It was refreshing to sit in the reclaimed Horse Hospital building in Bloomsbury last night and enjoy some UK shorts. As Festival Director Patrick Hazard explained, there sadly haven’t been enough UK features to dominate at our venues, but there are an abundance of exciting short pieces. The films were all between five and twenty minutes long, meaning the evening was fantastically varied and stimulating.

Part 1 of this evening started with the unlisted, quirky and timely ‘Credit Crunch’, which featured individuals giving sound bytes about their most personal possession, their purse, with stories entertaining and touching forming along the way, despite the owners of the purses not being pictured. James Newton’s ‘The Space You Leave’ (2009) was even more affecting, telling the personal stories of mothers and fathers and their families left in a limbo of unknowing when their children, in this case their sons, disappear without trace.  Neither of the mothers, expressing their feelings of loss, could bear to look at the camera, although Tim Reilly, whose son has been missing for far longer, and whom was featured in another documentary last year, could look at us directly and imploringly and enquire about his son. Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight’s film and Q+A at the Tate Modern was the result of a wonderful collaboration between creative disciplines.

I found the film, and Perjovschi, to be insightful, funny and clever, and it encouraged me to ponder what the relationship between filmmaker and artist was in such a context. Does the film grow from the artist and their perspective? Or was the representation of the artist more a product of the filmmaker?

Luckily for me, Dan and his interviewer, Tate curator Maeve Polkinhorn, executed an extremely eloquent and interesting Q+A after the screening.

We learnt that Perjovschi, originally a classically trained painter from Romania, finished his degree at what he refers to as ‘the worst time during the communist regime’, subsequently feeling that just when he wanted to express himself most, he was unable to. He told us how he was forced ‘underground’, at one time covering the entire inside of his house in white paper in order to have a secret canvas.

His new simplistic graffiti-style drawings grew out of the enormous excitement he felt when the regime finally fell: “It is a celebration of the ability to express myself freely,” he explains, “It’s a speedy and mobile response to the outside world. And I like to talk, to communicate, and finally every wall had it’s possibilities”.

He came across as  modest and intelligent, showing a deep love for what he does, “ I feel as though I power the white walls to make them active, most walls in galleries and museums are dead, they do not embrace change”.

On his relationship to the film’s director, Anna Marziano, who unfortunately couldn’t join us due to being in Saudi Arabia filming, he was tender and appreciative, explaining how she had helped him to look at himself in the context of the wider world: “I’m selfish in what I take from the world” he said,  ”taking things just for my art, Anna takes in more of the details”.

A real 25 minute gem of a movie, and an intriguing meeting of minds.

The beautiful and well-hidden Lexi Cinema in Kensal Rise played host to an evening of Polish Documentary, an interesting mix of pieces.

The Lexi itself is worthy of note; despite its unexpected location, this small, popular independent has been running since November 2008, and is a social enterprise: its entire profit is used to support the Sustainable Institute in Africa. The woman behind this project is Sally Wilton, who runs the Lexi out of her own pocket and covers overheads through the corporate and private hire the building is available for (more information available on their website), with a predominantly volunteer staff. And it’s beautiful: the well-stocked purple winebar behind the screen plays host to local artists, and the screening room itself holds a magnificent glass ceiling light sculpture by Bruce Munro. The equipment on offer is also first-class: the projection and silver screen are by Motion Picture Solutions, and the stunning audio, used rather well throughout the evening, is by Munro Acoustics, providers of sound to Pinewood Studios. It is, I am reliably told by a Lexi enthusiast, the best soundsystem in London. It definitely adds to the overall effect of sumptuous screening, the final touches of which are the fantastically comfortable chairs for up to eighty people and, for tonight, extra cabaret-style floor seating, with tealight lanterns flickering evocatively on the tables. A proper cinematic experience, and a luxurious way to watch documentary. Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight’s film, at the Rich Mix in East London, was certainly provocative.

We Don’t Care About Music Anyway is a weird, beautiful, interesting and LOUD film documenting a movement of young people in Japan who are ‘fighting against the social norms’ and trying to express themselves through the language of noise.

Their ‘instruments’ are the everyday sounds of the city; bits of junk, their own bodies, broken record players, electrical static. They take sanders to cellos, causing orange sparks to fly hypnotically into the audience, and continue until the screeching sound becomes too overwhelming. They record traffic, electronic frequencies, rubbish trucks crunching metal, anything that buzzes, hums or shrieks unpleasantly is moulded into a explosive cacophony of noise.

“Japan has a poor notion of happiness,” one ‘musician’ explains, “it is ‘happiness in a box’- as if you can buy it in a shop”.

This is what advocates of this burgeoning underground scene are railing against; the control, uniformity and restriction they feel has come to define modern day Japan.

The images of Tokyo certainly are reminiscent of Blade Runner, in contrast the musical interludes were shattering, bizarre and at times quite horrifically unpleasant on the eardrums, but somehow fascinating and beautiful in their truthfulness.

“We are trying to take our surroundings, and make something new out of them…to deny Modernism, while living in modernity”.

I found the film to be highly thought-provoking and original, and much of the audience seemed to agree with me, “I feel a bit like my ears have been assaulted, but in a good way” one man, grinning, tells me after the film finishes.

However, about one third of the audience seemed to disagree, and left during the screening. “That was horrible, so loud! Awful music, didn’t like it at all” I overheard one girl say to her friend as they left.

We Don’t Care about Music Anyway is definitely a bizarre, fascinating, unique, horrific and funny film that is about as far away from mainstream cinema as you can get, much too far, it seems, for some.

Still photography is a new addition to the Festival this year, with an exhibition at the Free Word Center – Salt Water Tears by award winning photographer Munem Wasif – during the Festival, reminding us of the potency of the simple photograph: sans voiceover, sans split screen, but still a lasting effect. The Shoot Experience runs fantastic photography competitions with an edge that I’ve been wanting to participate in for ages. You pay to register, then get a group of friends together, give yourself a funny group name, and head off round the chosen area of London with your cameras with a pre-written story and take pictures of your interpretations of the answers. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Playground’, Libby Spears’ 78 minute expose on the child sex industry, has been aptly programmed in to coincide with the Filmmaking for Social Change: Pakistan series at the next-door Stevenson theatre. The childish cartoon illustrations immediately give way to a damning story of an American who paid to get himself off the charge of child sex offender after opening a child abuse establishment – one of the 25% of child sex tourists who are US citizens. We are then brought back to the US to meet those fighting the shockingly thriving child sex industry there – this isn’t a film about “somewhere else” as many on this side of the Equator presuppose documentary filmmaking to be about, but instead is focussed on the Western world. Read the rest of this entry »

Today at the British Museum we are celebrating the fantastic LIDF Filmmaking for Social Change  project in Pakistan that, now in its second year, has been giving young people a platform on which to make their stories, viewpoints, and ideas heard by the wider world.

The aim of this important project is to explore the humanist side of the issues at the centre of  Pakistan, highlighting the daily lives of the Pakistani population, the individual stories, the names and lives behind the Western media’s negative portrayal of this complex and rich country. Read the rest of this entry »

Is a hacker a social nuisance or a new breed of artist? Come and join the debate at tonight’s screening of Hacker at the Horse Hospital.

Whether you’re a fully fledged hacker, a wannabe, or just curious as to why there is such a huge sub-culture of ‘mathematical artists’, as one teenagers proclaims of himself, then head out for tonight’s conversation in film at 8, and find out what produces ‘an immense feeling of power’ in a hackers unusual world, and why they feel their work achieves a ‘a new perspective’ on life.

Or, if life in Israeli-occupied Syria is of more interest to you, the Free Word Centre is screening Shout tonight at 8, a simply wonderful film about two friends struggling with ‘undefined citizenship’ and their desire to go back to their ‘free’ homeland in order to study in Damascus. A fascinating journey of discovery that is not to be missed.