Thinking and Drinking: Conversations in Film
Six UK Short Docs from the LIDF 2010

We are delighted to be starting a new partnership with The Book Club (‘…currently the venue for hip literary events.’ The Independent). The Book Club brings together wit, wisdom, creative events, food, drink and a brain-teasing, eclectic programme.

The new partnership allows the LIDF to meet, greet, entertain, chat and watch films with the London community of documentary film enthusiasts. It is our first chance to really sit down in an informal setting and ask what do you want from your London documentary festival. It is a chance for closer involvement, for forging deeper partnerships and generating as yet unknown connections and ideas.

We look forward to meeting you on the 19th January when we kick off with drinks and a selection of our favourite UK short docs.

‘Conversations in Film’ is a new event where film and discussion go hand in hand. Each month we will look at documentary film as it straddles the worlds of reportage, anthropology, activism, and mass entertainment. A chance for dialogue and the London documentary community to gather, a chance for debate, for support and inspiration.

Wednesday 19th January
Time: 7pm -  8.30pm
Door: £7 including complimentary glass of wine
100 Leonard Street, EC2A 4RH – 020 7684 8618
www.wearetbc.com

The full film line-up ……… Read the rest of this entry »

Timothy Albone, Lucy Martens | 2010 | UK | 85 min.

In just a few years, the Afghan cricket team has risen from the sport’s lowest ranks to phenomenal success in the highly competitive international arena.

Garnering a ‘Best of the Fest’ nod from Edinburgh this year, this is the remarkable and inspirational story of coach Taj Malik Aleem and his team, who became the sport’s unlikeliest heroes during a triumphant campaign culminating in the crucial World Cup qualifier in South Africa.

Executive prodcued by Oscar-winning director and cricket enthusiast Sam Mendes, Out of the Ashes follows the squad over two years as they go from playing in their shalwar-kameezes on rubble pitches to battling their way around the globe and up the international league tables. In a country more often associated with war and rigged elections, their incredible journey is an absolute joy to behold.

+ Q&A with directors Lucy Martens and Timothy Albone, producer Leslie Knott and Cricketing legend Bill Allen OBE

‘Best of the Fest’, Edinburgh International Film Festival

“Puts a human face to a nation that many have turned their back on…”  Sam Mendes, Exec Producer, Out of the Ashes

“Uplifting, fascinating…  An intriguing and extremely watchable film.”  Screen

“Filmic gold…. Remarkable” Sunday Times

“The real-life contemporary Cinderella story of how Afghanistan’s ragtag cricket team rose up through the sport’s international ranks is charmingly recounted in Brit-made docu….This often humourous pic is ultimately more about people and passion that it is about the game itself.” Variety

Producers: Leslie Knott & Rachel Wexler, Bungalow Town Production Ltd

Barbican, Cinema 1, 18:30
7 December 2010

Tickets: Standard – £8.50 online (£10.50 full price) / Barbican Members – £6.50 online (£8.50 full price) / Concessions £7.50 (subject to availability) BOOK HERE

Noel Chanan | 2009 | UK | 40min

In 1983 poet Ted Hughes and American printmaker and sculptor Leonard Baskin, his collaborator for many years, took part in an unrehearsed audio recording in which they talked about their long-standing friendship and the nature of their collaborative work on illustrated books of Hughes’s poems.

The outcome of the recording by renowned filmmaker and photographer Noel Chanan is a lively, entertaining, and revelatory documentary where Hughes and Baskin explore in intimate detail the genesis of such key works as CROW and CAVE BIRDS.

Includes previously unseen photographs, extensive illustrations of Baskin’s dramatic prints and sculptures and readings by Hughes himself.

+ Q&A with Noel Chanan, poet Tom Paulin, Nicholas Penny (Director of the National Gallery), and Nicholas Spice (London Review of Books)

The Artist and the Poet will be preceded by the short film THE GHOSTVILLE PROJECT

Tim Daly | 2009 | UK | 12min

This short documentary was shot in October 2009 on the remote Cowal Peninsula in the West of Scotland. It details arts collective Agents of Change’s transformation of the abandoned village of Pollphail into an open air art gallery. The brutalist 1970s concrete structures had never seen human inhabitants. The site was originally constructed ostensibly as a base to house workers needed to construct concrete oil rigs, but the plan was subsequently abandoned, and now it is ideally suited to the separate styles and methods employed by the collective. Drawing inspiration from the marked contrast between the architecture and the surrounding landscape of rolling hills, forests and lochs, the artists worked for three days through challenging physical conditions to produce foreboding yet hauntingly beautiful artwork all over the site. The viewer is rewarded with a unique insight into the world of the graffiti artist and an opportunity to experience the creative process behind such a huge undertaking.

18:30 / 17 November 2010
Barbican Cinema 1

Tickets: £8.50 online / £10.50 full price; Members £6.50 online / £8.50 full price; Concessions £7.50; Under 15 £5.50
subject to availability BOOK HERE

DocSpot: Shout (15*) + Q&A + Exhibition

20:45 / This powerful portrayal of youth and growing up and a forgotten part of the Middle East conflict won the Best Film of the London International Documentary Festival 2010

Born in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, best friends Ezat and Bayan journey across the UN monitored no man’s land to study in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Leaving behind their village, friends and family, the two young men at first enjoy the freedom their new home affords them; however, they soon learn that the city is a place where sides must be picked and words carefully chosen.

The Netherlands 2009 Dirs. Ester Gould & Sabine Lubbe Bakker 75 min.
In Arabic with English subtitles.

+ Q&A with director Sabine Lubbe Bakker, Chris Doyle (Director, Council for Arab-British Understanding) and Shaza Shannan (British Syrian Society)

Chris Doyle – Director of The Council for Arab-British Understanding. As the lead spokesperson for CAABU and as an acknowledged expert on the region, Chris is a frequent commentator on TV and Radio. He gives numerous talks around the country on issues such as Palestine, Iraq, Islamophobia and the Arabs in Britain. He has had numerous letters published in the British and international media.

Sabine Lubbe Bakker is a dutch film maker with a passion for the Middle East. Having orginially trained in political science, she has been in the motion picture industry since 2005. ‘Shout’ is her first feature.

Shaza Shannan is currently the Head of Cultural Committee at British Syrian Society and the Vice Chair at CAABU – she organises events focussed on Middle Eastern issues. She is the Business Change Manager at British Council and also holds a position teaching arabic at SOAS.

20.45, 29 September 2010
Barbican, Cinema 1

Tickets: Standard – £8.50 online (£10.50 full price) / Barbican Members – £6.50 online (£8.50 full price) / Concessions £7.50 / Under 15 £5.50
subject to availability. BOOK HERE

‘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.

This was a particularly touching pairing of a short and a feature both with the central themes of displacement. In A Letter Home, an Iranian-American woman, the director Shahrzad Davis, writes to her deceased mother, explaining how she has taken it upon herself to take a spiritual and physical journey to discover her roots. She combined images of her mother in the past, rather as though we were watching a ghost. In The Women From Georgia, groups of surprisingly older women from Eastern state have moved to work illegally to the US in order to send money home, living together in ‘hotels’, really two or three bedroom apartments that are full of beds and often rather far away from their jobs which are mostly caring for the elderly. Some have not seen home for years. As one woman watched a video sent to her by her husband telling her via this modern postcard that she was “the best wife in the world”, it felt rather that she too was communicating with the dead; in a terribly poignant moment she kissed the screen. Levan Koguashvili’s film appeared to move most of the audience, who waited for some time before breaking into a round of applause at the film’s end.

More excellent UK shorts were being shown at the Stevenson Theatre to start off this, the last day of the Festival, at the British Museum today.

Films such as ‘Companion of Kings’, about the people who frequent the dog tracks, somewhat of a hidden British tradition, and ‘Peter in Radioland’, a mish-mash of styles overlapping to create a representation of the closing-in world of Peter, an ex-teacher retreating into the safe, non-modernised world of “analogue”, were indicative of experimental styles of documenting experience. They often used voiceovers of the subjects, played over images of them not speaking, which gave the effect that they were sending you their thoughts.

A slight sense of déjà vu as we started this afternoon’s pieces with ‘Pollphail’, a brief piece about the abandoned and never-used purpose-built Pollphail village in Scotland, built to house the army of oilrig builders that never came, their usefulness becoming moot as the industry changed while their homes were being built. An artist, Mick McCraw, was building models and creating an exhibition of disappearing photographs of the empty buildings. The village looked coincidentally like that spraypainted in style by Agents of Change at Wednesday’s Horse Hospital showing of ‘The Ghostvillage Project’, so if the landlord really was keeping the location secret, as Timid was suggesting, the secret could be out. (EDIT: It is.) It’s exciting when these visual links are made and stories overlap – the bigger picture of the UK as a whole.

1. How did you meet Dan Perjovschi and what did you aim to capture in your film about him?

I met Dan in Paris while he was at the Récollets and I was attending the Ateliers Varan. I wanted to make a film about the relationship between the contemporary art scene and society, and I felt Dan and his art to be a paradigm of the critical sense applied to these systems.

When I first began to discover his creative process I thought we could collaborate on two different “rough materials”. He was working on the level of information (press, internet etc), and I would develop the narration through his actions, and at the same time I could work upon the level of the common reality that surrounds us, with some intersections that interrupted the narration.

In the space of the film we could somehow return the man to the centre of things, at least in the imaginary axis of the sight. I think that this was our central point of contact.

2. I love the way you mirror Dan’s interest in the little things that often get over looked, the beauty in the tiny details, through your patient way of filming. For example, lingering on the way a person walks or drinks, that captures their character beautifully. Did you find on being with Dan, that you were looking at things around you in a different way?

Dan’s interest is beyond the things themselves. For example when you see him looking around, you could never know what he is really looking at. That’s why when you compose the frame around what he sees, this frame should be introducing a question. Because the amazing thing happening there, is not in front of his eyes but behind them.

We each see the reality around us in different ways. Dan revels the inner paradox of human systems. Regarding this film, I desired to practice a gesture of empathy.

3. How does Dan see your film? As an extension of his art, the creation of an entirely new piece of art, or as something very different altogether?

Dan really accepted my film happening, without any control and I deeply appreciated this.

4. If you could pick anyone, what other artist would you most like to make a film about?

I would never make a film ‘about’ anyone, it would be impossible. I would make a film ‘with’ someone.