The Don Boyd retrospective that forms part of this year’s festival kicked off tonight with1998’s Lucia. This was preceded with a talk from Patrick Hazard on the importance of Don Boyd’s work, before Boyd himself took the microphone. He explained the reasons for his focussing this dramatic piece on Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor. It began when Boyd was a young boy, with a passion for the original historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott, whom was regarded as a bit of a celebrity, and was a character of particular interest to Boyd. The opera gave him a wonderful opportunity he said: it is “drenching with beautiful music”, which, with the chance to play with beautiful costumes and scenery, is an “irresistible opportunity” for the filmmaker. Read the rest of this entry »
Nick Papadimitriou goes for long walks, often for days at a time, in an ambitious effort to “hold my region in my mind.” He is comforted by what he sees as the rejected buildings and spaces of London, the “overlooked” places, that lack the care and attention he himself felt he had found wanting in his own early life. Filmmaker John Rogers’ portrait piece ‘The London Perambulator’, about the self-styled Deep Topographer and his loving study of liminal spaces, started ‘The Invisible City‘ day at The Hub in Kings Cross Read the rest of this entry »
The 64-minute Isolation is a mixture of telling clips and camera shots as Directors Joseph Bull and Luke Seomore follow ex-soldier Stuart Griffiths around the country interviewing fellow ex-servicemen about their experiences since leaving the army, mostly after injury. Shot in extreme clarity and focus, uncomfortable notes rising as a disconcerting, disconnected voice matter-of-factly lists the detritus of modern life, following with the disturbing fact that ‘it’s easy to disappear among them’. We creep slowly into the subject matter; ex-soldier Stuart Griffiths travels seemingly through the night and into day, interviewing homeless and dispossessed ex-soldiers. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Space Tourists’ by Christian Frei won this year’s Best Documentary Director Award at the Sundance Film festival, and this eclectically structured piece highlights both the dream of mankind to reach the stars and the divisions that exists between rich and poor as represented by their aspirations in connection to that dream. The film mainly tells the story of Anousheh Ansari, a wealthy businesswoman who ploughed $20million of her own money into an 8-day stay on the International Space Station, and, to a lesser extent, that of Charles Simonyi, co-creator of Word and Excel, who is twice visitor to the Station and well versed in the practices of space training. Following them, literally picking up the scraps of their experience, are the inhabitants of rural Kazakhstan, building shepherding hides and selling scrap from the pieces of the rocket engines that fall, spent, to the ground after the rockets take off from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Read the rest of this entry »
For three years, LIDF has explored and showcased some of the best documentary films from around the world. Now, we’ve decided to delve deeper into the true meaning of ‘documentary’ and explore this method of real life story-telling through other media.
Photographic and radio documentaries will be included in this year’s programme, increasing the scope of material we exhibit and the range of practitioners we work with. Professionals from the film, photography and radio industries will join our panels, lead workshops and participatory events, and contribute new voices to our ‘conversations in documentary’. Highlights so far include Documentary Photography workshops with Magnum photographers, and a photographic treasure-hunt in and around the streets of Bloomsbury.
What’s more, the festival will now run for 16 days (23 April – 8 May) that’s twice as long as last year, so you’ll have plenty of time to get involved. Look our for further event details and very special announcements coming soon!
15:00 Sunday 6 December 2009 at Tricycle Followed by a panel discussion with Stephen Wilkinson (Assistant Director of the International Institute for the Study of Cuba at the London Metropolitan University) and Stephen M. Hart (Professor of Hispanic Studies at University College London). Tickets: £8 (£6.50 Tricycle Members)
Box office: 020 7328 1000 www.tricycle.co.uk
Whilst the international press speculates on the imminent death of Fidel Castro and the Cuban community of Miami is already celebrating his funeral, on the island the condition of his health is a state secret. But the umbilical cord that ties every Cuban to the revolution is beginning to be severed, and a new energy is emerging in the country.
Worth Abbey from the BBC TV Series 'The Monastery'. Photo: worthabbey.net
Documentary as a genre has become a staple of television programming. Every evening, audiences can expect to see anything from the drinking habits of British teenagers to radicalisation in the Muslim community. Although varied in content, the form and presentation of these films has become convergent. It is not only the constraints of the slot, being a national broadcast and thus speaking to a general audience, but also the way they are constructed. There is a standardisation occurring in the narrative arc and the use of music. How can an audience engage with a topic if the frame is predictable and rigid? And is there room for authorship by the filmmaker given the constraints set by commissioning editors?
The LIDF continues its open-ended, audience-led, events at the new Cinephilia West. Unlike other screenings, here we dispense with the panel format and discuss the evening’s theme in an informal, improvised way. We will look at documentary film as it straddles the worlds of reportage, anthropology, activism, photography and mass-entertainment.
