A sigh of collective and happy relief from the volunteers as the drinks were rolled out and the filmmakers, attendees and workers alike joined together to hear Patrick Hazard close the festival and announce the winners of the two categories. And so, the winners were….

Best Short: Cathedral

Film We Liked The Most: Shout

In his final speech, Hazard praised the stamina of his volunteer staff, his “formidable crew, likeable, skilled…and who do all the things I can’t do!”, who have been the unseen stars of the show. We all hope that the success of this year’s London International Documentary Festival will be repeated next year, and that you’ll join us!

With the last of Don Boyd’s excellent and intriguing introductions to his works, giving the average viewer something else to look forward to and the Boyd fan an exciting glimpse into the background of this pioneering director, War Requiem started. This was a beautiful piece to end the Festival on. Wordless and mysterious, this film by the late Derek Jarman, produced by Boyd, combines visual storytelling and metaphorical imagery with Benjamin Britten’s famous War Requiem, commissioned for the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral and inspired by Wilfred Owen’s war poetry that echoed the composer’s own pacifist stance. The film accompanies each movement of the Requiem with its main characters of the Nurse, Wilfred Owen, the German Soldier and the Unknown Soldier, played by Tilda Swinton, Nathaniel Parker, Sean Bean and Owen Teale, with a cameo performance and voiceover by Laurence Olivier as the Old Soldier, in different situations, playing out their wartime roles and their grief at the effects of war on their lives and the lives of those around them.

Don Boyd told us the touching story of the effect being involved had on an aging and dementia-stalked Olivier;  after he later died, his own nurse called Boyd to tell him the actor had had a new lease of life after filming the piece. Jarman himself was very ill during filming. He wrote it at his famous farmhouse, where the garden was used as the backdrop for the first scene with Olivier. And despite Boyd agreeing that the piece would never be commissioned today, he was pleased to be able to tell us that the BBC have had to re-purchase it, intending to show it again.

As an end to the Festival, this warmly-received piece reminded us of everything the huge variety of films shown have set out do: invite us to remember the forgotten, or even meet the unknown for the first time. A moving finish.

‘Poets’ opens with two mysterious men sporting interesting moustaches, clad in long black coats and Panama hats, hovering over Gregory Corso’s grave while reciting his poetry. ‘Excellent,’ I think, ‘right up my street’.

This film is a dream-like, sepia-tinted, nostalgic homage to the Beat Generation in both America and Italy, where poetry festivals sprung up on beaches and hundreds cheered (or jeered) the vibrant performance poets as they feverishly screamed into microphones, tore off their clothes and exclaimed things like “Philosophers! The title of this poem is Fuck Off!”.
It is also a film that seeks to find out what has changed since that frequently romanticised period, and what purpose poetry can serve now.

‘Things have become more organised,’ explains one contemporary Roman poet, ‘they’re not so spontaneous.’ He laughs, ‘what we need is a sex and poetry rave party!’

Through interviews with modern poets, recitations, much graveyard wondering and beautiful old footage, our two poetic protagonists show us that poetry is still flourishing under the surface of popular culture in Italy, even if it is being written on mobile phones or MacBooks. And it asks how we can bring poetry to what it once was, out in the open and reaching vast audiences worldwide.

Nostalgic, hopeful, poignant, prospective and inspiring, ‘Poets’ is a wonderful film, filled with exerts from fantastic poems whose authors and words will forever remain within a certain arena of public consciousness, contrary to Keats’ famous grave inscription.

Don Boyd, as part of his retrospective, gave a roomful of lucky viewers a real insight not only into his work but into the film commissioning industry in his talk, accompanied by film footage, ‘Hamlet in China’ today in the Sackler Room at the British Museum. “This is by no accounts a film,” he half-apologised, somewhat echoing his words at the opening of his film ‘Lucia’ at the Barbican a week or so ago when he told us “this is in no way a documentary.”. “I have never ever shown anything unfinished….this is unique,” he went on to explain, exciting the audience further. And so he told us his story.

“Television is dead…the day of the tv commissioning editor is over.”

And here’s why. Several years ago, Nick Fraser, somewhat commissioning editor of the legendary Storyville, told Don Boyd he wanted him to make a film: Hamlet in China. Boyd, incredulous at first, spent a year researching his project and getting very, very excited, as the footage of potential settings – including the Great Wall – and potential actors – from the Chinese RADA-equivalent – shows.  It was to be a film within a play within a documentary. It was all planned. The pre-Olympics timing was just perfect. A day or so before everything was to be shipped, organized and begun, Nick Fraser rang up to announce…that the BBC had pulled their funding. Isn’t it ridiculous, Boyd opined, that for the sake of a sum about a third the size of Alan Yentob’s salary, the entire project was shelved.

During his commentary, it was clear to see that Boyd still has feelings for this project. Sadly, he thinks it’s unlikely to get made now, and all of his and others’ hard work will go to waste. This story really highlights the mercy at which filmmakers find themselves in the hands of commissioning editors. Don Boyd has a plan: ‘Highbrow’, a project he thinks will allow true creativity, a platform for the visual arts, with 25-30 ‘curators’ who won’t be answering to tyrannous executives, and which will be “as revolutionary as the printing press.”. In waiting for that to come about, we were privileged to see inside this director’s “notebook”.

Today’s film, shown in association with Brightwide, whose slogan ‘Watch Think Link Act’ echos LIDF’s commitment to filmmaking for social change, is a paradigm  for both party’s belief that film, through bringing about awareness, has the power to alter society.

Human Organ Traffic asks a number of questions for which there are no simple answers: ‘If it was a question of life or death for you or a loved one, would you be willing to pay to attain an organ illegally?’, ’should organ donation in living donors be made legal everywhere, even if the donors are most likely doing it as a result of extreme poverty and desperation?’

In an attempt to shed more light on these questions the director of H.O.T sought to document the experiences of the donors, from Brazil to Nepal, all of whom are deeply impoverished.
We also meet the middle agents who take a cash cut from the operation by putting the potential patients in touch with the right people.
The experiences were as varied as they were fascinating. From donors who felt it was worth doing on account of the large sum of money they received, to others who were conned out of any money at all, to the truly shocking disclosure that 95% of all organ donations in China are from executed prisoners, of which the money paid for them goes to the government.
Organ trafficking, it seems, is big business, and the only ones who appear to loose out in this global trade are the donors.

The enlightening panel after the film gave us an insight into the mind of a surgeon, who performs hundreds of transplants a year, and the director of the National Kidney Foundation, both of whom tackled the debates surrounding the ‘Opt- Out’ donation scheme being proposed by the government, and the severe complications, including the death of the donors, that these illegal operations can cause.

H.O.T is a call to arms for all those who get to watch this great documentary, but I’m yet still unsure what side is best to join.