Take One CFF2012 #3

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TUESDAY EIGHTEENTH SEPTEMBER issue three

"Just as I go back to my home town of Marseilles on a regular basis to look after my family, I feel drawn to Cambridge. This atmosphere

of

serious

learning is good for the soul and for the intellect."

- Robert Guédiguian

OFFICIAL REVIEW PUBLICATION OF THE

CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL It‘s been a busy first weekend at the 32nd Cambridge Film Festival! Opening night saw legendary director and friend of CFF, Robert Guédiguian, present his new film SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO; and David Frankel, director of HOPE SPRINGS, introduced his new comedy-drama, which stars Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. As if that wasn‘t enough, Woody Allen‘s latest, TO ROME WITH LOVE, opened to a packed house. And that was just the start of a weekend full of the best of new, innovative and classic cinema.

BLACK BEARD, WAR WITCH and HEMEL are just a few of the most talked about films. The Family Film Festival was a great success, especially the Cosgrove classics DANGERMOUSE and THE BFG. In this issue, we speak to the programmers of the Catalan Cinema season, to find out more about the cinema of Catalonia. You can also read a transcript of Robert Guediguian‘s Q&A, and if you‘re looking forward to a MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR tonight or A HARD DAY‘S NIGHT tomorrow, did you know that the Fab Four rocked the Picturehouse (then the Regal Cinema) in the 60s?

Read all about it inside!

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Mike Boyd

INTERVIEW ramon lamarca and bill lawrence on

CATALAN CINEMA A highlight of the 2012 Cambridge Film Festival is the selection of Catalan films. Catalonia is one of the oldest nations in Europe, and now a thriving community in north Spain, where a strong cultural and political heritage, as well as a deep sense of identity, flourishes. It is therefore no wonder that the film output is such an extraordinary range of talent and variety – as displayed in this season of the festival, showcasing the work of seven Catalan directors from the last two decades. Toby Miller spoke to Ramon Lamarca and Bill Lawrence, the programmers of the Catalan Cinema season, to find out more about the films showing and the cinema of Catalonia.

Toby Miller: Why a season of Catalan cinema?

Bill Lawrence: Earlier this year Ramon handed me a blu-ray of Augusti Villaronga’s BLACK BREAD, which he thought I should see. There were a lot of aspects of the film that quite impressed me, not least of which was the sense of cultural context which was in there, the sense of the Spanish Civil War that permeated the piece and was clearly still a very important part of modern Catalan culture. Ramon then introduced me to other examples of Catalonian

When we regained democracy, the Catalan government had to actually choose between television or cinema... cinema.

Ramon Lamarca: Catalan cinema goes back as far as the history of cinema. What happened to Catalan culture and Catalan cinema in general is that when film sound arrived it is difficult enough to find an audience for a film that is not in English, let

CHASING ICE A huge hit at the Sundance Film Festival, this is not only an important film about global warming, but also a beautiful and breathtaking photographic experience.

In CHASING ICE National Geographic photographer James Balog and director Jeff Orlowski set out to actually show climate change taking place by trekking across the arctic. Faced with freezing temperatures and failing equipment, the team soldiered on to capture some of the most truly extraordinary images ever committed to film. Seeing really is believing.

CHASING ICE screens Thursday 20, 8pm and Friday 21, 10.15am.

BLACK BREAD (PA NEGRE)

alone Catalan - which is not as popular and well known as Spanish is. After the Civil War, when Franco won, not only did they ban Catalan to be used in any public arena, but also any representations of Catalan culture; it was complete cultural control and censorship. But when democracy came back in Spain in 1975, Catalan cinema started again.

TM: Where are the next generation of Catalan filmmakers coming from?

RL: Funnily enough it has been Catalan television that’s financed most of our cinema, because they are going to end up on Catalan television. The Government has an interest in promoting and protecting Catalan culture, so there’s been a push from the government and grants awarded for films that are going to be made in the Catalan language.

Read Toby Miller‘s unabridged interview at www.takeonecff.com

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TAKE ONE RECOMMENDS

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF

HOPE SPRINGS? Best of the fest?

Check out our review at TakeOneCFF.com and find out if we agree....

REVIEW

ON THE ROAD DIR: WALTER SALLES

... there is an engagingly hypnotic quality to their personas and musings ...

Walter Salles‘ adaptation of ON THE ROAD is an intoxicating but frustrating film. Similar to the characters - drawn like moths to the flame of Dean Moriarty, the muse at the centre of Jack Kerouac‘s original novel - chances are you will be drawn in by the visual and aural hedonism. You’ll ignore the self-indulgence and lack of control - but only up to a point.

... much like Kerouac’s impulsive prose, ON THE ROAD rarely slows down to pull over.

The film follows Sal (Sam Riley), an avatar for Kerouac, across his many road adventures with his eclectic collection of Beat Generation friends. The fulcrum around which their youthful indulgences pivot is the Bacchanalian Dean (Garrett Hedlund). Across time and locations, connections are formed, broken and repaired as numerous people eventually move on and reject Dean - including Sal himself.

There is much to like in ON THE ROAD, Walter Salles’ second adaptation of a famous road story (the first being THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES in 2004). Eric Gautier’s cinematography almost has a humid look in summer scenes, and you expect frost to develop on the screen in winter. In addition, some wonderful camera work and framing in linking passages give the film a sense of momentum, often compensating for the lack of a narrative vector.

The acting is strong, with Hedlund and Riley (previously wonderful in CONTROL) proving capable leads – even if they are shown up a bit by the sporadic appearances of Viggo Mortensen. Kristen Stewart also crams more sexual tension, energy and release into her performance as Marylou than all her previous work combined.

Much like Kerouac’s impulsive and unconstrained prose, however, ON THE ROAD rarely slows down to pull over. ON THE ROAD, as a result, does not necessarily

make for a film with a satisfying narrative. When we are left to linger with Sal and Dean there is an engagingly hypnotic quality to their personas and musings - but the journey to each point is muddled. To the language of cinema, Kerouac’s book is perhaps the equivalent of a word without a literal translation. Salles can articulate the story on screen, but he can’t quite retain the elegance of the native form.

Jim Ross

"It‘s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it‘s dark and we‘re wearing sunglasses."

THE BLUES BROTHERS screens at ARU on Thurs 20th at 20.00

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© 2012

Cambridge Film Festival Review Editor/Design Rosy Hunt Deputy Editor Jim Ross Comms Manager Mike Boyd Sub Editor Gavin Midgley Photography Tom Catchesides

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FEATURE

,

AN AUDIENCE WITH ROBERT GUEDIGUIAN

"Just like Mitterand, I refuse to speak English," quipped Robert Guédiguian at the Q&A following the CFF screening of LES NEIGES DU KILIMANDJARO on Thursday, with Isabelle McNeill translating.

He cited Victor Hugo as an inspiration: "... You can see in the titles of his works - like Les Miserables - he tried and he succeeded in giving a certain grandeur to the lives and the stories of the people who were often not represented by literature. Hugo had this desire to give to people the grandeur, or the greatness that they didn't know they had inside themselves. I was very influenced by him generally and Les Miserables was the first serious book that I ever read.

Most of the films I have made have started from this idea and this desire. To give these great feelings and emotions to ordinary, everyday people we see in the street who are perfectly humble. Cinema exists on the one hand to reveal things, to criticise and to denounce, but also to encourage us to show what‘s good in the world, and the positive side.

... we need to [...] affirm that there is no such thing as personal success, it only exists collectively...

You will notice that as well as Victor Hugo, Jean Duresse (a great leader of the workers‘ movement in France; the father of french socialism and the founder of the newspaper Humanite) was also very present in the film. I believe we need to revisit 19th century thinkers today. This short 20th century, as as the historian Hobbes called it, is a century where we need to rewind to a time when socialism and capitalism clashed and went in the wrong direction. We need to ask the questions again and make a fresh start with more solid foundations, in particular in relation to the sharing out of wealth and property. Other than that, the film is a love story!

Isabelle McNeill: In the film, the older generation is seen by the younger generation as fighting for rights that have been forgotten; does this lack of understanding contribute to difficulties?

Robert Guédiguian: We live in a society which is constantly forgetting. Nobody ever mentions that the state we live in today has been fought for, has been torn out of a situation by people who shed blood and tears for it. This whole history of struggle and of class 30 years ago has been lost. Not just the history but also the culture of resistance and struggle has been lost and replaced by an individualism, thinking about personal gain first and foremost. We need to go back to fraternity and solidarity and affirm that there is no such thing as personal success, that it only exists collectively.

The complete Q&A transcript will be available soon at www.takeonecff.com.

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++

SELLING OUT FAST! CFF FRANCESCO ROSI SEASON BEGINS WITH SALVATORE GIULIANO ON WED 19TH AT 15.00PM ++

REVIEW

JASON BECKER: NOT DEAD YET

DIR: JESSE VILE

"Today will be the best day in the world..."

"I‘m going to see Lego in the cinema!"

Lou Gehrig’s Disease knocks you down hard and fast, or at least it should do. Jesse Vile’s directorial debut gallantly attempts to lift the lid on the degenerative condition, using the anomalous case of virtuosic Hair Metal axe-man Jason Becker, given three years to live in 1990, yet still going strong (if paralysed) twentytwo years later. As the director concedes beforehand, “a lot of people think this is a film about heavy metal, but it’s not”; it actually riffs on community, appetites for life and Becker’s remarkable ebullience in the face of a terminal illness.

...he doesn’t want to be a hero, maybe just “the gross Dad in Family Guy”.

"I‘m going see Lego in cinema!"

to the

- Theo

Join the lively debate in the comments sections at takeonecff.com!

Becker declares that he doesn’t want to go into anything deep or heartwarming; he doesn’t want to be a hero, maybe just “the gross Dad in Family Guy”. Ricocheting from original camerawork and interviews through TV footage to archival films and cartoon drawing, the film avoids overwhelming you with emotion.

Yes, Vile confronts your typical existential ideas, but he does so in an amusing fashion, never punchy or

disorientating.

The opening scene shows home footage of a teen Becker jamming a hoedown ‘Mr Tambourine Man’.

Locks of wavy black hair, fingers noodling away on a guitar, we’re swept through a youth of obstinate musical mania: Dylan, Clapton solos and a little later, Bach fugues.

..."He wanted everything to be perfect already..."

“He wanted everything to be perfect already”, says his mother, and there was no doubting he was a prodigy. Superstardom came fast: he soon joined Marty Friedman’s neoclassical metal outfit Cacophony, rush-released a solo album and subsequently bagged the most lucrative gig in rock, lead guitar in the David Lee Roth Band. But having recorded "A Little Ain’t Enough", his condition was diagnosed, and his dreams of touring shattered.

Unable to move or speak, he continues to live with an effervescent determination, and the film examines this workaholic dimension intimately. First there was Perspective – an album made in the early 90s using Becker’s eye and chin movements – and now there’s an “eye sign language” developed by his father. He still writes music, it’s just someone else has to write it down.

Aside from his unflinching humour, the film’s most touching aspect is perhaps the collective of ex-lovers, friends and family who surround him.

Together they’ve created an uplifting and closely-stitched documentary bolstered with an extraordinary spirit.

Huw Oliver

++ SCHEDULE CHANGE! SINISTER SCREENS TUESDAY 18 AT 22.30, NOT 23.00! ++

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FEATURE

Hysteria, Torn Hair and Smelling Salts

THE BEATLES AT THE REGAL!

If you believe in yesterday, think about the Fab Four next time you watch a movie at the Arts Picturehouse.

Back in 1963, what we now know as our Film Festival

summer of ’63 saw John, Paul, George and Ringo become

venue was the upper gallery of a much larger cinema

the objects of desire for every screaming teenager in

called The Regal.

Yes, the name of the huge booze Keller downstairs reflects

town.

Just eight months after their first visit to The Regal,

the much older moniker of a Cambridge legend. The Regal

the boys came back as superstars. They played on the

cinema (later the ABC) was opened in 1937 and boasted

27th November, just days after President Kennedy was

one of the finest organs in any picture house. Its swanky

assassinated. But the dire doings in Dallas were not

art deco interior also impressed the Yanks – the back rows

uppermost in the minds of 4000 youngsters who queued

became a favourite setting for a quiet fag and a smooch

up to get tickets to see their heroes live and in the

with the local girl. The ABC Regal was also used as a stage

scream-worthy flesh on the Regal stage. The Regal found

for live gigs and many an upcoming band (such as the

itself at the epicenter of Beatlemania with the local press

Rolling Stones) made their names here.

headlines screaming, “Hysteria, Torn Hair and Smelling

In March 1963, a little-known beat group was hired to

Salts.” There was a deafening wall of high-pitched sound

support Chris Montez and Tommy Roe. The Cambridge

as the boys came on stage. Few in the audience actually

News of the day advertised the Roe gig without even

heard them sing.

mentioning his Merseyside support band, The Beatles.

Such was the hysteria in the audience that Mr Archer, the

What a difference a few weeks make. Within a few days of

cinema manager on that day reported that, “The Regal

their obscure little set at The Regal, the boys brought out

is like a fortress with the drawbridge off. Every entry and

their first UK album, “Please Please Me”’ and their fame

exit point is being guarded..”

rocketed into the showbiz stratosphere. That spring and

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Mike Levy

Read the full story at www.takeonecff.com

REVIEW

AN AUDIENCE FAVOURITE

THE TEMPTATION OF ST TONY

The deliciously intriguing, witty opening – a peculiar funeral procession which is rudely interrupted in a most unexpected manner – sets the tone for this Estonian curiosity. It’s the beginning of a bizarre story which follows Tony, a middle manager who seems in a constant state of bewilderment, on a series of strange and ever more troubling encounters.

The narrative is full of unexpected and outlandish elements, as the story moves from the eccentric to something much more gruesome. The film is clearly inspired by, and makes reference to, a number of other filmmakers: Buñuel, in its sense of the surreal and an ever present potential for the unexpected; Lynch in its weird and unsettling juxtapositions, and its palpable sense of menace beneath the everyday; Roy Andersson in the precisely composed scenes, with their dead-pan humour; even Bela Tarr in some of those slow tracking shots over rain sodden earth (thanks to the striking black and white photography of Mart Taniel).

... Taavi Eelmaa is perfectly cast as Tony, his face subtly registering every possible kind of bafflement...

Somehow, though, writer/director Veiko Õunpuu brings together these elements in a coherent, distinctive modern fable on morality. The film explores the dilemmas and confusions in making moral choices, both in relation to the wider social setting of capitalism and its corporate imperatives, but also more importantly in the personal predicaments that Tony, our non-descript modern-day Saint Anthony, faces.

Taavi Eelmaa is perfectly cast as Tony, his face subtly registering every possible kind of bafflement as he tries to negotiate his way through the strange, almost Kafkaesque, world he finds himself in. As the story descends ever more into the nightmarish, satanic ‘forest dark’ of the Dante quote captioned at the start of the film, the moral choices become ever more confusing and troubling, and the nature of goodness more elusive.

THE TEMPTATION OF ST TONY is a film which is fresh, bold, and stimulating. It is also deliberately provocative: the final, unforgettable incident in the story – reminiscent of a notorious Peter Greenaway scene – is both grotesque and distastefully ironic, but perhaps the most fitting finale for this contemporary ‘saint’. Whatever your reaction, THE TEMPTATION OF ST TONY is guaranteed to stimulate the most lively of post-film discussions.

Mike O‘Brien

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