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tonight’s programme curated by Kayleigh Barnes This month’s REEL WOMEN event showcases local filmmakers, and trailers for some great upcoming features. We reviewed Rhiannon Evans’ wonderful stop-motion short FULFILAMENT at the Cambridge Film Festival last year. It’s about an idea represented as a lightbulb in he brain that’s trying to find its purpose. Our lightbulb does everything it can to fit in, but like the ugly duckling, it doesn’t seem to belong anywhere. Every shot is well crafted, and we presume agonised over. No detail is too small. Evans and her skilful animation team make a lightbulb speak without words; we know what the lightbulb is thinking and feeling just by its eyes. INTO THE RAIN was submitted to the 2015 Sci-Fi London 48 Hour Film Challenge. Director Sammy Patterson and her crew were given the title, a line of dialogue, a prop and a theme to work with. Patterson tailored her script to three outstanding character actors who she had pre-selected in preparation for the competition, and the result is an intoxicating future shock - we would describe it as a thinking woman’s EX MACHINA. Caroline Apichella’s THE BELLOWING BLUE is a one minute film consisting entirely of ITN archive footage and stock music from Audio Network. “I wanted to invite my audience to respond to the sublime beauty and terror of man and nature. “I didn’t expect to find such beautiful footage in the archived news reels, but I did,” says Apichella. Reel Women will also be screening a trailer for Apichella’s self-funded feature-length documentary. OLIVE won the Shortreel award at last year’s Cambridge Film Festival. Filmmaker Bex Church said, “Olive is a film very close to my heart. Motivated by my nan’s diagnosis, I wanted to make a film demonstrating the effects someone having dementia has on the family as a whole. It was a way for me, and my dad who was closely involved in the process, to deal with our emotions head on. I’m so overwhelmed and proud of the positive responses I’ve received, especially winning the ShortReel award!”. Hannah Gautrey’s THE WOODEN HOUSE is a documentary about a yellow wooden house in Cottenham, owned by art director Wesley West. The short was chosen for the British Film Institute (BFI) Future Film Festival award last year. She told the Cambridge Evening News: “It just felt great to entertain so many people, and give them an insight into Wesley’s life and a virtual tour of his remarkable home”. SERVICE | MOVEMENT | DESIRE (Zoe Chamberlain/Reeta Varpama) combines interviews with Cambridge City Football Club players and fans with footage from a public art project, KickstART. The project is connected to the creation of 106 new homes on the site of CFC’s grounds in Milton Road. The first of the project commissions was ‘Making The Move’ - when a giant animated footballer was projected onto facades along the route between Milton Road and Histon Road in Cambridge.
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THE CLOSER WE GET opened in cinemas Friday 6th November. The self-portrait documentary follows Karen Guthrie as she cares for her ailing mother, whilst discovering the past and present of her father’s previously hidden personal life. TAKE ONE: Maybe a good place to start is with the origins of THE CLOSER WE GET. It’s referenced in the film that this wasn’t the story you originally intended to make… Karen Guthrie: I suppose the first film would have been a lighter film in a way – maybe a Thelma and Louise with me and my mum driving around the world. It would have been a light-hearted version but around the same subject really. T1: So at what sort of time did the movie as we now have it take shape? KG: It was quite a few years after that (original) interview I had had with my mum that you see at the beginning of the film. I was coming home every other week and I was killing time with her really, and I said to her one afternoon “Do you remember that film we talked about doing?”. And she said “Yeah, yeah. Why don’t we just get on with it?” But (at that point) it was going to be a film about us in a room. I didn’t know that my Dad was going to move back in. I was just happy she wanted to do something, really. And then I started to bring the camera home, and we proceeded organically from there. It was always something she looked forward to. So for a long time it was just something that was part of day to day life really. T1: There are a number of dramatic events that happen in THE CLOSER WE GET that appear to come as a surprise – it must be very difficult reacting to these moments as they arise? KG: Well to be in it and to be editing it, with life progressing as well, you have to take a step back. To have that all on film, it’s really quite strange – a psychoanalyst would have a field day. My editor Alice (Powell) did a great job, and it’s a sign that it’s brilliantly edited that it feels natural. Of course it’s not – it’s entirely a constructed reality. We tried really hard to distil everything, so even the voice over is really sparse, but it still feels intimate. The same with the scenes: we had countless brilliant scenes, and we really had to make those difficult choices. T1: There are dynamics in the film which are hinted at but not fully shown … KG: I wanted to prepare the audience with the rhythm at the beginning. That this wasn’t going to be a film where people asked questions, got answers and had a big shout. It was going to be a film where you had to sit with these characters, you had to like them and find interest in them, and you’d have to wait and make up your own mind about people. [cont’d]
interview with karen guthrie - cont’d T1: Obviously the film is very much about you, and you growing to understand your parents as more than just parents – as normal human beings. KG: And it’s a self-portrait as a film. I’m sure many of my siblings wouldn’t view the family story, either in the past or the current events, in the same way I have. I was going through trauma when I made the film, and I tried to be really honest about how that was making me think about the past and the present. I wanted to keep a kind of rawness to it… There is a kind of emotional rawness to it that I tried not to self-edit too much. T1: The incredible honesty of the film is astounding at times. Has your father seen the film? KG: He has! He watched it privately first, and then we went together to the Edinburgh Film Festival premiere, and saw it in a room full of strangers and fielded questions. He was incredibly brilliant. He’s incredibly proud of the film and its success. In the end, although we see him in some harsh scenes … I think he realises that it’s compassionate and a loving portrait of him. He respects that really. Maybe it feels quite good to be 80 and have no secrets left.
“I feel like I’ve run out of this car crash with a flag waving.” T1: Was there an easy, natural point for ending the film? How did you decide what was going to be the final note? KG: No, it was very, very hard. Life was continuing and I knew the film couldn’t go on forever. And even in the last months when my mum was getting very ill, I always knew that it wasn’t going to include her death. That wasn’t important for the film. So I wanted to acknowledge it, but I was also very keen not to make it a scene. Making the film was part of my recovery from the trauma. Ending the film was ending that period – the recovery – and that was kind of sad in a way. T1: The amazing part of THE CLOSER WE GET is its ability to find those feelings of family hardship and grief. KG: Because so many of us are going through these really horrific traumas, that we’re not prepared for, and we don’t share it sometimes with those around us. When you come and see a film like this, it brings it all back to the surface. For some people it helps them process it in a way, as I’m saying “It’s alright, I went through it – you’ll get through it too!” I do feel like a survivor sometimes. I feel like I’ve run out of this car crash with a flag waving. Not the film, just the life experience and that trauma.
WE MEET PICTUREHOUSE EXEC
CLARE BINNS
HOB NOBBING AT BERLINALE 2016!
Clare oversees the Picturehouse booking policy, and works with a team of programmers who have a passionate interest in their cinemas and particular areas of interest. She also acquires films for Picturehouse Entertainment, such as THE LOBSTER and MARGUERITE. TAKE ONE: To a Film Studies student in the UK, faced with undergraduate tuition fees of £9000 and more for postgraduate studies, what do you say to the type of person looking to get into the industry whilst maintaining an academic curiosity in their subject? CB: What I would say is that it’s a different world to when I went into the industry. I don’t have any education whatsoever in terms of film. I learnt on the job. So you don’t have to go to film school, or university to do film studies, you can just get straight out there and gain experience. I think the most important thing is to see lots and lots and lots of films. Try and understand the business. Go to Festivals. Talk to people, people who are working in the industry. A festival is the best possible place to talk about the very thing that you’re passionate about.
“I don’t have any education whatsoever in terms of film. I learnt on the job.” T1: Do you despair sometimes on the festival circuit that just don’t make it over to the UK? CB: It breaks my heart. I think one of the reasons that I still want our cinemas to be very, very successful – and if that means we have to show films that I personally don’t like – if you are successful it gives you more opportunities to do creative things. So, I think we try very hard at Picturehouse to get smaller films into cinemas. I’m currently trying to work on various films that wouldn’t get distribution in the UK, that we can try and find a way. T1: Do you get star-struck when you meet stars at festivals, or is it on more of an level-field industry footing that you meet? I refere to your recent photo online with Werner Herzog at Sundance. CB: I’m thrilled by meeting people that I admire! Werner Herzog for me, I worked as an usher when his films were coming out back in the day. I knew Werner from CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS 3D, which we released. But it’s incredibly exciting to be able to release films and meet people who you admire who are incredibly creative, which I ain’t!
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW AT TAKEONECFF.COM
Sara Jordenö’s KIKI had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and its European Premiere took place at Berlinale 2016. We spoke to Jordenö about her experience bringing a film with a queer angle to the festival.
Meet Sara Jordeno, director of
Kiki
Sara Jordenö: We had an amazing response at Sundance. I would say something, and everyone in the audience would whoop and cheer. I was interested to see if there would be a difference in Berlin. We know that also Berlin is an amazing and important city for queer and trans people, so I wasn’t too worried. But it was great to see that the film seems to speak outside of the U.S. even though it takes place in the U.S. Take One: We’ve just had Rotterdam before Berlin, and Cannes coming up in May… is Berlinale’s placement in the film festival circuit advantageous to you? SJ: It was funny, because when we got Sundance, people were telling me “great, now you don’t have to worry about festivals.” And I was thinking, “No! We need to get Berlin too!” For me, as a European, this is the perfect context for the European premiere. I’ve been to the Berlinale before, and this is a Swedish/American co-production, so quite a few films from the production company have premiered here. I think the Panorama section here is just a beautiful section to be in. And of course I knew about the Teddy Award and it’s just a context I really wanted. But also, there are amazing questions during the Q&As… T1: As a Swedish filmmaker, could you tell us a little about queer filmmaking in Sweden? Are you forced to go overseas to get films made, or is there a willing audience in Sweden at cinemas and on VOD platforms? SJ: Absolutely. This film is about an LGBTQ subculture, but it’s not limited to that audience: there are a lot of other politics and discussions in the film too. It’s about being on the margins of society. It’s about coming-of-age. It’s about choosing families. It’s about activism and agency. We’re going to have a Swedish premiere in about a month. We’re the opening film at the Tempo Documentary Film Festival in Stockholm. There’s a huge interest there. I think questions around gender, and gender artforms, and the voguing dance scene are big things in Stockholm, yes.
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW AT TAKEONECFF.COM
We spoke to the director of “A Social Life”:
kerith lemon
You’d easily be forgiven for assuming this was a trailer for an exciting new drama, or perhaps promoting something through a wary narrative. After all, Kerith Lemon’s debut short film is highly polished, with a brilliant pace – and truly resonates with you. After a fruitful career that started in PR, Kerith has worked in advertising through to film production with names that include L’Oreal, Nickleodeon and MTV Games. But it was in 2010 that she decided she was just getting started: “I was basically selling products and reached my limit in 2010 and wanted to be on the creative side – I wanted to start making films,” says Kerith. “I wanted to make something that was mine, I wanted for it to be my own”. She quit her life in New York and moved to Paris for 6 months, volunteering at Sundance Film Festival where she worked in the Press Office, steadily building from there. Skipping some years ahead, she became increasingly aware of the digital epidemic that was taking over society. Kerith feels it could be our overworked nature that drives us to blindly pick up phones in our down time and start scrolling, scrutinizing life through other users’ pictures. Which is what inspired her to write. “This whole obsession with social media and the connection to devices formed part of something I really wanted to say”, she adds. “I was with my husband and we were both watching TV whilst being on our phones and I just couldn’t do it any more…” Kerith’s poignant film, A SOCIAL LIFE, centres around a 20 something Meredith. Like most of us, she’s attached to her phone. Unlike most of us, her attachment is closer to an addiction. Documenting her everyday life, we see that everything that Meredith is doing is staged: she’s caught in a web of silence and loneliness that she has spun by her obsession of craving approval via her digital life. But once the glass shatters, the stark truth is revealed – as though waking from a slumber, Meredith realises she needs to live her life rather than pretend to live it. [CONT’D]
INTERVIEW WITH KERITH LEMON - CONT’D
In those 8 or so minutes, any audience member will be able to identify with Meredith because it’s a life we are a part of. This was the foundation that Kerith was inspired by, and something that she experienced herself: “I spent so much time staring at a screen. One evening, I was with my husband and we were both watching TV whilst being on our phones and I realised I just couldn’t do it any more. I saw some articles about social media and it put a name to how I was feeling.” Whilst this film actually opens the floor to a discussion worth having with ourselves, you may notice that there is little to no dialogue. But dialogue is unnecessary when the story is beautifully told through Kerith’s direction of Meredith (played so naturally by Rosalind Ross). Not only this, but you’re pulled into the web further with attractive photography and gripping visual effects. “I’ve been asked a lot if this is a cautionary tale, or if I am vilifying social media. And I’m not, I believe in it.” Whilst social media is a double edged sword and it has been revolutionary, it’s important to exercise caution and quite rightly, Kerith advises: “I think it’s important to be aware – especially for those who are born into it. It’s a habit, that we just pick up our device without thinking when we’re bored.” Even as she faced difficulties in the process of scripting and then producing A SOCIAL LIFE, she persevered: “I sat down every morning for a couple of days and just churned out the script. I will say that what ended up on the screen is very identical to the script. It’s the first thing I’ve written and directed on my own, and I could not be prouder.”
“A sOCIAL LIFE” will be released online on March 14th! ©TAKE ONE 2016 WITH THANKS TO COVER ARTIST SUE SMITH AND CONTRIBUTORS FAYE GENTILE, JACK TOYE, EDD ELLIOTT AND GARRY POPE