite, there are two animated films on the menu; MEAL TIME! (2016) and PAPA (2014). PAPA, by Natalie Labarre, the winner of several festival awards in 2014, ditches dialogue for some classic visual humour. It’s about a father who attempts to build a robot for his daughter. The characters are based on a young Labarre and her father, and that link to reality helps create sweet and believable characters.

The same can be said of the very short, very cute MEAL TIME!, by Tiffany Wei. It’s made up of intercut stories centred around different meals; a couple on a date at a restaurant, kids in the cafeteria, and so on. Wei said the film was inspired by personal experiences, and this shows in the lovably relatable cast and scenarios. The humour (also dialogue-free) feels genuine and well-observed, and the art style is adorable.

Also on the programme is PLAYGROUND POLITIX (2015) by Doreen Spicer-Dannelly, wherein playground dominance is decided by an epic dance battle. It’s an innocent and lighthearted romp, but the choreography is where the piece really shines. It’s outstanding, particularly for such young dancers.

But the highlight might be STRYKA (2015). Written and directed

by Emily Carmichael, it follows an alien criminal as she struggles to choose a human partner-in-crime. It takes a dynamic made famous with characters like Han Solo and Chewbacca (alluded to in the film), and twists it, placing the alien as our lead, and playing the drama out as if it were a romance. It’s a genius concept executed fantastically, with a witty script, excellent visual effects, and a believable futuristic world. The narrative is simple yet rewarding, and the characters are ones you’d want to see again.

All these films prove, as if it ever needed proving, that there is a wealth of female talent in filmmaking. It’s not just wrong to ignore it; in the case of the reptilian thief Stryka, it’s downright criminal.

- Ben Jones, Student Writer

For documentary fans, Hannah Gautrey’s THE WOODEN HOUSE (2016) is a fantastically whimsical portrait of an eccentric modelmaker named Wesley West. He makes for an interesting subject to say the least, and the direction is brilliant, especially considering the team @ReelWomenUK is a proud partner of CFF 2017. Look for their logo here and in the CFF brochure to find every film directed by a woman.

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anishoara the idyllic summer of youth is not just a memory...

The idea of mapping out the span of a life or a coming of age according to the rhythms of the seasons is nothing new in cinema, but rather than allow it to impose a rigid structure on her film, Ana Felicia Scutelnian’s debut feature ANISHOARA is much more open to other new ways of looking at the world that each season represents.

The film opens with a tale related directly to the camera by a storyteller: the legend of a skylark who wants to embrace the sun.

The subsequent chapter, which is almost entirely free of dialogue, opens on the last summer of youth for a 15 year old girl in a remote Moldovan village far from the modern world. Children’s shadows move on a playground, like the limited view of the world available to the inhabitants of Plato’s cave. It’s a world of pure experience, untouched by reason or self-conscious awareness. Anishoara plays, sleeps, rides a tractor out to work in the fields, eats a watermelon, sings folk songs and catches the eye of a handsome young man; the film needs no words other than occasional exchanges.

The beauty of the imagery remains in the Autumn chapter but it is no longer quite as idyllic; reality is creeping in, slowly and barely perceptibly. Rather than ride freely in a tractor, Anishoara is learning to drive one. It’s a simple image, a throwaway moment that opens this chapter, but it’s in tune with the changing pace and tone of the film. There’s a German visitor in the village: an outsider, an old man, an ornithologist who has come seeking something more than the birds; so the skylark needs to be wary of singing too brightly. A more generous interpretation would be that the old man is unable to find any other way of recapturing lost youth, but he still represents a danger for Anishoara, and she seems to act on an instinct that warns her not only of physical violation but of corruption on a spiritual level.

Winter and Spring continue to mix impressions of the beauty of nature with a more uncomfortable dawning of reality. Anishoara appears to be increasingly out of place, far away from those earlier, carefree days. The young boy she met in summer, and danced with

Screening at the Picturehouse on Oct 22nd at 21.00 3

www.takeonecff.com | @takeonecinema

in autumn, takes her to see the sea on his motorbike. But it’s all too much for Anishoara to take in, and they retreat to an inn where Anishoara attempts to block out her immediate surroundings and try to find another connection to the sound of the sea itself. Sounds are just as important in Scutelnian’s film: a way of opening up the senses to other ways of experiencing the world. A search for inner peace, however, proves impossible when the young girl realises that the world shapes itself around the older generation, and she needs to chart her own escape route. Scutelnian leaves us with a sense that the idyllic summer of youth is not just a memory, but something that lives within us - and which can still be preserved.

- Noel Megahey

“Light leaves the room, and air and sound and time.” Simon Fitzmaurice makes the audience aware of all their senses. His philosophy draws on the essence of humanity and being alive, which is highlighted through his passion to finish his featurelength film, “This is Emily”, despite only having his sight left.

- Elle Haywood, Student Writer See IT’S NOT YET DARK on Sun 22 at 15.15 (Picturehouse) and Mon 23 at 12.00 (Emmanuel College)

for those in peril...

Simon “FASHIONISTA” Rumley’s film CROWHURST, exec produced by Nic Roeg, is due for an early 2018 release courtesy of StudioCanal. Visit takeonecff.com to read more about this astounding and heartbreaking true story.

In the Same Boat Oh, if only those seen in Rudy Gnutti’s 2016 documentary film IN THE SAME BOAT could be found in the bar of the Arts Picturehouse afterwards. They include some of the world’s most challenging, interesting and it has to be said entertaining thinkers – folk you’d long to talk with, into the wee small hours. One has since passed on: Zygmunt Bauman, the Polish sociologist, who we see on screen puffing away at his pipe and looking and sounding for all the world like the world’s greatest sage. Another guy you’d love to buy a drink for is Jose Mujica – a wonderfully wise old owl, and former President of Uruguay - who gave away most of his government salary.

Mauro Gallegati are full of good ideas for all of us.

If all this sounds like a 70-minute TED talk – it isn’t. Gnutti infuses into the discussions some captivating imagery: the most potent being that of the eponymous boat (the one that we are all in) cracking the ice of an arctic ocean. There is some obvious use of symbolism (yes, those glaciers falling into the sea to suggest global warming) but the whole piece, including a strangely effective linking motif of a radio presenter (played by Alex Brendemhul) and groups of vox poppers in cities around the world, have a powerful effect. The only regret here is that you can’t chat to them afterwards. - Mike Levy

The theme of the Catalan director’s latest work is no less than the future of mankind (spoiler alert: some hope - but not that much).

Tackling some of the big economic and social issues of our century, By way of consolation, we hope to welcome director Rudy Gnutti the talking heads ponder such topics as global poverty and inequality, to the screening for a Q&A - and if you are lucky, you’ll find him climate change, technology, globalisation and unemployment. in the Picturehouse bar afterwards!

Solutions are offered (mainly a universal living wage coupled with less work) but more importantly it is comforting to know that such Picturehouse screenings on 24th Oct at 17.15 and 25th at 14.45 bright and perceptive folk such as economists Mariana Mazzucato and

Camera Catalonia

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INEXBA / THE WOUND

Screening at the Arts Picturehouse at 18.00 on 22nd October Xolani and Vija are the caregivers in traditional circumcision ceremonies in South Africa – each year they watch over and guide the young initiates into manhood. Xolani is asked by a family friend to be the caregiver for his son, Kwanda, because he has been behaving strangely at home in the city. However, Xolani has a secret as to why he attends the ceremony every year: his feelings for Vija go beyond that of a boyhood friendship. Secretly, the men meet for sexual liaisons each year during this time out in the wilderness, although Vija is married with children. When Kwanda’s sexuality comes into question, Xolani is faced with difficult choices that threaten to upset this sacred ritual of manhood.

The details of the circumcision ceremony are often seen as taboo, and so the on-screen portrayal of the event is immediately controversial.

Furthermore, INXEBA has a particular relevance in Africa, and will receive a different response on the continent compared to other audiences around the world. That is not to say that there will be any confusion in cultural translation; the controversy lies in the perception of this ceremony, and what it might mean to some communities. The film is ably constructed as a love story which can be viewed through its universal themes, despite the importance and complexity of the setting in which it takes place.

This love story is also about gay identity in the traditional world, something which is not tolerated in many African cultures, even outlawed in some African countries (although not in South Africa, it must be noted). This adds an extra layer of controversy to the picture. There is an irony to these two gay characters leading boys into manhood, while they are not following the practices of a stereotypical, traditional man. Xolani and Vija are respected for their roles as caregivers and leaders in this masculine setting. As well as that, we as the audience begin to care for Xolani, in particular, and the plight in which he finds himself. Thus, the film asks us what it means to be a man – unpacking the stereotype, and suggesting that sexuality does not define manhood.

It is not surprising that INXEBA is in consideration for the South African entry to the Academy Awards next year. Although the subject matter can be critiqued – and if nothing else, will generate a dialogue on many levels – the shocking ending will certainly create discussion around where this ultimately all leads.

- Mike Boyd

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THE BALLAD OF SHIRLEY COLLINS

“Shirley Collins is a truly amazing figure. She is the very spirit of folk music, and has always been in a kind of awkward relationship with it, as the kind of music that Shirley has always espoused is the oldest, truest, perhaps darkest form of folk music, with all of these fantastic dissonances, all this bloody and tragic history distilled into every verse…” - Alan Moore

Meet producer Paul Williams and director Tim Plester on 22 Oct at the Picturehouse screening at 20.15 5

Cambridge African Film Festival

THE FOREST OF

LOST SOULS José Pedro Lopes offers fans, and those just dipping a toe into the genre, an original take on the horror film. THE FOREST OF LOST SOULS is a breath of fresh air in a genre populated by remakes and CGI. Lopes has kept this black and white Portuguese indie horror short and purposefully paced, to create a film that both horror enthusiasts and those who are less well-versed in the genre will appreciate.

The film focuses on a fictional forest where people go to commit suicide. Father and husband Ricardo (Jorge Mota) comes across Carolina (Daniela Love), a young teenage girl, while he is seeking solace in his final hours in the forest. What initially comes across as a meeting of two people looking for an escape takes an unexpected turn and unveils a much more sinister underbelly. There follows a much more familiar storyline, with spatterings of blood and slasher elements bringing the film full circle into horror-land.

The style that Lopes has used is reminiscent of 1960s Godard, intertwined with the gothic stylings of early Hammer: the rich contrast of the black and white creates a depth to each scene much like the forest itself. Each shot is deliberate and lugubrious; fans of Tarkovsky will enjoy the contemplative scenes which make up the story of the forest, and of those within its boughs.

Portugal has recently battled with an increasing number of suicides, following a bid to reduce them by 10% by 2020. Lopes approaches dark and sensitive subject matters with intensity but also with a thoughtfulness that means THE FOREST OF LOST SOULS can be

enjoyed as a horror that seriously explores the real-life issues at its core.

The contrasts between the natural and the urban, and the timeless and the contemporary are beautifully pieced together. Shots taken at ground-level create the sense of being part of the forest; a perfect example of Lopes’ attention to detail. Each shot has a story and a reason. Audiences can see further examples of this in Lopes’ 2011 short SURVIVALISMO. THE FOREST OF LOST SOULS performs an elegant balancing act on the genre spectrum: part slasher and part home invasion, peppered with coming-of-age elements. Viewers looking for a different take on the genre will be impressed and thoroughly creeped out by this visually beautiful and unnerving tale.

- April McIntyre

This wonderful film has come to the Festival all the way from Portugal. Please consider donating to those affected by the forest fires in Pedrógão Grande, which Prime Minister António Costs described as “the worst tragedy in terms of human lives lost that we’ve known in recent years”. https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/pedrogao-grande #juntosporpedrogao #juntosomosmaisfortes

Picturehouse screening on 25th Oct at 22.00

ALL CONTENT © TAKE ONE 2017 | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: ROSY HUNT | MANAGING EDITOR: JIM ROSS | DEPUTY EDITORS: BEN JOHNSTON, MARK LIVERSIDGE, STEPHEN WATSON | DESIGN: ROSY HUNT | SPONSOR: ARU | THANKS TO: BUMS ON SEATS

More reviews, interviews, features and unabridged versions of all our printed content at takeonecff.com

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