the BIFF 2013 brochure

Transcription

19th Bradford International Film Festival 11 - 21 April 2013
A UNESCO CREATIVE CITY
Don’t miss next year’s Festival: Spring 2014
National Media Museum
Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD1 1NQ
Box Office 0844 856 3797
www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
www.bradfordfilmfestival.org.uk
Contents
Tickets
Introductions
Opening and closing films
Happy Birthday, Indian Cinema!
Uncharted States of America VII
Alexey Balabanov
2013 European Features Competition
New features
2013 Shine Short Film Competition
New shorts
Short Film Retrospectives: CH Wood
Short Film Retrospectives: sixpackfilm
3
4
8
12
24
36
38
42
60
66
74
76
Short Film Retrospectives: Stan Brakhage
Bradford After Dark III
Live/special events and screenings
BIFF by Night
Filmmakers’ Weekend
Family Film Fundays
Festival staff and thanks
Festival venues and information on Bradford
Widescreen Weekend Index of films and events
Diary
80
86
90
100
102
108
114
116
122
124
126
Special offer:
Buy 5 standard price tickets, get 1 free
Pick up a loyalty card from Box Office.
Tickets
Tickets for every festival screening or event can be purchased from the
National Media Museum Box Office (open 10am – 9pm during the festival)
0844 856 3797
www.bradfordfilmfestival.org.uk
Standard Price Tickets
Pictureville, Cubby Broccoli, IMAX cinemas** £6 / £5*
Seniors Citizens’ screenings £3.25
Family Film Fundays £2
Under 3s free
Special Event Tickets
Aiden Goately: 10 Films with my Dad £8
The Best of BUG: The Evolution of Music Video £17
The Dodge Brothers and Neil Brand
accompany The Ghost that Never Returns £17
Opportunities for Women
in Film and Television – A One Day Seminar £10 / £8*
Widescreen Weekend Standard films £7.50/£5.50
Widescreen Weekend Premium films £10/£8
Widescreen Weekend Presentations and talks £4/£3
Other prices may apply, please see website for details. Prices for
external venues may vary. Please check website for details.
*Concessions available to those under 15, over 60, anyone
receiving disability benefits, income support or Job Seekers’
Allowance, students in possession of an NUS card, and Passport
to Leisure card holders. Please note that for some screenings and
events there will be no tickets available at concession price.
**Non IMAX format films only
EE Wednesdays
2 for 1 cinema tickets available to EE and Orange customers.
Applies to standard priced film screenings only on purchase of a
full price adult ticket.
PASSES
Film Lovers Pass £80/£70
Allows entry to all standard priced films; excludes Special
Events, Widescreen Weekend screenings and events,
Filmmakers’ Weekend.
Widescreen Weekend
Weekend Pass £90/£70
Filmmakers’ Weekend.
Weekend Pass £100/£60
Day Passes £55/£35
All programme information is correct at the time of going
to print. Please check www.bradfordfilmfestival.org.uk for
updates, including guest appearances.
Tickets for screenings and events at Impressions Gallery,
Bradford 1 Gallery, Bradford Cathedral, The Plaza Cinema,
Hebden Bridge Picture House, Hyde Park Picture House,
Otley Courthouse and The Plaza Cinema will be available
from the National Media Museum Box Office up to 24
hours prior to the event, and may also be purchased from
the venue on the day of the event. If tickets are purchased
through the National Media Museum box office or website,
they will be available for collection from the venue on the
day of purchase.
Senior Citizens’ screenings
Meet at 10.30 for complimentary tea or coffee and biscuits. Films
start at 11am. An informal discussion will follow this screening.
2 www.bradfordfilmfestival.org.uk
www.bradfordfilmfestival.org.uk 3
Introduction
On 3 May 1913 in a city called Bombay, Dadasaheb
Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra played to invited guests.
This is regarded as the birth of Indian cinema. 100 years
on, the 19th Bradford International Film Festival (BIFF)
wishes Indian cinema a happy centenary by devoting a
large chunk of our programming to this inexhaustibly
fertile source of astonishing films.
Back in 1913, India - stretching from modern-day
Pakistan to Bangladesh and Burma - was a rather
different place, ‘jewel in the crown’ of the British
Empire. But changes were afoot: in November, a
Gujarati lawyer named Mohandas K Gandhi was
arrested in South Africa while campaigning for the
rights of Indian workers; ten days later, Bengali poet
Rabindranath Tagore became the first non-European to
win the Nobel Prize for Literature. In Paris, the premiere of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of
Spring occasioned a near-riot by patrons angered by its
radicalism, and Georges Méliès made his final movie.
On this side of the Channel, Sagar Mitchell and James
Kenyon also hung up their cameras for the last time,
while In West Yorkshire, the productivity and popularity
of Holmfirth’s Bamforth and Company’s slapstick
Winky series was some way ahead of nascent efforts in
Hollywood, which ground into action that year with Cecil
B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man.
Much of ‘modern’ culture, indeed much of the modern
world, was taking shape in 1913 - and we hope the
films and events which the BIFF team have assembled
over the past year provide a multi-faceted reflection of
that world: geographically and artistically eclectic, with
one foot in the past and one striding into the future. Bradford’s own C. H. Wood, a prolific documenter of
Yorkshire life, is honoured in a special programme.
Stravinsky’s avant-garde flame continues to burn
bright, guarded and maintained in the late last century
by U.S. mavericks like Stan Brakhage, and now by
intrepid organisations such as Vienna’s sixpackfilm.
Méliès-style cinema of dazzling spectacle finds 21stcentury expression in the no-hold-barred extravaganza
that is Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning. Hollywood
takes its place alongside the finest fruits of the USA’s
genuinely independent scene as showcased in our
seventh Uncharted States of America strand.
This year our festival will be shared farther and wider
across the city than ever before thanks to special
city centre programmes, thanks to Bradford UNESCO
City of Film. We’re grateful too to Virgin Media, who
return for their sophomore year as our title sponsor. In drawing on one hundred years of cinema, and still
more, ‘Something for everyone’ is a tempting cliché -how about we try ‘Everything for someone’ instead?
Tom Vincent and Neil Young
Co-Directors
A Word from...
Jo Quinton-Tulloch
Jeff Dodds
Head of Museum, National Media Museum
Chief Marketing Officer, Virgin Media
Aidan Goatley
What Happened to this City?
It is a great pleasure to welcome you to this year’s
Bradford International Film Festival. Since joining
the National Media Museum towards the end of
last year I have been continuously surprised by the
wealth of creativity that exists within the Museum’s
collections and exhibitions, and the multiple ways
that they have relevance to people’s lives. It is
therefore a pleasure and privilege to be able to host
such a rich and diverse film festival and to celebrate
the power that film has to communicate, inspire
and empower. As economic challenges continue to
threaten access to the arts across the UK we must
take every opportunity to highlight the irreplaceable
value that film and culture offer, the boundaries that
they cross and the creativity that they inspire.
Kalpana
When pushed to select which bits of the entire festival
programme I’m most looking forward to – and with so much
going on – choosing proved to be a fun, if not challenging
task. I’ve settled on some of the films in Happy Birthday, Indian
Cinema! The fact that we are celebrating 100 years since the
first Indian feature film highlights the enduring impact that
film has had around the world. Kalpana, a lyrical gem from
the 1940s brought back into the spotlight by Martin Scorsese
and directed by Ravi Shankar’s brother Uday, is an enticing
proposition, while our screening of What Happened to this City?
represents just what film festivals can do – surprise us with
facets of the world that we thought we already knew. Happy
Birthday… also includes Bollywood exuberance, silent films, and
new films by fresh talent… the strand takes in so much, and
what a great way to celebrate Indian cinema in its centenary
year. I can’t wait. I hope you are inspired too.
The Dodge Brothers
At Virgin Media we’re passionate about supporting
British filmmaking talent and are devoted to bringing you
the best new entertainment around. So naturally we’re
delighted to sponsor BIFF, one of the biggest film festivals
in the UK, for a second year.
The line-up this year is terrific as always and it was tricky
picking just three recommendations, but here are my
2013 BIFF picks:
Aidan Goatley: Ten Films with my Dad. As a big film lover,
I get a kick out of listening to other people talk about the
ones they love. In this brilliant hour-long comedy show,
Aidan opens up about his relationship with his father and
how movies brought them together.
The Best of Bug: The Evolution of the Music Video. Music
is a big part of what we do at Virgin Media so Adam
Buxton’s celebration of music videos is a must-see for me.
The sell out show started life at London’s BFI Southbank
and now it’s making its Bradford debut right here at the
festival so don’t miss it!
The Dodge Brothers and Neil Brand Accompany The Ghost
That Never Returns. BIFF shares with our competition
Virgin Media Shorts the joy of screening short films before
cinema features – a fine tradition. Another great tradition
of the ‘silent’ era was live music in cinemas. The Dodge
Brothers, featuring film critic Mark Kermode provide live
accompaniment to this mouth-watering 1920’s trainhopping classic.
Opening Film
The Look of Love
Thursday 11 April, 7.30pm Pictureville
Dir. Michael Winterbottom UK/USA 2013 105 mins (18) Digital
Steve Coogan, Imogen Poots, Anna Friel, Tamsin Egerton, James
Lance
A charmingly rakish purveyor of his very own “World Centre
of Erotic Entertainment”, nude theatre owner and top-shelf
magazine publisher Paul Raymond cut a highly successful
dash in buttoned-up ‘60s Britain. He died in 2008 as Britain’s
richest man. Director Michael Winterbottom, in his fourth
collaboration with Steve Coogan, has made this warm, witty
film that follows Raymond (played with aplomb by Coogan) as
a spiv with a knack for publicity - “Arbitrary displays of naked
flesh” read one damning review; Raymond plastered the quote
on billboards.
And though the ‘nudge-nudge’ world of 60s and 70s Soho
makes a sometimes ribald backdrop to Raymond’s adventures,
The Look of Love is much more than this, and introduces a
poignant note as Raymond approaches retirement and begins
to consider his legacy. Much of this emotional charge comes
from the three smart women in Raymond’s life: his feisty
wife Jean (Anna Friel), girlfriend with business partner Amber
(Tasmin Egerton) and vulnerable, adored daughter Debbie
(Imogen Poots). All three actresses are terrific, as noted by
The Telegraph’s Sebastian Doggart: “funny and touching…
You are left with a clutch of superb performances – not only
from Coogan but from Anna Friel as the long-suffering Jean
and Tamsin Egerton as the luminously beautiful but deeply
vulnerable Amber – and some fascinating historical detail.”
Film source: StudioCanal
Contains arbitrary displays
of naked flesh
Members of the cast will attend the screening.
Closing Film
The Reluctant
Fundamentalist
Sunday 21 April, 8pm, Pictureville
Dir. Mira Nair India, Pakistan, USA, UK, Qatar 2012
128 mins (adv. 12A) Digital
Riz Ahmed, Kate Hudson, Liev Schreiber,
Kiefer Sutherland, Om Puri
At the height of a hostage crisis successful young Pakistani
Changez (Ahmed) is interviewed by an American journalist in
a Lahore teahouse. With searing ambition, Changez has made
a name for himself on Wall Street and has risen in the ranks
to take charge of the acquisition of companies. But following
9-11 and away from the boardroom Changez is viewed with
suspicion. His status undermined, Changez appears to have
become “radicalised”. Director Mira Nair’s adaptation of Mohsin
Hamed’s 2007 bestselling novel shines thanks to the everexcellent Riz Ahmed (Four Lions, BIFF 2010; Shifty, BIFF 2008),
carrying his complex role here with great skill.
“Making a globe-trotting political thriller with substance has
got to be one of the hardest things in cinema to do... Nair pulls
it off with an adaptation that’s frequently exhilarating. Much
of that is down to Riz Ahmed, who is terrific.” – Cameron Bailey,
Artistic Director, Toronto International Film Festival (Best Films
of 2012, Sight & Sound)
Film source: Mara Pictures
Mughal - E - Azam
Happy Birthday,
Indian Cinema!
“Salgirah Mubarak”
to the most abundant of national cinemas!
In the spring of 1913 India was still halfway though the period of
British rule. Bombay, as the capital of Maharashtra was known
then, had become an expanding and rapidly industrialising city,
home to a population of nearly one million, many of whom had
arrived from other regions and who were thirsty for commerce
and innovation. Bombay had welcomed cinema eagerly to India
in 1896 when the city hosted the Lumière Brothers on their
famous mind-boggling world tour of cinema demonstrations.
Seventeen years later Bombay gave birth to a nascent industry
when on 3 May the city’s Coronation Cinema held the premiere
of the first Indian feature film, D. Phalke’s coyly theatrical
wholly Indian-produced Raja Harishchandra. The film was an
immediate, barnstorming success, and by the late 1910s Mumbai
had germinated the national centres of Marathi and Hindi
filmmaking.
By the 1990s Indian cinema had become the biggest film
industry of all. Indian filmmaking has given us a wealth of
unique cinematic styles - booming mythical epics, exuberant
Bollywood masalas, critically heralded state-sponsored ‘parallel’
films, politically committed documentaries, knockabout kids’
comedies, and a vibrant contemporary independent scene. For
this vast, ancient and endlessly, deeply varied nation, “cinema”
really means “cinemas”. India’s film industries thrive in Bengal,
Kokata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Maharashtra and Kochi as well as
the mighty Mumbai (population in 2011, 18,414,288) with films
produced in dozens of languages including Hindi, Assamese,
Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil
and Telugu.
Cinephilia, that intense love for cinema, is felt in India quite like
nowhere else. Bollywood stars have become stateswomen and
men, their appeal has a global aspect that is unique. Make no
mistake; we live in the age of Indian cinema. The biggest movie
stars in the world are Indian and in many regions of the world –
Hong Kong, the Middle East - Bollywood regularly trumps all else
at the box office. Like everywhere else Indian films are becoming
ever more global in their outlook, and Hollywood and China are
keen investors. But for all its richness, popularity and range, many
of the treasures of Indian film history remain endangered and
difficult to see. We have archives worldwide to thank for much of
this programme, but archives everywhere are under-resourced;
those in India particularly so. The world is waiting…
Here then, we present a chronological sampler of some
outstanding films from India and her first one hundred years of
cinema. From the first fragments of film under the Raj, to the
freshest new talent, there is so much here to celebrate.
See also BIFF By Night, p100
Exhibition 8 March – 16 June
nationalmediamuseum.org.uk FREE ENTRY Bradford, BD1
RAJA HARISHCHANDRA (excerpt)
Friday 12 April, 6.25pm, Pictureville
Dir. Dadasaheb Phalke 1913 12 mins (adv. U)
b/w silent film with intertitles in English Blu-ray
D.D. Dabke, P.G. Sane, Bhalachandra D. Phalke, G.V. Sane
These twelve minutes are all that are known to remain of the
first Indian feature film, which originally ran to around four times
this length. Raja Harishchandra is based on the legend of King
Harishchandra (recounted in classic texts The Ramayana and The
Mahabharata), who sacrifices his kingdom and family to please
the sage Vishvamitra. A fragment from the birth of the Indian
film industry.
Please note that Raja Harishchandra
without a soundtrack or score.
Film source: National Film Archive of India
+ A THROW OF DICE
KALPANA
(Prapancha Pash)
Dir. Franz Osten India/UK/Germany 1929 74 mins (U)
b/w silent film with intertitles in English Digital
Seeta Devi, Himansu Rai, Charu Roy, Modhu Bose
This luminous film, based like Raja Harishchandra on an
episode from the Sanskrit text The Mahabharata, is the tale
of two rival kings: Ranjit and the unscrupulous Sohan. Both
are addicted to gambling and in love with the same woman,
Sunita, the daughter of a hermit. Through a crooked game of
dice, Ranjit loses his kingdom and Sunita. A cautionary fairytale
about greed, complacency and addiction. Shot on location in
Rajasthan, the production used over ten thousand extras, one
thousand horses and fifty elephants that were provided by the
royal houses of Jaipur, Udaipur and Mysore.
This restoration features a score by Nitin Sawhney, which
combines delicate vocals, Indian flute, acoustic guitar and tabla
percussion with a symphony orchestra.
Film source: bfi
A THROW OF DICE
A THROW OF DICE
KALPANA
+ Rauch und Spiegel, p70
Saturday 13 April, 5.25pm Cubby Broccoli
Dir. Uday Shankar India 1948 155 mins (adv. U) Hindi with
subtitles Digital
Lakshmi Kanta, Usha Kiran, Amala Shankar, Uday Shankar
A great work of hallucinatory expression and ecstatic beauty. A
writer goes to a film producer with a story in the hope of selling
the idea for a film. As he explains it to the producer, scenes from
his movie come to life. With an autobiographical narrative of a
dancer who dreams of establishing his own academy, this is one
of the few real ‘dance films’ – a film that doesn’t just include
dance sequences, but whose primary vocabulary is dance.
A commercial failure when it was released, the film is now
regarded, justifiably, as a creative peak in the history of Indian
filmmaking.
Kalpana was restored in 2012 by the World Cinema Foundation,
which is dedicated to the preservation and restoration of
neglected films from around the world. This screening will be
preceded by a video introduction by the Foundation’s founder
Martin Scorsese.
MOTHER INDIA
Sunday 14 April, 2.30pm, Pictureville
Dir. Mehboob Khan India 1957 175 mins plus intermission (U)
Hindi with subtitles 35mm
Nargis, Sunil Dutt, Rajendra Kumar, Raaj Kumar
The cornerstone of Indian commercial cinema. Almost constantly
in distribution in India since 1957, this remarkable film is a
powerful emotional journey through the tragedy and joy of rural
life in a country in transition. 1950’s Bollywood queen Nargis stars
as Radha, the quintessential earth-mother standing knee-deep in
fertile soil, imploring the villagers not to abandon their land. After
her husband is maimed in a horrific accident, Radha raises her
children alone under threat of financial ruin and sexual advances
from a moneylender. Years pass and one son becomes committed
to vengeance. Radha, caught between her son and the honour
of her community, is faced with the most painful decision of any
mother’s life. Bring three or four hankies!
Film source: bfi
Mother India
MUGHAL-E-AZAM
Monday 16 April, 7.15pm Pictureville
Dir. K. Asif India 1960 197 mins plus intermission (PG) Urdu with
subtitles 35mm
Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Madhubala, Durga Khote
Still widely regarded as one the greatest and most iconic of all
Indian films. Set in the magnificent 16th century Mughal Court
and inspired by true events, Mughal-e-Azam tells of Anarkali, a
beautiful courtesan who falls in love with the young Prince Salim
only to be confronted by his father, the strict Emperor Mughal
who is determined to stop their love affair. Mughal-e-Azam
employed a mammoth cast including the elite of thespians, and
took nine years to complete as the most expensive production
of its time. A mythic film that is narrated “by Hindustan itself”,
it is a yearning romance that bursts into ravishing colour at key
junctures.
Film source: bfi, Rights: Eros International
THE CHESS PLAYERS
+ The Garden of Earthly Delights p.83
Tuesday 16 April, 8.15pm, Cubby Broccoli
Dir. Satyajit Ray India 1911 124 mins (U) Urdu and Hindi with
subtitles 35mm
Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Shabana Azmi, David
Attenborough, Amitabh Bachchan
Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) was known as one of the great masters
of world cinema, though with the exception of within his native
Bengal his renown derived more from critics outside India than
within. A parable on colonial politics, The Chess Players was
Ray’s first film made in a language other than Bengali. It is set in
Lucknow in 1856, just as the ruling British are about to annexe
the wealthy state of Oudh. While the British manoeuvre into the
kingdom to help swell their coffers, two sovereign noblemen
neglects state and family for interminable games of chess.
Restored by the Satyajit Ray Preservation Project at the Academy
Film Archive with funding from the Film Foundation. Print
courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
MUGHAL-E-AZAM
MUGHAL-E-AZAM
SILSILA
WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS CITY?
Wednesday 17 April, 7pm, The Plaza Cinema
Dir. Yash Chopra India 1981 167 mins plus intermission (U) Hindi
with subtitles Blu-ray
Shashi Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bhaduri, Rekha
The producer, writer and director of numerous romantic classics
from the last forty years, Yash Chopra passed away last October
at the age of eighty. Silsila was one of Chopra’s favourites of
his own films. In it, best friends Shekhar (Kapoor) and Amit
(Bachchan) are about to marry their sweethearts when tragedy
strikes and Shekhar is killed. Amit takes pity on Shekhar’s widow
Shobha (Bhaduri) and marries her, asking his betrothed Chandri
(Rekha) to forget him. Amitabh Bachchan, for so long the world’s
biggest movie star, was seldom more charismatic, and the electric
chemistry in Silsila was reportedly born out of the then real-life
Bachchan-Bhaduri-Rekha love triangle. The songs, particularly
Pehli Pehlia Baar with Bachchan and Rekha, are intoxicating, and
this remains a cult Bollywood favourite.
Film source: Yash Raj Films
Special Price: £4, £2 concessions
THE CHESS PLAYERS
(Kya Hua Iss Shaher Ko)
+ black ice p.83 + cheap tickets p.68
Thursday 18 April, 8.30pm, Cubby Broccoli
Dir. Deepa Dhanraj India 1986, 95 min (adv. 12A)
Hindi with subtitles Digital
Documentary
An enduringly influential landmark in the noble but oftenoverlooked tradition of politically-engaged Indian documentary.
Shot on 16mm, Deepa Dhanraj’s classic study of violent conflict
between Hindus and Muslims in 1984 Hyderabad was all but
unseeable - especially outside the country - until it was digitally
restored for a special programme at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.
Campaigning feminist Dhanraj, in collaboration with Navroze
Contractor and Keshav Rao Jadhav, chronicles and analyses riots
that lasted for ten weeks and ended eight centuries of communal
harmony in Andhra Pradesh’s crumbling riverside capital. “Two
aspects stand out: the particular quality of the films’ eyewitness
accounts and its calm yet pervasive portrayal of ‘living under
curfew’... A pioneering political work of contemporary relevance...
whose complexity lends it immense political force.” (Nicole Wolf.)
Film source: Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art
SILSILA
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge
Friday 19 April, 7pm, The Plaza Cinema
Dir. Aditya Chopra India 1995 182 mins plus intermission (PG)
Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi with subtitles Blu-ray
Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Amrish Puri, Farida Jalal
A genre-hopping ‘masala movie’ Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayange (or
“DDLJ” as the cool kids say) opens with an elderly ‘desi’ emigrant
(played by the great Amrish Puri) standing in a drizzle-slicked
Trafalgar Square, reminiscing for the vibrant yellows and greens
of the Punjab. We then meet his teenage daughter Simran (Kajol)
as she reluctantly prepares to return to India after her studies for
a marriage arranged by her parents. Simran embarks on one last
holiday around Europe before she settles down, and there she’s
joined by privileged dimwit Raj (megastar Shah Rukh Khan)… By
turns goofy, thrilling and moving, DDLJ is the Bollywood mega-hit
of the modern era, and has played continuously at the Maratha
Mandir cinema in Mumbai for an incredible 900 weeks.
Film source: Yash Raj Films
Special Price: £4, £2 concessions
THE SOUND OF OLD ROOMS
+ SHORT FILMS
I.D.
+ LUISA IS NOT HOME p.69
UK PREMIERE
Tuesday 16 & Wednesdat 17 April
Dir. Sandeep Ray India 2011 72 mins (adv. PG) Bengali with
subtitles HDCam
Documentary with Sarthak Roychowdhury
UK PREMIERE
Sunday 14 and Sunday 21 April
Dir. Kamal K.M. India 2012 87 mins (adv. 12A) Hindi with subtitles
Digital
Geetanjali Thapa, Murari Kumar
A moving documentary that charts three phases over 20 years
in the life of Sarthak Roychowdhury, a struggling Kolkata poet.
We begin with a 2011 birthday party: Amidst the restless mood
of the family celebration we’re thrown back to Sarthak’s student
years. As a young idealist and bon vivant he works hard to
understand the social problems of his nation. Laced with downat-heel humour (Sarthak reciting poetry to a passing dog) The
Sound of Old Rooms is a remarkable document assembled by
director Sandeep Ray’s two decades of up-close observation of
his subject. We first see Sarthak when he is still in his teens, and
conclude when he is nearly forty. In between the past is woven
together from memories, dilemmas, and basic human fears,
concerns and joys.
Film source: Ray Pictures
Privileged young professional Charu lives in a Mumbai skyscraper,
determined to make the metropolis her new home. A workman
arrives to paint one of the apartment walls, and shortly Charu
finds him lying on the floor, unconscious and gravely ill. Unable
to get an ambulance she takes him to the hospital, and finds
herself reluctantly in charge. It is the beginning of a voyage into
the poorest quarters of the city (these scenes were filmed with an
extraordinary “documentary” method), in search of the unknown
man’s identity. As Jay Weissberg of Variety magazine observes,
“[lead actress] Thapa, with very little acting experience, delivers
a superb performance that captures the socially apathetic urban
professional who believably awakens to her humanity, and heads
far outside her comfort zone.”
Film source: Jar Pictures
MUMBAI’S KING
(Mumbai Cha Raja)
+ RAIN p.70
UK PREMIERE
Friday 12 and Friday 19 April
Dir. Manjeet Singh India 2012 77 mins (adv. 15) Hindi with
subtitles Digital
Rahul Bairagi, Dhanshree Jain, Arbaaz Khan, Salman Khan
This pungently atmospheric debut from writer-director Manjeet
Singh shows us the backwaters and hidden crannies of India’s
biggest city - home to its world-famous film-industry. But
we’re a world away from big-budget Bollywood here - a vivid
reminder of current Indian cinema’s thrilling eclecticism. A kind
of Slumdog Millionaire without the “Millionaire” stuff, it’s the
story of teenager Rahul (Rahul Bairaji), who flees an abusive
home-life to spend most of his waking hours ducking and diving
on the rain-soaked streets with his pals. Set during a carnival
marking the feast-days of Hindu god Ganesh, Mumbai’s King
offers an unsentimental native’s view both of the metropolis and
a generous handful of its 20 million citizens. “Indian cinema can
celebrate a new voice” (Variety).
Film Source: All Rights Entertainment
Decoding the Bollywood Poster
Hand painted Bollywood (popular Hindi cinema) movie posters
are as distinct as the genre they promote. In fact, it’s difficult
to believe this form of advertising wasn’t used to publicise the
earliest movies made in India. When the country’s first feature
film, Raja Harishchandra was screened one hundred years ago at
Mumbai’s Coronation Cinema, announcements in the prestigious
Times of India publicised the event. Even on the release of India’s
first sound film, Alam Ara (Ardeshir Irani, 1931), the screening was
promoted with text-based handbills and newspaper adverts, as
was the norm among theatre companies of the time.
The earliest surviving Indian movie poster is believed to be for a
1924 film called Kalyan Khajina (Baburao Painter). Vintage hand
painted prints, which remained in vogue until the 1980s, now
offer a wonderful sense of nostalgia about a film indu stry
which they helped to portray as larger than life. In today’s glossy
digital age, hand painted prints are highly sought after by private
collectors, museums and auction houses in India and beyond.
Although some of these Indian posters took their inspiration
from the imagery of Hollywood, the former served a somewhat
different purpose. As well as promoting the latest film in one of
the most prominent film producing countries in the world, the
posters had also to respond to the audience’s unique cultural
needs. In a nation as vast as India, with its inherent linguistic,
religious and regional differences, Bollywood is a significant
unifying thread. Thus, the film poster acted as a tool to cut across
cultural barriers to make the film appeal to a mass market.
Historically, film posters have used language quite strategically.
Text was kept to a minimum to accommodate the low levels
of literacy when trying to appeal to a mass audience. Part of
Bollywood’s appeal is its universal language which traverses
religious and regional boundaries to make films accessible to a
broad multilingual audience. For instance two of India’s major
languages, Hindi and Urdu, are regarded as sister tongues,
sharing a large common vocabulary. Bollywood films tend to use
a colloquial blend of these, and increasingly a mix of Hindi, Urdu
and English (known as Hinglish) which makes the films intelligible
to speakers of several languages and dialects. It is for this reason
that Bollywood is so popular among a wide British Asian audience;
whether they’re Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi, and regardless of
mother tongue, the language of Bollywood brings them together.
Whilst the language of Bollywood is intelligible to a broad audience
when spoken, the unique writing systems for Urdu and Hindi
make their scripts mutually exclusive. This is another reason to
keep Bollywood posters so light on text; a quote or tagline in one
script would exclude large parts of the audience, particularly in
rural centres. Conversely, the film’s title on the poster for the epic
Mughal-e-Azam appears in three different scripts –Hindi, Urdu and
English – to attract the largest audience possible.
The poster for Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ) features the
title in Hindi only, suggesting this particular version was created
for a specific region. In the absence of a central publicity machine,
local cinemas would hire an artist locally to paint their billboards,
trusting him with a set of publicity stills, which were probably
little more than stock shots of the film’s main stars. The artist
would then re-imagine the film’s key themes, infusing the images
with drama, romance, regional nuances and his own aesthetic
sensibility. This also explains the existence of multiple versions of
the same poster.
A second poster for DDLJ illustrates how posters are modified in
accordance with a film’s post-release publicity strategy. The later
poster replaces the original stylised image of the fun-loving couple
with a simple photograph to emphasise the film’s central theme
of romance. The image is taken from DDLJ’s most popular song,
Tujhe Dekha To Yeh Jaana Sanam, which was famously filmed in
the mustard fields of Indian Punjab. The poster text here is critical,
highlighting the film’s runaway success; DDLJ ran for a record
breaking 500 weeks in the same cinema in Mumbai!
The Indian star system also determines the nature of the film
poster. With text usually diminished to the background, the star
becomes the key focus. But then, a Bollywood star always has
been the film’s main commodity and draw. Fans will choose a film
based on the star it features. His or her name is not required on the
poster; the star will be instantly recognisable anyway.
In the era of Bollywood film studios during the 1940s, 50s and
60s, artists were contracted to work on publicity posters. As
specific studios developed their own distinctive styles of film
making, the poster painters played a vital role in perpetrating
the star’s persona – creating an iconic representation and simply
carrying this persona from one film to the next. This was the
case with Fearless Nadia, who went on to marry her director
and owner of Wadia Movietone, the studio which made all her
films. The English-Greek actress who was born Mary Evans, was
reinvented as Indian cinema’s original stunt queen. Posters for
films like Bambaiwali (Homi Wadia, 1941), depict her repeatedly
as a larger-than-life, weapon-wielding, ‘fearless’ huntress.
The film poster artists are also credited with creating one of
Bollywood’s most iconic images, Amitabh Bachchan’s angry
young man. In order to imbue the image of Bachchan with anger,
the artists created their own visual language by blending distinct
art styles such as painting with knives instead of traditional
brushes. The unusual technique and its powerful effect are clearly
visible on the celebrated poster for Deewar (Yash Chopra, 1975),
which is dominated by Bachchan’s enraged, darkened expression.
Following the demise of the studio system in the 1970s,
independent workshops such as Jolly Art Studio, Kalarath and Om
Studio were established to cater exclusively for the film industry.
Between them, these workshops employed around 200 artists
to paint their posters and banners. The employees were usually
self-taught, learning their craft from senior artists before setting
up on their own. Incidentally, one of India’s best known artists,
M F Hussain famously began his creative career as a painter of
Bollywood film posters.
Film producers had their own priorities for poster design. They
wanted the poster to act as a safety net. It had to offer value
for money by appearing to be all things to all people. Thus, the
movie had to appeal to as many different segments of society
as possible by offering comedy, romance, action as well as
melodrama, all on the one poster, as a promise of the different
ingredients the film contained. And so, rather than highlighting
the most compelling image to offer one strong key message,
some producers preferred to consolidate every highlight from
the film. This inevitably made the posters seem cluttered, as
did showing the main character in different guises. Yet, the lure
of variety - comedy, romance, melodrama, action – all in one
film - was deemed to make it appeal to many different markets
simultaneously.
Cut and paste techniques became dominant in the 1970s when
posters began to resemble montages. Images of actors were
clipped from still photographs and pasted into a collage, cramming
as much as possible into the available poster space, with a barely
visible hand painted background, ready to be reproduced in bulk.
The posters from this era favoured pragmatism over creativity. The
collage aimed to offer a glimpse of different aspects of the film,
for instance the cast in a multi starrer like Amar Akbar Anthony
(Manmohan Desai, 1977) which features three heroes as well as
three heroines.
Film posters in recent times, as well as the stars that appear
on them, have become slicker and slicker. The poster as a key
marketing tool has also given way to satellite television where
promotional budgets are now diverted. Meanwhile, it’s also worth
remembering that Bollywood posters were originally created
specifically for outdoor advertising. The posters complemented the
oversized cinema hoardings at major road junctions. In a nation
renowned for its vibrancy of colour, outdoor advertising by nature
needed to be louder, more animated, eccentric and mesmerising to
stand out from the crowd.
Irna Qureshi, February 2013
Further reading:
Bollywood Posters, J. Pinto & S. Sippy, Thames & Hudson, 2008
Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film, Rachel Dwyer and
Divia Patel, Reaktion Books, 2002
The Art of Bollywood, Rajesh Devraj & Paul Duncan, Taschen, 2010
Bollywood Icons: 100 Years of Indian Cinema runs until 16 June in
Gallery 2, National Media Museum
Pincus
Uncharted States
of America VII
THE DANCING SOUL
OF THE WALKING PEOPLE
+ SHORT FILMS
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Paula Gladstone USA 1976 67 mins (adv. PG) b/w HDCam
Documentary
Shot at Coney Island, New York’s legendary amusement park,
over two years from 1974-1976, this beautiful landmark of
American experimental film languished in semi-obscurity for
three decades after its 1980 debut. Restoration was a complex
process involving algorithmic computer programming
deployed to synchronise sound with images originally
recorded (on monochrome Super 8mm film!) at the unusually
slow rate of 17 frames per second. The result is cinema as a
miraculous time-travel machine, a city-poem which transports
us to hidden corners that only a true Coney-Islander would
know: a native like writer, director, producer and editor Paula
Gladstone. She also arranged the soundtrack, featuring music
that ranges from Duke Ellington to the Drifters (“under the
board-walk, down by sea...”) and, most stirringly, LaBelle.
Film source: Paula Gladstone
PINCUS
“We travelled west, the rumble of the train muffled by
snowbanks, through the forests of Massachusetts. But even in
that darkness I recognized it. It was not the opaque night, the
uninterrupted dark, of a foreign country’s hinterland. It was the
darkness that only baffles strangers. It was an average evening
for this time of year in this place; and I knew all the ghosts here. It
was the darkness of home.”
Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express (1979)
Benning continuing his signature One Way Boogie Woogie
series into the digital era, Ott following up 2011’s Uncharted hit
Littlerock with Pearblossom Hwy. But as always the emphasis
is on new blood, including UK - and sometimes International premieres for the latest work by Robert Todd, Andrew Brotzman,
Gina Telaroli, David Fenster and Tom Jarmusch. Unfamiliar names
to most, though the latter’s kid brother Jim has been flying the
family flag for quite some time...
This year’s eight programmes in BIFF’s seventh Uncharted
States of America strand takes the total number of films shown
in the section since 2007 up to 78 (by 66 different directors)
as listed in our handy A-Z reference. Our guiding ethos has,
we hope, remained constant over the years - as stated in that
2007 catalogue, we indefatigably hunt “genuinely independent
American cinema... experimental, transgressive, genuinely lowbudget, wildly eclectic.”
Tom J’s grittily direct portrait of Cleveland, Ohio in Sometimes
City perhaps most neatly epitomises the Uncharted spirit: an
adventurous engagement with place, a concern with tough social
realities, all expressed by means of a can-do self-reliance that
makes a virtue of limited means. And while we’re all so familiar
with New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, just how often do you
get to see Cleveland (pop. 393,806) on the big screen? Or a farflung working town like Calumet, Michigan - as chronicled in the
eye-opening documentary 1913 Massacre? The question is its
own answer. And the truth is out there: way, way out there.
Uncharted favourites James Benning and Mike Ott return:
THE DANCING SOUL OF THE WALKING PEOPLE
FILMS BY ROBERT TODD
1913 MASSACRE
NOR’EASTER
Saturday 13 and Tuesday 16 April
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
Tuesday 16 and Thursday 18 April
Dirs. Louis Galdieri, Ken Ross USA 2011 66 mins (adv. 12A) HDCam
Documentary with Arlo Guthrie
MASTER PLAN
Dir. Robert Todd USA 2012 62 mins (adv. PG) 16mm
+ DANGEROUS LIGHT
Dir. Robert Todd USA 2012 7 mins (adv. PG) Digital
+ HABITAT
Dir. Robert Todd USA 2012 10 mins (adv. PG) 16mm
Three documentaries
Having never before featured in Uncharted States, Robert Todd
now makes a belated, spectacular strand-debut with midlengther Master Plan and shorts Dangerous Light and Habitat.
But this is just a small sampling of this prodigiously prolific
experimentalist’s output - over sixty works since 1990. A teacher
of film at Boston’s Emerson College, Todd’s preferred format for
his semi-abstract glimpses of nature is 16mm celluloid. In Master
Plan he trains his camera on various types of housing across
various corners of the United States, providing an Uncharted
tour in miniature. Off-camera first-person testimony adds
colour and lo-fi warmth to potentially dry subject-matter while
enigmatically observational images are presented with a painterly
eye. Todd’s fascination with architectural space takes on more
avant-garde hues in Habitat, breaking down the human domestic
environment into lines and planes. Dangerous Light, meanwhile,
is a rare video outing for Todd, a radical act of eye-popping sci-fi
détournement unfolding a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
“Take a trip with me in nineteen thirteen / To Calumet, Michigan
in the copper country / I’ll take you to a place called Italian Hall
/ And the miners are having their big Christmas ball” - so sang
Woody Guthrie in his classic ballad 1913 Massacre, first recorded
over 70 years ago and always a great favourite of Bob Dylan’s.
The song commemorates a catastrophe that occurred during
a particularly rancorous strike, when a false cry of “fire!” in a
crowded building led to a stampede and 73 fatalities including 59
children. In this informative and heartfelt documentary, Woody’s
son Arlo - no mean performer himself - journeys to Calumet and
examines the enduring impact of the strike, disaster and song on
the town and its people.
+ TRAVELING LIGHT
+ rage Net p.83 + Return p.41
Monday 15 and Thursday 18 April
Dir. Andrew Brotzman USA 2012 (adv. 15) HDCam
David Call, Richard Bekins, Liam Aiken
As Uncharted States is all about showcasing rough diamonds
from the hard-scrabble fringes of American cinema, we did
debate the eligibility of such a poised, calm, smooth production
as Nor’easter, one of the most beautifully-shot films you’ll see this
year. But in the end, the section is also intended to introduce the
most promising new talents around and writer-director Andrew
Brotzman is most certainly the Real Deal. Now resident in Los
Angeles, he went back home to the remote north-east corner of
the US to make his feature debut: “Maine native creates thriller
that shows state’s icy beauty” was how the Portland Press Herald
summed up this truly engrossing, ultimately shattering tale of a
young priest negotiating tricky terrain - physical, psychological
and moral - in his bleakly picturesque new parish.
Dir. Gina Telaroli USA 2011 57 mins (adv. PG) HDCam
Documentary
With all respect to Jack Kerouac and his petrolhead pals,
the best mode of mechanised transport for appreciating a
landscape - American or otherwise - has to be the train, and
in this experimental docu/fiction hybrid Gina Telaroli joins an
illustrious list of US filmmakers entranced by the railroad. Much
more intimate and oblique than James Benning’s monumental
RR (Uncharted States 2008), Traveling Light provides elliptical
glimpses of a journey from Penn Station in New York to Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. “Any Amtrak patron is likely to get something in
the vicinity of a Proustian rush at some point during the picture,”
wrote US critic Glenn Kenny, hailing Traveling Light as “one of the
most striking and exciting films I’ve seen this year. I can’t wait to
see it again.” All aboard!!
Film sources:
Films by Robert Todd: Robert Todd
1913 Massacre: Louis Galdieri Ken Ross
Traveling Light: Gina Telaroli
Nor’Easter: Andrew Brotzman
DANGEROUS LIGHT
MASTER PLAN
HABITAT
1913 MASSACRE
NOR’EASTER
Uncharted States
ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE
UK PREMIERE
Saturday 13 and Monday 15 April
Dir. James Benning USA 2012 (adv. PG) Digital
Documentary
PEARBLOSSOM HWY
UK PREMIERE
Wednesday 17 and Sunday 21 April
Dir. Mike Ott USA 2012 78 mins (adv. 15) Digital
Atsuko Okatsuka, Cory Zacharia, John Brotherton
The undisputed King of Uncharted States is back again with
this wonderful addition to his earlier One Way Boogie Woogie
films from 1977 and 2005 - though this wordless, fixed-camera
landscape examination, comprising shots of five minutes apiece,
is a work that can be appreciated entirely on its own merits. “For
this second re-make I decided to go back to the original idea,”
says Benning, “that is, to simply document the architecture in
Milwaukee’s industrial valley. I searched for buildings that looked
like the ones from 1977. I found 18 of them. A few of them are
also in the original 1977 film, and the others look as if they
could have been.” Keep your eyes peeled for Benning’s fleeting,
Hitchcock-style cameo.
Film Source: James Benning
Few Uncharted selections have proven as popular as Mike Ott’s
off-beat Californian romantic mood-piece Littlerock from 2011,
so we’re delighted that Mike - whose Analog Days appeared in
the strand’s 2007 debut - is back so quickly with this follow-up.
It’s not really a “sequel”, despite again being set in the dusty
small towns of eastern California, and again starring Atsuko
Okatsuka and Cory Zacharia - here they play “variations” of
their Littlerock characters in an intimate, delicate story of love,
family and self-awareness. As Peter Knegt wrote in Indiewire,
“Pearblossom easily stands on its own as a distinctive and
engaging film that works so well because of the collaborative,
unconventional approach behind it and the organic-feeling
cinema that results.”
Film source: Mike Ott
+ CENTURY
SHINESHORT FILM COMPETITION
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Kevin Jerome Everson USA 2012 7 mins (adv. PG) 16mm
Documentary
One sunny day in Charlottesville, Virginia. One scrapyard, with
view of forested hills beyond. One brown car - a General Motors
Buick Century, to be precise. And one mighty weight, falling from
the heavens. A one-shot movie about decay, transience and
obsolescence - filmed, of course, on 16mm celluloid.
Film source: Kevin Jerome Everson
+ ANOTHER BULLET DODGED
UK PREMIERE Dir. Landon Zakheim USA 2011 13 mins (adv. 12A) HDCam
Vincent Cardinale, Jennifer Landon, Alix Angelis
Recommended to BIFF by Pearblossom Hwy’s Mike Ott - who
also appears briefly on-screen right at the end - this razor-sharp
short plunges us into a relationship between a guy and a girl
that’s souring faster than last Thursday’s milk. Excruciatingly
true.
Film source: Landon Zakheim
century
PEARBLOSSOM HWY
ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE
ANOTHER BULLET DODGED
PINCUS
SOMETIMES CITY
UK PREMIERE
Sunday 14 and Saturday 20 April
Dir. David Fenster USA 2012 (adv. 15) HDCam
David Nordstrom, Paul Fenster, Dietmar Franusch, Christi Idavoy
Friday 12 and Saturday 20 April
Dir. Tom Jarmusch USA 2011 (adv. 15) 80 mins Digibeta
Documentary
One of the highlights of last year’s BIFF was David Nordstrom’s
Sawdust City, with David himself in attendance for a film which
he wrote, directed, edited and starred in. Twelve months later
he’s back on our screens as the eponymous ‘hero’ in David
Fenster’s low-key comedy of problematic relationships. Caring
for his Parkinson’s-afflicted dad (played by Fenster’s own father
in an affecting screen debut), the terminally slackerish, thirtyish
Pincus struggles to keep the family construction-firm afloat
while dabbles in new-agey philosophy, drifting into an awkward
romantic entanglement with a yoga-instructor, and dealing with
the vicissitudes of his grizzled German colleague/employee. Set
and shot in Fenster’s native Florida, Pincus has a distinctively spiky
charm that really gets under your skin.
Older brother of the more famous Jim, Tom Jarmusch’s
raw DIY movies make even his illustrious sibling’s roughedged early works look like Baz Luhrmann extravaganzas.
Sometimes City is a punchy, punkish, video-shot collage that
builds into a hard-knock, persuasively empathetic portrait
of Cleveland, Ohio - a historic midwest city that has endured
punishingly tough economic times for decades. What makes
people stay in an area that those in wealthier metropolises
dismiss with bemused disdain? Himself a native of nearby
Akron, Jarmusch interviews ordinary Joes and Joannes who
live in “The Rock and Roll Capital of the World”, punctuating
their earthy responses with verité dispatches from the
streets, raucous cuts from local garage-rock bands, whatever
takes his fancy. “The viewer feels as if he or she has entered
a character novel of Vonnegut proportions” (Miguel Sabogal,
Splice Today).
+ THE LIVELONG DAY
UK PREMEIRE
Dir. David Fenster USA 2008 (adv. U) 22 mins HDCam
Documentary
“A simply amazing and fascinating documentary by David Fenster
about model train enthusiasts. An intimate, revealing portrait
of an obsessive, lifelong-commitment hobby, with real care
given to understanding what draws these men to its lifestyle.” underground-film guru Mike Everleth (Bad Lit)
Film source: David Fenster
+ ALFREDO
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Tom Jarmusch USA 2008 (adv. PG) 8 mins b/w silent
Digibeta
Documentary
Jarmusch’s bluntly in-your-face take on American gun-culture
observes one particular firearms enthusiast as he discharges
a series of lethal weapons during a visit to an indoor range.
Shot on inky low-tech video and then stripped of all sounds,
the result is an enigmatic, nightmarish vignette of brute,
mute machismo.
Film source: Tom Jarmusch
SOMETIMES CITY
THE LIVELONG DAY
SOMETIMES CITY
Alfredo
PINCUS
Uncharted States of America 2007 - 2013
A.EFFECT – Mike Ott (17m) – 2010
ALFREDO [2000] – Tom Jarmusch (8m) – 2013
AN AMERICAN JOURNEY – Philippe Séclier [France] (58m) – 2011
ANALOG DAYS – Mike Ott (80m) – 2007
ANOTHER BULLET DODGED – Landon Zakheim (13m) – 2013
APART FROM THAT – Shainin & Walker (120m) – 2007
AUGUST EVENING – Chris Eska (127m) – 2008
BEETLE QUEEN CONQUERS TOKYO – Jessica Oreck (90m) – 2010
BLUE BUS – Phil Scarpaci (95m) – 2010
BONECRUSHER – Matthew F Fountain (72m) – 2010
BRAVE NEW WEST – Carr & Hawes-Davis (80m) – 2009
BROKE SKY – Thomas L Callaway (97m) – 2008
BUMMER SUMMER – Zach Weintraub (81m) – 2012
CALIFORNIA COMPANY TOWN – Lee Anne Schmitt (77m) – 2009
CALL OF THE WILD – Ron Lamothe (108m) – 2008
CASTING A GLANCE – James Benning (80m) – 2008
CENTURY – Kevin Jerome Everson (7m) – 2013
CHINA TOWN – Lucy Raven (52m) – 2010
COLD WEATHER – Aaron Katz (96m) – 2011
THE COLOR WHEEL – Alex Ross Perry (83m) – 2012
DANCE PARTY, USA – Aaron Katz (65m) – 2007
THE DANCING SOUL OF THE WALKING PEOPLE [1980] restoration
– Paula Gladstone (63m) – 2013
DANGEROUS LIGHT – Robert Todd (7m) – 2013
DANGEROUS MEN – John S Rad (80m) – 2007
A DARKNESS SWALLOWED – Betzy Bromberg (78m) – 2007
DISFARMER: A PORTRAIT OF AMERICA – Martin Lavut [Canada]
(52m) – 2011 * (Disfarmer short version shown 2009)
DISTINGUISHED FLYING CROSS – Travis Wilkerson (61m) – 2012
EGGSHELLS [1969] restoration – Tobe Hooper (90m) – 2010
EXIT – Sharon Lockhart (41m) – 2009
FISH KILL FLEA – Cassidy, Hillis & Loeber (50m) – 2008
FOREIGN PARTS – Paravel & Sniadecki (81m) – 2011
45365 – Ross & Ross (90m) – 2011
FREEZER FRIGHT – Nancy Silver (57m) – 2010
HABITAT – Robert Todd (10m) – 2013
HAMILTON – Matthew Porterfield (65m) – 2007
HOHOKAM – Frank V Ross (72m) – 2008
HOOPESTON – Thomas Bender (78m) – 2009
IMMOKALEE, USA – Georg Koszulinski (77m) – 2009
INTRO – Brandon Cahoon (79m) – 2012
IT WAS GREAT, BUT I WAS READY TO COME HOME – Kris Swanberg
61m) – 2010
THE LAST BUFFALO HUNT – Lynch & Schmitt (76m) – 2012
Uncharted States of America 2007 - 2013
LAY DOWN TRACKS – Lombardi & McCaffrey (59m) – 2007
LITTLEROCK – Mike Ott (84m) – 2011
THE LIVELONG DAY [2008] – David Fenster (21m) – 2013
LOREN CASS – Chris Fuller (83m) – 2007
LOWLANDS – Peter Thompson (51m) – 2010
LUNCH BREAK – Sharon Lockhart (83m) – 2009
MASTER PLAN – Robert Todd (62m) – 2013
1913 MASSACRE – Galdieri & Ross (65m) – 2013
NOR’EASTER – Andrew Brotzman (85m) – 2013
O’ER THE LAND – Deborah Stratman (52m) – 2009
OMG/HAHAHA – Morgan Jon Fox (74m) – 2009
ONE SMART INDIAN – Craig Butta (9m) – 2012
ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE / 27 YEARS LATER – James Benning
(116m) 2007
ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE [2012] – James Benning (105m) – 2013
PARADE – Brandon Cahoon (83m) – 2009
PEARBLOSSOM HWY – Mike Ott (80m) – 2013
PINCUS – David Fenster (78m) – 2013
POLICE BEAT – Robinson Devor (81m) – 2007
PROFIT MOTIVE AND THE WHISPERING WIND – John Gianvito
(58m) – 008
PUTTY HILL – Matthew Porterfield (85m) – 2011
QUIET CITY – Aaron Katz (81m) – 2008
REDLAND – Asiel Norton (105m) – 2010
R R – James Benning (112m) – 2008
SAWDUST CITY – David Nordstrom (97m) – 2012
SMALL ROADS – James Benning (103m) – 2012
SOMETIMES CITY – Tom Jarmusch (80m) – 2013
TEAM PICTURE – Kentucker Audley (62m) – 2009
THREE STORIES – Lee Anne Schmitt (14m) – 2012
TRAVELING LIGHT – Gina Telaroli (57m) – 2013
TURKEY BOWL – Kyle Smith (64m) – 2012
VOLUPTOUS SLEEP – Betzy Bromberg (95m) – 2012
WHEN IS TOMORROW – Kevin Ford (80m) – 2008
WHO IS BOZO TEXINO? – Bill Daniel (56m) – 2007
WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN? – Travis Wilkerson (73m, aka WKCR
Redux) – 2007
THE WHOLE SHOOTIN’ MATCH [1979] restoration – Eagle Pennell
(109m) 2008
WITHOUT – Mark Jackson (87m) – 2012
YEAST – Mary Bronstein (77m) – 2009
Year on right-hand side of line refers to the year shown at BIFF,
not the year of film’s production
Alexey Balabanov
CARGO 200
Alexey Balabanov
Russia’s Maverick Maestro
British cinemagoers may know Aleksandr Sokurov (Faust) and Andrei
Zvyagintsev (The Return, Elena), but Russian cinema, currently
experiencing something of a golden age, remains an enigma for far
too many. St Petersburg’s trouble-stirring Alexey Balabanov (b.1959) is
a case in point - this softly-spoken ‘beast from the east’ whose bloodspattered outrages suggest an unholy hybrid of Lars von Trier, JeanPierre Melville and Takeshi Kitano.
While long acknowledged as a major cultural figure at home - gangland
drama Brother (1997), its 2000 sequel, and Chechnya-set War (2001)
were mammoth hits - and with a string of film-festival awards to his
credit, he’s the ‘European’ auteur with the most undeservedly low UK
profile.
Bradford International Film Festival seeks to rectify this by presenting
three of Balabanov’s key recent works - entirely separate stories, but
connected by theme, tone and some performers - including Me Too,
a vodka-fuelled, Tarkovsky-riffing satire that has polarised critics and
viewers since premiering at Venice last September.
CARGO 200 (Gruz 200)
+ BELLUM p.68
A STOKER
A STOKER (Kochegar)
+ empire p.79
Monday 15 and Saturday 20 April
Dir. Alexey Balabanov Russia 2007 89 mins (adv.18) 35mm
Agniva Kuznetsova, Aleksei Poluyan, Leonid Gromov
Wednesday 17 and Saturday 20 April
Dir. Alexey Balabanov Russia 2012 84 mins (adv. 18) Digital
Mikhail Skryabin, Yuri Matveyev, Alexander Mosin
1984: as the USSR pours resources and men into an
unwinnable war in Afghanistan, the “repatriated”
victims are referred to as ‘Cargo 200’ - bureaucratic
code for what are often horribly mangled cadavers. In
his eleventh feature director Alexey Balabanov has no
truck with euphemisms, displaying the terrible effects of
both conflict and general social breakdown via a wildly
unpredictable story in which a corrupt, psychopathic cop
kidnaps and abuses a young woman whose boyfriend is
away at the front. Writing in New York’s Village Voice, critic
Vadim Rizov marvelled at this “cavalcade of atrocities...
The outrages (many and constant) stop being appalling
and become grimly amusing. It feels as if you’re watching
some kind of deranged performance-art piece. Cargo 200
is beautifully filmed and completely disturbing for its
entire running time.”
Film source: Intercinema
1995: in post-Soviet St Petersburg it’s hard to tell cops from
crooks, and both sides need a reliable way to dispose of
inconvenient corpses. One apartment-block is heated by furnaces
tended by a concussed Afghan-war veteran, a meek-seeming
oldster who isn’t averse to helping out his former comrades. But
there comes a time when a man must take a stand... Balabanov’s
builds his 13th feature around the deceptively slender shoulders
of veteran stage-performer Mikhail Skryabin, who died only
months after the picture’s release and who also appears in Cargo
200. Key roles are played by the delightfully thuggish Alexander
Mosin and Yuri Matveev - who would later reteam for Me Too
- in a film described by Variety’s Alissa Simon as “harsh and
disturbing, but still a lot of fun.” The soundtrack, meanwhile, has
to be heard to be (dis-)believed.
ME TOO
ME TOO (Ya tozhe khochu)
+ INERTIA p.69
Thursday 18 and Friday 19 April
Dir. Alexey Balabanov Russia 2012 83 mins (adv. 18) Digital
Aleksandr Mosin, Jurij Matveyev, Oleg Garkusha
2012: in St Petersburg, it’s still hard to tell good guys from villains,
and as the Mayan Calendar ticks down an apocalyptic mood grips
the city, the country, and the world. But perhaps there is a way
out! ‘Bandit’ (Alexander Mosin), Jura (Yuri Matveev) and Oleg
(Oleg Garkusha) drive into the wilds seeking the fabled ‘Belltower
of Happiness’ that can supposedly make their dreams come
true. But the road to joy is filled with peril... Admirers of Andrei
Tarkovsky’s Stalker may recognise Balabanov’s basic template
here, but if anything his provocatively-scored picture is much
closer in tone to Stalker’s source - the Strugatsky brothers’ hardboiled novel Roadside Picnic. Regardless, Balabanov has now
delivered what may well be his crowning masterpiece, mashing
together black comedy, gritty crime and philosophical sci-fi with
the utterly idiosyncratic and uncompromising flair that’s become
his hallmark.
Balabanov examines all strata of contemporary Russian society with a
savagely sardonic directness, packing his films with jet-black humour,
outbursts of startling violence, challengingly ‘crazy’ soundtracks and an
ingrained cynicism tempered by glimmers of hard-won optimism.
As Anna Niemen wrote in an extended profile for Mubi, “Balabanov
remains a somewhat mysterious, contradictory and controversial figure
in Russian cinema... accused of many sins, from being ‘unpatriotic’ to
‘a degenerate’.... His point of view is that of a grownup, who has the
courage to sweep aside the conveniently nostalgic view of history, to
look the present straight in the eye and to shake us, his audience.”
2013 European Features
Competition
2013 European Features Competition
Last year half a dozen debutant directors vied for BIFF’s inaugural
European Features Competition for outstanding fictional features
without UK distribution - the prize going to Iceland’s Rúnar
Rúnarsson with the shattering Volcano.
Twelve months on, excitingly fresh talent is again to the fore in
the form of first-time feature filmmakers Kristina Nikolova from
Bulgaria (Faith, Love and Whiskey), the Netherlands’ Joost van
Ginkel (170 Hz), and Olmo Omerzu from Slovenia, who went to
the Czech Republic to make A Night Too Young.
Speaking of crossing borders brings us the multi-national Emily
Atef, born in Berlin to French-Iranian parents and raised in
California. Her fourth feature Kill Me is a German/French/Swiss
affair, a co-production like so many European movies in these
straitened economic times.
170 Hz
Kill Me
And we’re also delighted to showcase a pair of well-established
veterans in the form of 57-year-old Jan Jakub Kolski from Poland
(To Kill a Beaver) and 55-year-old Branko Schmidt from Croatia
(Vegetarian Cannibal) - both of them boasting over 20 years
of features to their names. But these latest provocations from
Kolski and Schmidt have the kind of energy, audacity and sheer
verve that you’d associate with confident newcomers to the
moviemaking game - reminding us all of the late Aaliyah’s sage
words: age, truly, ain’t nothin’ but a number.
Faith, Love and Whiskey
A Night Too Young
Jury
Hannah McGill
Hannah is a writer, journalist, broadcaster and film festival
programmer based in Edinburgh. Her outlets as an arts critic
include The List, Sight and Sound, The Times, Scotland on Sunday
and the BBC Review Show, and she also writes fiction. From 2006
to 2010 she was Artistic Director of the Edinburgh International
Film Festival. In 2008 she was named in Variety Magazine’s
Women’s Impact Report as one of 50 women of achievement in
worldwide arts and entertainment, and in 2009 she was awarded
the Women in Film and TV UK’s New Talent Award.
Twitter: @HannahJMcGill
To Kill a Beaver
Vegetarian Cannibal
THE COMPETING FILMS 2013:
170 Hz
Netherlands: directed by Joost van Ginkel
The winning film will be screened again on Sunday 21 April and
will receive the Bradford City of Film European Features Award.
Bulgaria: directed by Kristina Nikolova
Kill Me
France: directed by Emily Atef
A Night Too Young
Czech Republic: directed by Olmo Omerzu
To Kill a Beaver
Poland: directed by Jan Jakub Kolski
Vegetarian Cannibal
Croatia: directed by Branko Schmidt
Stephanie Bunbury
Stephanie has been writing about arts and culture, with an
emphasis on film, for 30 years. Most of her work has appeared
in Fairfax publications in Australia - primarily in The Age in
Melbourne - although she has also contributed to various essay
collections, academic readers and literary magazines. As a
cinephile, her interests swing wildly from slow, bleak Austrian
films to gross-out frat comedies with plenty of poo jokes. When
she isn’t working, she is likely to be found hiking in Britain or
backpacking in remote mountains without a screen to be seen.
Martijn Maria Smits
Born in Breda (The Netherlands) in 1980, Smits studied AudioVisual Arts and Photography in Antwerp before graduating
in the Documentary school of the Dutch Film Academy with
prize-winning short Otzenrath: The Last Day (2006). He is also an
alumnus of the Binger Writers and Directors Lab in Amsterdam,
where he currently resides. One of Holland’s most acclaimed
younger writer-directors - noted for his engagement with
social themes - his other films include the short Anvers (2009)
and the feature It’s Already Summer (C’est déjà l’été, 2010).
The latter played at dozens of film-festivals across the world
winning numerous awards including Best Music at the Dutch
national film-festival. His latest production Under the Weight of
Clouds shows at this year’s BIFF in a double-bill with the Polish
documentary My House Without Me.
CITADEL
New Features
New Features
New Features
BABYLON + NOTES ON FILM 04 p.79
EUROPEAN FEATURES COMPETITION
170 HZ + BLUE MONDAY p.68
UK PREMIERE
Thursday 18 and Friday 19 April
Dir. Joost van Ginkel Neth 2012 86 mins (adv. 15) subtitles Digital
Gaite Jansen, Michael Muller, Eva van Heijningen, Ariane Schluter
UK PREMIERE
Dirs. Ismael Chebbi, Youssef Chebbi, Ala Eddine Slim Tunisia 2012
112 mins (adv. 12A) Digital Documentary
“The directors have elected not to resort to subtitles,” Babylon’s
opening titles bluntly inform us, and instantly a century of
cinematic convention is gleefully discarded. Shot in a temporary
refugee camp erected in Tunisia to cope with the influx of
workers fleeing 2011’s violence in neighbouring Libya, this top
prize-winner at the prestigious FIDMarseille festival last summer
is an intimately observant slice of behind-the-headlines vérité
that chronicles the camp’s construction, everyday goings-on, and
ultimate dismantlement. Trust us on this one: what looks like a
daunting minus quickly reveals itself as a very special plus.
Film source: Exit Productions
A film about unconditional love and the freedom that goes with
it. Nick and Evy are deafmute adolescents who fall hopelessly for
one another. When they sense that their parents do not agree
with them being together, they devise a plan to flee and hide.
Nick takes the initiative and drives off with Evy to the wreck of
a submarine. Writer-director Joost van Ginkel’s debut feature
immerses the viewer in the strange intensity of teenage love.
Film source: Column Film
AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL TELEVISION MYTH
CURSED BE THE PHOSPHATE + stroBOGRAMM p.79
(Un mito antropologico television)
UK PREMIERE
Saturday 14 and Friday 19 April
Dirs. Alessandro Gagliardo, Maria Helene Bertino, Dario Castelli
Italy 2012 54 mins (adv. 12A) subtitles MiniDV Documentary
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Sami Tlili Tunisia/UAE/Lebanon/Qatar 2012
84 mins (adv. 12A) subtitles Digibeta Documentary
There have been dozens of documentaries covering the Arab Spring,
the series of uprisings and revolutions which spread across north
Africa and the middle East after the suicide of a Tunisian streetvendor in December 2010. Two of the most striking examples
receive their UK premieres at BIFF this year, both from Tunisia: the
challengingly radical Babylon and the relatively ‘conventional’ Cursed
Be the Phosphate, which turns the clock back to examine a key
pre-Revolutionary episode in recent Tunisian history. When a strike
in an obscure mining-town in 2008 was brutally suppressed by
government forces, the local people fought back - and paid a heavy
price for their resistance.
Film source: Nomadis Images
Sami Tlili will attend the first screening.
Don’t touch that dial! An Anthropological Television Myth
is a gloriously jagged collage of fragments culled from an
independent Sicilian TV station’s output in the mid-90s –
the period just before the ‘Berlusconi era.’ But whereas the
Milanese media mogul’s spells as president were notable for
the cynical degradation of his nation’s television output, with
its bawdy game-shows earning much overseas derision, the
small broadcaster showcased here evidently foregrounded and
documented local grass-roots political shenanigans. Virtuouso
editing knits together a dizzyingly wide range of sights and
sounds that consistently fascinate and impress.
Film source: malastrada film
+ CITADEL (Ciudadela)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Diego Mondaca Germany/Bolivia 2011 48 mins (adv. 15)
subtitles Digibeta Documentary
Since cinema’s birth, filmmakers of all stripes have been drawn to
prison stories - but there’s never been a “big house” movie quite
like the thrillingly kinetic Citadel. Director Diego Mondaca and his
daredevil cameraman Andrés Boera Madrid barrel us through the
Hogarthian labyrinth that is the San Pedro jail, slap-bang in the
middle of Bolivia’s high-altitude capital La Paz. A town within a
city, San Pedro is occupied by male prisoners plus in many cases
their wives and children, the population sustained by an array of
micro-businesses and barely controlled by any representatives of
authority To find out why, we recommend Rusty Young’s amazing
memoir Marching Powder - Mondaca’s dazzling debut is by
contrast a wild blast of impressionistic, tantalising, captivating
glimpses, edited with heroically berserk savagery by Aldo Alvarez.
Film source: Pucara films
DRAGONFLIES WITH BIRDS AND SNAKE
+ SHORT FILMS
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Wolfgang Lehmann Swe/Ger 2011 60 mins (adv. PG) Digibeta
A “nature film” beyond even the wildest imaginings of David
Attenborough: one silent hour of rhythmic, pulsating, fast-cut
images of dragonflies, birds, a snake - and also some toads.
German-born, Swedish-based director Wolfgang Lehmann
is evidently a keen scholar of the other three Rs: repetition,
repetition, repetition. His most ambitious enterprise in a career
that stretches back to the 1980s, Dragonflies is experimental
film as beautiful mosaic, in which the rapidfire nature of the
visual data means that everyone will “see” something different
depending on how the light and colours hit their retina.
Film source: Wolfgang Lehmann
New Features
New Features
A DREAM’S MERCHANT
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Llie-Micu Rom 2012 172 mins (adv. 12A) subtitles Digital
A three-hour, shoestring-budget Romanian documentary about a
motorbike journey may not sound the most enticing of prospects
on paper... but even those immune to such petrolhead delights
as the BBC’s Top Gear may find themselves steadily engrossed
in and then enraptured by Bogdan Ilie-Micu’s magnificently lo-fi
debut. Much closer to the spirit of Jack Kerouac and company
than Walter Salles’ big-bucks On the Road adaptation, this truelife ‘Motorcycle Diary’ recounts the epic trek of genial, thirtyish
photographer Mihai Barbu as he rumbles to the Mongolian
capital Ulan Bator - and back - aboard the BMW Enduro touringbike he names ‘Doyle.’ Mihai took his camera and a pen, recording
his exploits at every stop along the way, the results form this
prize-winning, inspirational celebration of old-school wanderlust.
Film source: Bogdan Ilie-Micu
FAITH, LOVE & WHISKEY + LIFE DOESN’T FRIGHTEN ME p.69
UK PREMIERE
Wednesday 17 and Friday 19 April
Dir. Kristina Nikolova Bulgaria, USA 2012 75 mins (adv. 15) subtitles
Digital Ana Stojanovska, Yavor Baharov, Lidia Indjova, John Keabler
Young Neli abandons a secure future with a wealthy, straight-laced
fiancé in the U.S., returning to Bulgaria for one last fling with Val,
her passionate but boozily self destructive ex-boyfriend. Shot on
beautifully saturated Super 16mm film, director Nikolova’s first
feature captures Neli’s woozy emotional state in Sofia among stray
dogs and strip clubs. Macedonian lead Stojanovska lends a subtle
performance as a young woman caught between home and escape.
“Although it was clearly shot on a shoe-string budget, [this is] an
interesting looking movie. … a cerebral and sensual film, which is
actually a rather cool combination.” – Joe Bendel,
Film source: Magic Shop
GONE WILD + SPARK p.71
Dir. Dan Curean Romania 2012 83 mins (adv. 15) subtitles
HDCam Documentary
The Danube Delta is surely the most spectacular section of the
European Union’s untamed eastern fringes, this quiet corner of
Romania hosting some of the rarest and most endangered of
the continent’s flora and fauna. Dan Curean’s ruminative but
provocative documentary examines one particularly controversial
aspect of the region’s fragile ecosystem: a herd of wild horses
who have been running free here since the collapse of Nicolae
Ceausescu’s dictatorship, when their collective-farm was
broken up. The fate of these unique equines made national and
international news when their burgeoning numbers spurred
the national government to drastic action - as chronicled in this
admirably unfussy, unsentimental documentary.
Film source: Fundatia Arta
A DREAM’S MERCHANT
New Features
New Features
I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A DREAMER + SHORTS
UK PREMIERE
Sunday 14 and Tuesday 16 April
Dir. Sabine Gruffat USA/United Arab Emirates 2012 78 mins
(adv. PG) HDCam Documentary
A documentary travelogue and portrait of two cities in contrasting
states: Dubai and Detroit. Detroit, the incarnation of Fordism now
crumbles famously, a depopulating relic haunted by its former
grandeur. Dubai, in the continual process of being built, is similarly
‘empty’. Video artist Sabine takes an impressionistic, sometimes
witty approach to this urban essay. Bradfordians are advised to
seek this out.
“extreme low-angle shots, accompanied on the soundtrack by
ambient noise and confessional interviews, depict downtown
Detroit as alternately scary, ridiculous, and poignant. (Uses)
big-screen photography more effectively than many Hollywood
productions. — Ben Sachs, The Chicago Reader
Film Source: Sabine Gruffat
KILL ME + LAST NIGHT p.69
Dir. Atef Ger/Fr/Sw 2012
91 mins (adv. 15) subtitles Digital
Maria-Victoria Dragus, Roeland Wiesnekker, Wolfram Koch
Maria Dragus isn’t yet 20, but this ethereal, elfin blonde from
Romania is regarded as fast-rising star of European cinema and here confirms the promise of her spectacularly unnerving
performance as bird-crucifying Klara in Michael Haneke’s
The White Ribbon. Taking centre stage as depressed farm-girl
teenager Adele, Dragus commands attention as a young woman
increasingly consumed with thoughts of suicide as a form of
escape from her daily drudgery. ‘Salvation’ appears in the unlikely
form of an escaped murderer (Roeland Wiesnekker) whom Klara
helps to evade capture - on the unusual terms referred to in the
film’s title.
Film source: Les Films du Losange
LA PLAYA DC
+ FILM/SPRICHT/VIELE/SPRACHEN p.79 + A DAY OR TWO p.68
Dir. Juan Andrés Arango Garcia Spain 2012 90 mins (adv. 15)
subtitles 35mm Luis Carlos Guevara, Jamés Solis, Andrés Murillo
Something different from the ever-fertile cinema of South
America: a Colombian Mean Streets that whisks us up to the
chilly, hilltop capital Bogota for a hard-knock tale of urban
deprivation and brotherly strife. Premiering at Cannes, this
exciting debut from native-born ‘Bogotano’ Juan Andrés Arango
is a rare and welcome cinematic dispatch from the continent’s
most northerly country. Teenage brothers Tomas, Jairo and
Chaco have fled to the capital from their formerly-idyllic home
on the country’s western seaboard, driven out by the civil war
which claimed the life of their father. But the big bad city has its
own share of dangers... Drugs, death and hardcore barbering are
on the menu - a spicy dish, expertly served iceberg cold.
Film source: Doc & Film International
KILL ME
New Features
New Features
THE LAST DOGS OF WINTER + FOXES p.69
Saturday 13 and Monday 15 April
Dir. Costa Botes Canada 2011 97 mins (12A) subtitles HDCam
Documentary with Caleb Ross
Former Peter Jackson collaborator Costa Botes takes us far, far
north of his native New Zealand for this magical documentary
about man’s four-legged friends. Brian Ladoon is an eccentric,
lone-wolf Canadian who has dedicated his life to saving the
extinction-threatened Qimmiq - a species of canine used by local
Inuits for centuries as hunting-hounds but now abandoned in
favour of motorised skidoos. The snowy wilds of remote northern
Manitoba make for a stirringly picturesque backdrop for footage
of the rugged but irresistibly cute Qimmiq, not to mention the
polar bears who occasionally amble by. Doing their best to make
an impact among such furry scene stealers are the crustily ornery
Ladoon and his unflappably laid-back younger Kiwi assistant,
former teen-TV pinup Caleb Ross.
Film source: New Zealand Film Commission
LITTLE WORLD + MOTHLIGHT* p.83
UK PREMIERE
Saturday 13*, Monday 15 and Thursday 18* April
Dir. Marcel Barrena Spain 2012 (adv. 15) subtitles Blu-Ray TBC
Documentary with Pili Alamán, Alba Casals, Albert Casals
An utterly unsentimental but movingly inspirational
documentary about a globe-trotting 20-year-old from Barcelona.
Very much a case of “four wheels good,” debutant director
Barrena introduces us to the infectiously can-do, wheelchairusing Barcelona native Albert Casals, who’s been a world traveller
since the age of 15. His strategy is simplicity itself, eschewing
money and relying on his well-honed street-smarts plus the
kindness of strangers. His most ambitious adventure is a
30,000km (18,600-mile) trek to the exact antipode of his home:
East Cape in New Zealand. What follows instantly takes its place
among the most outstanding examples of travelogue cinema
Film source: Umbilical Productions
LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED + A to A p.79
Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 April
Dir. Susanne Bier Denmark/Swe/Italy/Fr/Ger2012
116 mins (adv. 12A) some subtitles Digital
Pierce Brosnan, Trine Dyrholm, Kim Bodnia, Paprika Steen
Sun-kissed romance meets family dysfunction in Oscar-winning
director Susanne Bier’s delightful new film Love is All You Need.
A dapper Pierce Brosnan plays efficient yet terminally grumpy
Copenhagen-based businessman Philip, a self-absorbed man
who berates people without thinking. Meanwhile across town,
Ida, played by the terrific Trine Dyrholm (A Royal Affair, In a Better
World) is a mouse-like hairdresser coping with a post-cancer
recovery and a deeply crap, philandering husband. Philip and Ida’s
cars collide en route to a wedding in the beautifully rustic Italian
town of Sorrento, the setting for a grand finale, with Philip and
Ida’s families all set to either to fall apart, or fall in love.
Film source: Arrow Films
THE LAST DOGS OF WINTER
New Features
New Features
THE LOVE SONGS OF TIEDAN + THE 3 RS p.79
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Hao Jie China 2012 91 mins (adv. 18) subtitles Digital
Feng Si, Ye Lan, Feng Yun, Li Yuqin
+ SHORT FILMS
Sunday 14 and Thursday 18 April
Dir. Joss Whedon USA 2012 107 mins (adv PG) b/w Digital
Alexis Denisof, Amy Acker, Fran Kranz, Ashley Johnson
This raucously knockabout satirical comedy - with songs!
- establishes Hao Jie as the Preston Sturges of Chinese
independent cinema. In his second feature, director/co-writer
Hao pays rousing tribute to ‘Er-ren-tai’, a form of saucy musical
performance closely associated with Hao’s home region in the
north-west near the Mongolian border. This colourfully accessible
slice of backwater ethnography follows hapless hero Tiedan (Feng
Si) from joyous childhood through to a maturity notable for an
eventfully unorthodox love-life. Taking their cue from the Er-rentai songs themselves, which express passionate feelings in bursts
of hyper-stylised intensity, Hao and his Korean editor Baek Seung
Hoon sock over short scenes packed with freewheeling incident
and comedy. Film source: PAD International
Avengers: Assemble and Buffy director Joss Whedon takes a break
from super heroes and the supernatural to direct this modern
retelling of Shakespeare’s witty and popular play. Shot in less
than a fortnight at Whedon’s California home, the director brings
together a group of acting buddies to perform this contemporary
take on a tale of triumphant love. Brilliantly acted and shot in
a dreamy black and white, this is an accessible introduction to
Shakespeare and a creative new approach for fans of the play.
“Joss Whedon’s impact on youth culture is already hard to
overestimate. Now he’s made the first great contemporary
Shakespeare since Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet.” - Catherine
Shoard, The Guardian
Film source: Kaleidoscope Entertainment
MAGPIE + Doctor Bucketman p.68
WORLD PREMIERE
Tuesday 18 and Saturday 20 April
Dir. Marc Price UK 2013 77 mins (adv 15) HDCam
Daisy Aitkens, Craig Russell, Phil Deguara, Alastair Kirton
A NIGHT TOO YOUNG + SHORT FILMS
Saturday 13 and Saturday 20 April
Dir. O. Omerzu Cz Rep. 2012 65 mins (adv. 15) subtitles 35mm
Martin Pechlát, Jirí Cerný, Natalie Rehorova, Vojtech Machuta
Five years ago director Marc Price’s debut feature Colin, reportedly
made on a budget of just £45, struck a chord with horror fans
worldwide, and was an inspiration to first time filmmakers with
bags of talent but little other resources. Price’s follow-up Magpie is
a short side stem from – but not too far from – the horror genre. It’s
a nerve-wrangling drama about a wayward father who gatecrashes
his estranged son’s funeral and makes off with the coffin. Tense,
sometimes comic and pitched deftly between hysteric and sympathy,
Magpie is an assured and distinctive British indie, and yet more
evidence of its makers’ talent.
Marc Price and producer Helen Grace will attend the second
screening. Film source: Nowhere Fast Productions
Ljubljana-born 28-year-old Olmo Omerzu first made his name
in the world of comics, editing the seminal Slovenian magazine
Stripburek. Moving to Prague in 2004, he graduated from the city’s
prestigious Film School in 2011 and after a series of well-received
shorts unveiled his debut mid-length work A Night Too Young at
the following year’s Berlin Film Festival. Chronicling the mishaps
of two pre-teen boys as they witness very adult happenings in
their neighbourhood, this is a hypnotically atmospheric miniature
which skilfully manipulates our expectations and fears as the kids
edge towards situations of unpredictable peril.
Film source: endorfilm
ME AND YOU + SHORT FILMS
SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME
UK PREMIERE
Friday 12 April and Tuesday 16 April
Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci Italy 2012 103 mins (adv tbc) subtitles
Digital
Tea Falco, Jacopo Olmo Antinori, Sonia Bergamasco
+ A MARRIAGE p.69
UK PREMIERE
Friday 12 and Wednesday 17 April
Dir. Bob Byington USA 2012 75 mins (adv. 15) subtitles Digital
Nick Offerman, Keith Poulson, Jess Weixler, Stephanie Hunt
Bernardo Bertolucci, the creator of some of the headiest and
most memorable European cinema of the late last century (The
Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, The Dreamers), returns with his
first film as director for nine years. Me and You is a sympathetic,
youth-focused drama. Its subject is Lorenzo, a 14-year-old boy
with too much time on his hands. After committing to a quiet
week at home while pretending to be on a school trip, Lorenzo is
alarmed when his bolshie and troubled half-sister Olivia arrives
looking for a place to stay, claiming that the pair are, as in the
Bowie song, ‘Space Oddities’.
Film source: Artificial Eye
Winner of the Jury Prize at last year’s glitzy but cutting-edge
Locarno Film Festival, Austin-based writer-director Bob Byington’s
ferociously smart independent American comedy - the humour
brandishing with a sharp, black edge - follows three decades
in the life of happy-go-lucky slacker Max (Keith Poulson). “A
bittersweet comedy about love and marriage, random fate and
eternal youth,” wrote Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Dalton, “...
highly original and delightfully unorthodox. The plot takes in
terminal illness, premature death, marital collapse, failed fathers
and disconnected sons, yet the characters are all charming
eccentrics and the overall mood is relentlessly sunny.
Film source: Bob Byington
New Features
New Features
SOMETHING IN THE AIR + Short films
Dir. O. Assayas France 2012 122 mins (adv. 15) subtitles Digital
Clément Métayer, Lola Créton, Felix Armand, Carole Combes
Last year Olivier Assayas came to Bradford to receive the Bradford
International Film festival’s Fellowship in person, and now we
present the latest gem from one of France’s most revered writerdirectors. A companion-piece of sorts to his 1994 classic Cold
Water, it also makes a fascinating “his-and-hers” counterpart
to Goodbye First Love. But this evocative slice of fictionalised
autobiography, tracing the romantic, political and professional
travails of a movie-loving student in the turbulent Paris of the
1970s, is a stand-alone picture which works beautifully in its
own right. Winner of the Best Screenplay prize at the Venice
Film Festival, it has - in the words of Variety’s Justin Chang - “the
bittersweet clarity of hindsight and the assurance of a director in
peak form.”
Film source: Artificial Eye
THIS AIN’T CALIFORNIA + TIC TAC p.79
Dir. M Persiel Ger 2012 90 mins (adv. 15) subtitles Digital
Documentary with David Nathan, Anneke Schwabe
East Germany, the 1970s. The Communist government’s love of
brutalist architecture turns city centres into concrete jungles of
harsh, sweeping planes and soaring ramps... perfect terrain, in
short, for skateboarding! This eye-opening documentary is the
story of one legendary Ossi “sk8r”, Panik, who became an icon
for rebellious youth in Berlin and far beyond. Nimbly combining
stranger-than-fiction archive footage with present-day testimony
by Panik’s now middle-aged peers, director Persiel brings a unique
subculture roaring back to life. As Quiet Earth’s reviewer Marina
Antunes wrote, “This Ain’t California is a testament not only to
youth and changing culture but to an entire nation on the brink
of change. It’s a hugely entertaining bit of history that anyone,
young and old, can latch onto.”
Film Source: Up Front Entertainment
TO KILL A BEAVER + FOUR HOURS BAREFOOT p.68
Friday 12 and Wednesday 17 April
Dir. J.J. Kolski Poland 2012 99 mins (adv. 18) subtitles Digital
Eryk Lubos, Agnieszka Pawelkiewicz, Alexandra Michael
SOMETHING IN THE AIR
As BIFF 2011 selection My Flesh My Blood showed, there are
few more intensely physical actors in Europe than Poland’s Eryk
Lubos. Revered by his peers at home, his talents were recognised
on a prestigious international stage when he won Best Actor at
Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic last summer for
his performance as an ice-cold hitman in taut two-hander To Kill
A Beaver. Hiding out in his rural safe-house while awaiting his
next job, Lubos’s ‘Eryk’ is startled to find that a teenaged runaway
(Agnieszka Pawelkiewicz) has moved in during his absence.
Complications ensue - all the way up to a spectacularly violent
finale. “It feels ripe for a Hollywood remake,” noted Hollywood
Reporter reviewer Stephen Dalton, singling out “taut style and
strong plot” for particular praise.
Film source: Tramway Studio Filmowe
New Features
New Features
TOKYO WAKA + short film
UNDER THE WEIGHT OF CLOUDS
UK PREMIERE
Tuesday 16 and Friday 19 April
Dirs. John Haptas, Kristine Samuelson USA/Japan 2012 63 mins
(adv. U) subtitles HDCam. Documentary
Monday 15 and Tuesday 17 April
Dir. Martijn Maria Smits Netherlands 2012 49 mins (adv. 18)
subtitles HDCam
Juda Goslinga, Valentijn Dhaenens, Golda de Leon, Tanja Otolski
Tokyo is a digital metropolis and wellspring of spectacular pop
culture, its commercial crossroads carpeted with people day and
night. Above them, watching from perches on buildings and
power lines are more than 20,000 crows. As their numbers soared
in recent years, Tokyo fought back: trapping them, destroying
nests, and securing rubbish bags. The crows adapted; they are
among the smartest of animals. The 13 million people of Tokyo
now live alongside them in a stalemate. Tokyo Waka (Waka
meaning poem) tells this story and a larger one as well. The film
is ultimately about the life and culture of Tokyo, one of the great
cities of the world.
Film source: John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson
The directors will attend the second screening.
Originally made for Dutch TV, Under the Weight of Clouds is a
hard-hitting slice of humanist realism emphatically deserving
of big-screen exposure. Written and directed by Martijn
Maria Smits, whose debut feature It’s Already Summer played
countless festivals around the world, the film focuses on Elena
(Tanja Otolski), a young woman from Ukraine enmeshed in
the grim world of human-trafficking and forced prostitution.
Taking responsibility for a colleague’s infant child, Elena finds
herself facing a nightmarish dilemma. A skilful variant on the
John Cassavetes classic Gloria, enthrallingly updated to a nearunrecognisable 21st-century Netherlands of stark social division
and hidden exploitation.
Film Source: Martijn Maria Smits
TOWER
Monday 15 and Sunday 21 April
Dir. Kazik Radwanski Canada 2012 78 mins (adv. 12A) Digital
Derek Bogart, Nicole Fairbairn, Deborah Sawyer
+ EAST HASTINGS PHARMACY
Dir. Antoine Bourges Canada 2012 46 mins (adv. 15) HDCam
Shauna Hansen, Luis Figueroa
A special double-bill of new films from Canada’s most exciting
and energetic independent production company, Medium
Density Fibreboard Films (MDFF) of Toronto, Ontario. Founded
in 2008 by producer Dan Montgomery and writer-director
Kaz Radwanski after they graduated from the city’s Ryerson
University, MDFF is best known for short films that have garnered
prizes and acclaim at festivals all over the world.
Tower is MDFF’s first feature-length enterprise and ranks among
the most unusual and ambitious Canadian films of the decade.
Shot with Radwanski’s trademark documentary-style directness,
this unsettling character-study gets up close and personal with
nervy 34-year-old Derek, an aspiring animator whose encounters
with the opposite sex are just one of many sources of daily angst.
He’s played by the superbly intense Derek Bogart who, like all
the other cast members, improvised his dialogue. “As fascinating
as it is sad, and as sad as it is awkward. It’s an achievement in
intentional discomfort and succeeds because it never relents.”
(Justin Li, Sound On Sight.)
Prize-winning mid-lengther East Hastings Pharmacy, from Frenchborn Antoine Bourges, seamlessly blends documentary and
fictional elements to capture daily routines in a tough Vancouver
neighbourhood’s methadone dispensary. As the credits note, the
film “was made through collaborative improvisations and reenactments with residents of the Vancouver Downtown Eastside
and actress Shauna Hansen performing as the pharmacist.”
Entirely natural and convincing, luminous newcomer Hansen on
this evidence doesn’t just resemble the great Julianne Moore in
terms of colouring and features - she has the talent to match.
Film source: Medium Density Fibreboard Films
+ MY HOUSE WITHOUT ME (Mój dom)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Magdalena Szymków Poland 2012 28 mins (adv. 18) subtitles
Blu-Ray Documentary
Though clocking in at just 28 minutes, Polish-British coproduction My House Without Me is one of the most promising
cinema debuts of recent years: writer-director Magdalena
Szymków’s name should go straight into every cinephile’s
notebook. An award-winner at no fewer than four Polish festivals,
her strikingly mature and quietly assured film interviews two
elderly women - one Polish, one German - about the house in
which both have lived, examining the upheavals and ironies of
occupation and displacement. Experimentally-processed archive
footage adds a haunting extra dimension to this searching,
spellbinding exploration of history’s paradoxes.
Film source: Wajda Studio
A HIJACKING (Kapringen) + Hotel Room* p.79
Saturday 13* & Sunday 21 April
Dir. Tobias Lindholm Denmark 2012 99 mins (adv. 15) subtitles
Digital Johan Philip Asbæk, Søren Malling, Dar Salim
If you’re a fan of TV’s Borgen or The Hunt, then the name of Tobias
Lindholm may already be familiar - he wrote the latter and cowrote the former. Lindholm now takes on solo directing and writing
duties for this superbly intelligent and tense drama of high-seas
crime and boardroom negotiation starring Borgen’s Pilou Asbæk.
Asbæk here plays the cook on a Danish-registered ship taken hostage by Somali pirates - the focus then metronomes back and forth
between the vessel and Copenhagen as the owners and hijackers
slowly hammer out a deal. Outstanding on every level, A Hijacking
features a terrific ensemble cast that including real-life negotiator
Gary Skjoldmose Porter and Søren Malling, best known as Sarah
Lund’s abrasive colleague Jan Meyer in The Killing.
Film source: Arrow Films www.bradfordfilmfestival.org.uk 57
New Features
UNIVERSAL SOLDIER:
DAY OF RECKONING
+ SHORT FILMS
Dir. John Hyams USA 2012 114 mins (18) 3D Digital
Scott Adkins, Dolph Lundgren, Andrei Arlovski,
Jean-Claude Van Damme
The BIFF team is proud to present an ultra-rare chance to see
one of the year’s most talked-about films on the big, big screen
and in the immersive magic of 3D... because for Jean-Claude Van
Damme and Dolph Lundgren, two measly dimensions are simply
not enough! Previous knowledge of the Uni-Sol universe is no
requirement to enjoy a truly sui generis enterprise described by
top American critic Mike D’Angelo as “an astonishing cinematic
Brundlefly, as if copies of the Universal Soldier franchise had
accidentally gotten into the telepod alongside the complete works
of Noé, Lynch and the Wachowskis. First two reels are virtually
nonstop abstraction, disorienting and ominous; even without
having seen any of the previous instalments, I could tell that
bearings were in deliberately short supply. Then the ass-kicking
commences, so single-mindedly ferocious that all you can do is
gape.”
Film source: StudioCanal
VEGETARIAN CANNIBAL + TUESDAY p.71
Monday 15 and Friday 19 April
Dir. Branko Schmidt Croatia 2012 85 mins (adv. 18) subtitles
Digital
Rene Bitorajac, Natasa Janjic, Leon Lucev, Emir
Hadzihafizbegovic
Croatia’s official entry to the 2013 Oscars didn’t tickle the
Academy’s palates - perhaps not a surprise, as this no-holdsbarred character-study of an egotistical, lecherous, very
possibly psychopathic gynaecologist (Rene Bitorajac in a
chilling, barnstorming turn as Danko Babic) is ferociously
strong, tangy meat indeed. Viewers squeamish about
abortions and/or animal suffering will endure one or
two queasy moments, although a prominent end-title
announcement thankfully asserts that no canines (nor, one
presumes, foetuses) were harmed during filming. A vicious
dog-fight is just one port of call during our swaggering
anti-hero’s blithe spiral into corruption and hedonism, in
a searingly dark vision of contemporary Croatian society
adapted from Ivo Balenovic’s novel and winner of six major
prizes at the country’s national film-festival.
Film source: Telefilm
UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONIONG
FOUR HOURS BAREFOOT
2013 Shine Short Film
Competition
Four Hours Barefoot
Out of Frame
2013 Shine
Short Film Competition
Dirs. various approx 76 mins (adv. 15) various formats
The Shine Short Film Competition is designed to honour the
best short film by an emerging director at Bradford International
Film Festival. Films featured in the competition are selected from
hundreds of entries submitted to the festival from all over the
world. Six films have been shortlisted by the festival programmers
for the Shine Award, and the winner will be selected by an invited
jury. The jury will select the winning film from the shortlist
during the opening weekend of BIFF 2012, and the award will be
presented on Sunday 21 April.
Tuesday
Another Bullet Dodged
A Day or Two
THE COMPETING FILMS 2013:
Four Hours Barefoot
(Quatro horas descalço) – Portugal/France, directed by Ico Costa
Another Bullet Dodged – USA, directed by Landon Zakheim
Bellum – Denmark, directed by David B. Sørensen
Tuesday – USA, directed by Fantavious Fritz
A Day or Two – Iceland/Denmark, directed by Hlynur Palmason
Out of Frame (Titloi telous) – Greece, directed by Yorgos Zois
See pages 68 and 71 for details
The winning film in the Shine Short Film Competition will be
screened again on Sunday 21 April at 5.30pm
Bellum
Previous Shine winners:
2012 Lars Kornhoff, Germany, Kinderspiel
2011 Philippe Verkinderen, Belgium, A Gentle Push
2010 Hans Montelious, Sweden, The Man with all the Marbles
2009 Dana Neuberg, Israel, Grown Up
2008 Harry Wootliff, UK, Trip
2007 Jon Garaño, Spain, Miramar Street
2006 Igor Pejic, France, l’Armée du bonheur
2006 Avie Luthra, UK, Lucky
2005 No award given
2004 Benjamin Diez, Germany, Druckbolzen
2003 Anna Ehnsiö, Sweden, The Rift
2002 Brian Percival, UK, About a Girl
2001 Emmanuel Jespers, Belgium, Le dernier rêve
2000 Guillaume Lecoquierre, France, Pixie
1999 Jonathan Hacker, UK, The Short Walk
1998 Jophi Ries, Germany, Marco at Work
Shine Jury 2013
Claire Hampton
Franzi Florack
Carol Mei Barker
Michael Wood
Carol Mei Barker
Carol is specialist in Chinese independent cinema, and a PhD
candidate researching in Film Studies at the University of
Bradford. As recipient of the UNESCO ‘City of Film’ PhD award
in 2010, her research is centred on representations of urban
regeneration in contemporary Chinese cinema. Her paper
‘Emancipating the image: the Beijing Olympics, regeneration and
the power of performance’, was recently published in the journal
Architecture: Media, Politics, Society. Carol has also reviewed
films for Time Out London magazine, and contributed to the
Intellect series; ‘World Film Locations’ Beijing edition.
Michael Wood
Michael is a screenwriter and film programmer. After graduating
with a degree in Television & Film Design from Lincoln University
he relocated to Leeds in 2007 where he began organising short
film screenings and filmmaker networking events within the city.
In 2012 he joined community cinema and film society Minicine
as their short film programmer and head of social media. In
September 2012 Minicine received a Best Film Programming
Award from the British Federation of Film Societies. Woody,
as he is known to most, is currently the director and head film
programmer at Minicine.
Howard Dawson
Howard Dawson
Howard's life in film and TV began as a lab technician working
with 16mm and 35mm negative. His expertise led to the position
of Operations Manager at Film Lab North including The Finishing
School, a department of ITV Northern Resources. Clients included
BBC NHU (The Blue Planet), Warp Films (This is England) and
NASA. 25 years and 100 million feet of film later some fool
suggested that Howard becoming an independent film producer
would be the logical next career step. In 2011, low budget indie
film Confession became Howard’s first feature. An experienced
judge of the Kodak Student Commercial Awards, in 2012 Howard
also helped judge the ‘2.8 Days Later’ short film competition
supported by Trinity Leeds and Everyman Cinemas.
Franzi Florack
Franzi is a film literacy PhD student at the University of Bradford
and the head of the International Student Film Organisation.
Since 2008 she has been involved in numerous student film
festivals in the UK. She has also organised student film festivals in
Southampton and Cambridge. Franzi teaches film and media at
school, college and university level, and at festivals. You can find
all information about her primary school media PhD project at
www.filmliteracyphd.co.uk
Claire Hampton
Claire is Curator of Film and Broadcast at the National Media
Museum. Her work includes the development of the Museum’s
Collection and the curation of various permanent and temporary
exhibition projects. Prior to this she was Film Education Officer in
the learning department, and before joining the Museum Claire
worked with Special Collections at the British Film Institute.
She is currently curating an exhibition about the adaptation of
children’s book for film and television. Claire regularly features
on the BBC Radio Leeds recommending the best of the week's
television.
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• 198 comfortable bedrooms
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RETURN
New Shorts
New Shorts
SHINE SHORT FILM COMPETITION
BELLUM
UK PREMIERE
Dir. David B. Sørensen Denmark 2011 19 mins (adv. 15) subtitles
35mm
Carl- Christian Riestra, Veronica Freddin Madnani
Teenage Dennis spends his last 24 hours at home before
deploying to Afghanistan. His final night of freedom is spent
drinking, dancing and driving. The debauchery and violence of his
night deftly foreshadows what’s in store for a young man about
to go to war.
BLUE MONDAY
Dir. Charles Chintzer Lai UK 2012 18 mins (adv. 12A) Digital
Josephine Starte, Harry Kershaw, Helen Cripps, Kathryn Worth,
Sean Hart
3rd of January, supposedly the most depressing day of the
year: Claire, a struggling writer experiencing a quarter-life
crisis, feels shame when her birthday serves as a reminder of
her underachievement. A sharp, witty and original look at midtwenties life.
CHEAP TICKETS
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Konstantinos Iordanou Greece 2012 11 mins (adv. 12A)
subtitles Blu-Ray Documentary
Night train to Athens: passengers travelling from Thessaloniki
to the capital are observed with empathetic detachment in a
documentary snapshot of a country gripped by financial and
social crisis. Assembled by an international group of second-year
students at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey.
New Shorts
A DAY OR TWO (En dag eller to)
Dir. Hlynur Palmason Iceland/Denmark 2012 15 mins (adv. 12A)
Digital
Lukas Schulze, Marie Louise Wille
We see a violent image, then a mother and her son driving
away from the city. They arrive at an old house where they
stay for a day or two. Receiving an honourable mention at The
Reykjavik International Film Festival for its “atmosphere that is
uncomfortable and vulnerable”, this showcases Scandinavian
cinema at its tense best.
DOCTOR BUCKETMAN
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Carlos Carcas Spain 2012 14 mins (adv. U) Digital
Documentary with Doctor Buckeman
A documentary about masterful Spanish street drummer “Doctor
Bucketman”. Being in a tight financial spot has left him without
a drumkit, so he plays on paint buckets, pots and pans. An
incredible drummer (the sequences of him in full flow will vouch
for that), what matters most to him is making an impression on
his audience, and looking out for other street artists.
FOUR HOURS BAREFOOT
(Quatro horas descalço)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Ico Costa Portugal/France 2012 15 mins (adv. 15) Digital
Sérgio Costa
In a village in the north of Portugal, a murder is committed. A
sixteen year old boy leaves the house barefoot to endure thirty
kilometres of harsh mountainous terrain. Inspired by a true story,
director Costa focuses on the aftermath and the boy’s escape,
rather than the murder itself.
FOXES
Dir. Lorcan Finnegan Ireland 2011 16 mins (adv. 15) Digital
Marie Ruane, Tom Vaughan – Lawlor
Winner of Best Short Film at the Irish Film and Television
Awards, Foxes takes us into a haunting world of identical houses
and shrieking foxes, where couple Ellen and James live alone.
Soon Ellen’s hobby of photographing these foxes turns into an
obsession and she flees into the surrounding wilderness.
INERTIA
Dir. Will Herbert UK 2012 7 mins (adv. 12A) Digital
Adam Davies, James Jowlett
On a cold night in a leafy Stockport road, a man embarks
with a trusted companion on a quest to return his girlfriend’s
belongings. A short and simple film that centres on the banter
between the two friends.
KHAANA
Dir. Cary Rajinder Sawhney UK 2012 8 mins (adv. U) Digibeta
Ferena Wazeir, Rez Kempton
A pregnant Muslim woman living in London has an appetite for
life as well as for food.
LAST NIGHT
EUROPEAN PREMIERE
Dir. Bae du ri South Korea 2012 16 mins (adv. PG) subtitles
HDCam
Kim Jayoung, Kim Minha
A middle aged woman spends her days working in a small clothes
shop. However tonight is different and she promises to run away
with a neighbouring man. But on receiving a visit from her son
her perfect plans are shattered as she’s forced to choose between
her son and her lover.
LIFE DOESN’T FRIGHTEN ME
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Stephen Dunn Canada 2012 14 mins (adv. 12A) Digital
Jade Aspros, Gordon Pinsent, Leah McPherson
Thirteen year old Esther must come to terms with becoming a
woman whilst living with her well-meaning Granddad and pet
pug, King Henry. Director Stephen Dunn invents a charming
world reminiscent of Wes Anderson. This also has a great
soundtrack by Sufjan Stevens.
LUISA IS NOT AT HOME (Luisa no está en casa)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Celia Rico Clavellino Spain 2012 19 mins (adv. U) subtitles
Blu-Ray
Asunción Balaguer, Fernando Guillén, María Alfonsa Rosso
Luisa’s washing machine has stopped working. After this initial
misfortune, the mishap will become Luisa’s perfect alibi to slip
away from her slow daily routine. Director Clavellino cleverly
explores the monotonous everyday and the effect when, like an
old washing machine, the mechanism breaks. A light-hearted
film which will have you rooting for its heroine all the way.
A MARRIAGE (Et ekteskap)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Henning Rosenlund Norway 2011 16 mins (15) subtitles
Digital
Ragnhild Gudbrandsen, Ingrid Jørgensen, Jørgen Langhelle, Irina
Potapenko
The arrival of a Russian “mail order bride” causes problems for
a shy bachelor living in a remote coastal town. This beautifully
wry debut by writer-director Rosenlund - whose “day job” is
programme-director of the Tromsø International Film Festival won Abu Dhabi’s $25,000 Black Pearl Award for best international
fiction short.
New Shorts
OUT OF FRAME (Titloi telous)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Yorgos Zois Greece 2012 10 mins (adv. U) Digital
Documentary
In Greece, advertising on exterior billboards has recently been
outlawed. As a result there are hundreds of blank billboards
that don’t show any messages. Nominated for the European
Film Awards short film award in 2012, Out of Frame comments
on social and financial issues of our time in an economical and
poetic way.
THE PERFECTIONISTS
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Tucker Davilia Wood Spain 2012 13 mins (adv. 12A) Digital
Goyo Villalabeitia, Jon Ariño, Michael Dukes
“Art is useless. So is Life. I need to make myself a boat.” - Pedro
Elcano Yarritu (founder of Les Comediens du Lys Rouge). American
wanderer Mike Sobotka, recounts his life-changing experience
with the Basque theatre troupe Les Comediens du Lys Rouge. A
quirky and unique mockery about the world of performance art.
RAIN
Dirs. Sam McKeith, Tom McKeith Australia 2011
11 mins (adv. 12A) Digibeta
Madeleine Levins, Andrew Ryan
Sam and Tom McKeith’s previous film Pig screened at over 20 film
festivals including Berlin. In their newest short film a girl carrying
a second-hand keyboard finds herself on the edge of town with a
storm on the way and no shelter. A heartbreaking film that shows
how vulnerable children can be when captured in difficult, and
very adult, situations.
New Shorts
RAUCH UND SPIEGEL
Dir. Nick Moore Australia 2012 6 mins (adv. U) Digital
Melbourne filmmaker Nick Moore takes a one-minute trapeze
routine and transforms it into a baffling stage trick, a music box
automaton and a mesmerising carousel. This is where sleight-ofhand becomes spectacular and circus becomes cinema.
REINDEER
Dir. Eva Weber UK 2011 4 mins (adv. U) HDCam
Documentary
In Karigasniemi village in Utsjoki, Finland, thousands of reindeer
are brought from the surrounding mountain sides to graze in the
warmer months. Shot in a snowy twilight, British film maker Eva
Weber shows the majesty of these beautiful creatures.
RESISTENTE
UK PREMIERE
Dirs. Renate Costa Perdomo, Salla Sorri Paraguay/Finland 2012
20 mins (adv. U) subtitles Digibeta
Alberto Bonnet
Don Alberto Bonnet is an elderly man who lives in a dilapidated
house and goes about his peaceful daily life. He seems to manage
to be one with time, the plants, the insects, the walls of his own
house. Don Alberto is an unmasked example of a unity between
man and its environment.
RETURN (Hazara)
SPARK
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Shay Levi Israel 2012 19 mins (adv. 15) subtitles Digital
Tom Hagi, Ami Weinberg, Viki Moran, Ester Dentes Sagi, Amit
Mashiach
Dir. Annie Silverstein USA 2012 9 mins (adv. PG) HDCam
Amy Esacove, Elise Gardner, Conrad Gonzales, Varun Reddy
Shay returns home after a psychotic breakdown. Without knowing
what this breakdown was, or what caused it, we see Shay struggle
to fit back into everyday life. A delicate film that takes us into Shay’s
confused mind and shows the impact on his close family. Directed
by student Shay Levi, Return suggests that exciting things are to
come from this young filmmaker.
SHORT OF BREATH (Le souffle court)
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Guillaume Legrand France 2012 20 mins (adv. 15) subtitles
Digital
Julien Lecannellier, Manon Klein
Young Léa and Arnaud help facilitate a child trafficking service
in exchange for living in an abandoned school. When a baby is
entrusted to the couple Léa’s efforts to stay away fails, and a bond
awakens between her and the child.
While a young boy waits inside his father’s truck he’s
unexpectedly forced to deal with a lady friend’s annoying yet
intriguing daughter. Set on a ranch in Bastrop, Texas, Spark uses
the environment to explore children’s worldview.
TUESDAY
EUROPEAN PREMIERE
Dir. Fantavious Fritz USA 2012 14 mins (adv. 12) Blu-ray
Daiva Zalnieriunas Inspired by a hypothetical ‘grown-up’ version of Holden Caulfield’s
little sister Phoebe (from J.D. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye),
Director Fantavious Fritz creates a character that is relatable
and endearing, while embracing the awkward and irresponsible
moments of twentysomething life.
SOLO, PIANO – NYC
Dir. Anthony Sherin USA 2011 5 mins (adv. U) Digital
Documentary
On a cold winter morning a lone piano stands on the pavement in
New York City. All day long passersby stop to play. Filmed over 24
hours, this poetic short documentary chronicles the interactions of
passers-by as the piano awaits its fate.
PARADISE LATER
Short Film Retrospectives
A Bradford Filmmaker C. H. Wood
sixpackfilm
Stan Brakhage
A Bradford Filmmaker - C.H. Wood
Wednesday 17 April
Dir. C.H. Wood UK 1920s – 70s Approx. 90 mins (adv. U) DVD
Yorkshire Film Archive presents:
A Bradford Filmmaker
C.H. Wood
In the autumn of 2010, with the help of Mr Jim Walsh and Mr David
Wood, the Yorkshire Film Archive acquired the
C.H. Wood film collection – several thousand hours of film, and
videotape, shot over eight decades by C.H. Wood company, a family
firm of professional cameraman, producers and businessmen living
and working in Bradford.
For the first time, audiences will be able to enjoy some of the
gems from the collection - films that tell a special story of the
people, places and industries of Yorkshire. Come and see Bradford
City Football Club in the 1940s, Wallace Arnold coach trips to the
Yorkshire Coast, motor sports in the Dales – as well as the changing
landscapes of Bradford over the decades.
Supported by
C.H. Wood’s son David Wood will attend both screenings.
sixpackfilm: a tribute
sixpackfilm:
a tribute
FATA MORGANA
“Although Austria has a handful of notable auteur figures (like
Michael Haneke and Michael Glawogger) the one area in which
film has incontestably flourished and excelled is that of the
avant-garde. From (at least) Peter Kubelka and Kurt Kren, along
the far-out feminism of Valie Export and Mara Mattuschka,
through to the brave young stylists of today, it seems like an
unbroken line of achievement in avant-garde cinema. And,
what’s more, this cinema is globally accessible -- it travels. In the
often wordless wonders of the latest round of Austrian delights
unspooling at whatever film festival or art event I attend on the
globe, I feel, for a delirious moment or three, that cinema has at
last fulfilled its fondest Esperanto dream: it has indeed cracked
the code of a universal language.”
Adrian Martin, I Dream of Austria; Film Unframed: A History of
Austrian Avant-Garde Cinema - Peter Tscherkassky, ed. (2012)
In a world awash with branding and brands, genuine hallmarks
of quality are increasingly elusive. In the world of cinema, the
Austrian distribution-company sixpackfilm is as close as one
can get to a guarantee of excellence. Having shown several
sixpackfilm titles over the past half-decade, BIFF now salutes this
Vienna-based organisation with three special programmes and a
scattering of shorts throughout the rest of our 2013 slate.
Founded in 1991 by Brigitta Burger-Utzer and leading avant-garde
filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky for, in the latter’s own words, “the
sole purpose of mounting a large-scale found footage festival”,
sixpackfilm survived the festival and quickly grew. “An alternating
jury of independent experts selects what they perceive to be the
most convincing current productions chosen from all genres-short narrative, documentary, animation, video and digital art,
avant-garde. The selected works are subsequently submitted to
festivals all around the world.”
Sixpackfilm is also heavily involved in organising exhibition of its
films, including at festivals and at special events, book-publishing,
personal appearances by filmmakers and distribution by video.
If every country had its equivalent of sixpackfilm, the world of
cinema would surely be a much more stimulating environment.
It would, without doubt, be much better organised. But the last
word should go to Henry Rollins...
“My girl friend asks me which one I like better... Six pack!
I hope the answer won’t upset her... Six pack! - Black Flag,
Six Pack” (1981)
FATA MORGANA
UK PREMIERE
Sunday 21 April, 12.30pm, Cubby Broccoli
Dir. Peter Schreiner Austria 2013 140 mins (adv PG) Digital
+ RECONNAISSANCE
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Johann Lurf Austria/USA 2012 5 mins (adv PG) HDCam
The centrepiece of our sixpackfilm tribute is a special programme
featuring the UK premieres of two filmmakers who are both central to
current European avant-garde cinema, and whose work has previously
been showcased here at the Bradford International Film Festival. After
A to A, Endeavour and The Quick Brown Fox Jumps over the Lazy Dog,
Johann Lurf returns to Bradford with his latest short. Totally silent and
enigmatically disconcerting, Reconnaissance is the first fruit of a project
which involved several months of explorations and examinations at
California’s disused Morris Reservoir, a former military torpedo-testing
site now strewn with “architectural oddities.”
Following Bellavista (BIFF 2007) and Totó (BIFF 2010), Peter Schreiner
completes his informal trilogy of epic, black-and-white digital-video
essay-films with the utterly monumental Fata Morgana. Shot in the
Libyan desert and in an abandoned building in Lausitz, Germany, it
features a man (Christian Schmidt), a woman (Giuliana Pachner, from
Bellavista) - and, glimpsed now and again, a guide (Awad Elkish.)
They talk, they fall silent. Winds blow. The sun shines. The camera
runs. What gradually takes shape is nothing less than a painstakingly
concentrated attempt to understand the human condition through the
lens of cinema. A lofty ambition, and one that demands a considerable
leap of faith on the part of the audience: this film is sedate, “difficult”,
challenging, often apparently impenetrable. But anyone who has seen
Schreiner’s previous films will be aware that he is by any standards a
major artist, one that can be trusted to find places that other directors
may not even suspect exist.
RECONNAISSANCE
sixpackfilm: a tribute
sixpackfilm:
a tribute
sixpackfilmcontemporaryclassics
Friday 19 and Sunday 21 April
Dirs. various Austria 2010 - 2012 (adv. 15) 77 min
We asked Brigitta Burger-Utzer to put together a selection of the
most significant and popular films distributed by sixpackfilm in
the current decade, and the resulting eight works are testament
to the seemingly inexhaustible vibrancy of the Austrian avantgarde tradition. Young, risk-taking directors like the boundarypushing Kurdwin Ayub take their place alongside veterans such
as the great Peter Tscherkassky, whose Coming Attractions is the
latest brilliant reconfiguration of found footage from a diehard
devotee of 35mm film.
Vargtimmen - After a Scene by Ingmar Bergman
Dir. Georg Tiller 2010 6 mins HDCam
Paradise Later – Dir. Ascan Breuer
2011 13 mins 35mm
Sommerurlaub (Vaginale VII)
Dir. Kurdwin Ayub 2011 3 mins HDCam
Mouse Palace – Dirs. Paul Horn and Harald Hund
2010 10 mins Digital
notes on film 05: Conference – Dir. Norbert Pfaffenbichler
2011 8 mins 35mm
Machination 84 – Dir. LIA 2010
6 mins Beta SP
Coming Attractions – Dir. Peter Tscherkassky
2010 25 mins 35mm
zounk! – Dir. Billy Roisz 2012
6 mins Digibeta
sixpackfilmclassics
Dirs. various Austria 1960 – 1999 (adv 18) 80 min
A crash-course in the magic of Austrian avant-garde cinema,
specially compiled for BIFF 2013 by sixpackfilm’s co-founder and
managing director Brigitta Burger-Utzer. Here we meet maverick
“personalities such as those of Peter Kubelka, Kurt Kren and Valie
Export, with their longing for radically new and innovative forms
of moving images” (Peter Tscherkassky). These are films which
shock, disturb, dazzle - and devastate.
The Ballad of Maria Lassnig (Maria Lassnig Kanatate)
Dirs. Maria Lassnig & Hubert Sielecki 1992 8 mins 35mm
...Remote...Remote...
Dir. Valie Export 1973 12 mins 16mm
Exposed – Dir. Siegfried A. Fruhauf
2001 9 mins 16mm
Self-Mutilation (10/65 Selbstverstümmelung)
Dir. Kurt Kren 1965 5mins silent 16mm
Ballhead (Kugelkopf)
Dir. Mara Mattuschka 1985 6 mins 16mm
Trees In Autumn (3/60 Bäume im Herbst) Dir. Kurt Kren 1960
5 mins 16mm
Our Trip to Africa (Unsere Afrikareise) – Dir. Peter Kubelka 1966
13 mins 16mm
Ägypten – Dir. Kathrin Resetarits 1997 10 mins 16mm
Chronomops – Dir. Tina Frank 2005 2 mins Beta SP
Outer Space - Peter Tscherkassky 1999 10 mins 35mm
sixpackfilm shorts
to be screened before features
Dirs. various Austria 2010 - 2012
This selection of cutting-edge, (mainly) short shorts includes
the UK premieres of new work by Palme d’Or winners David
Lynch and Apichatpong Weerasethakul: their The 3Rs and
Empire, as was Gustav Deutsch’s Bollywood-tastic Film/Spricht/
Viele/Sprachen were commissioned as “trailers” by the Vienna
International Film Festival.
Addicted – Dir. Reinhold Bidner 2011
3 mins (adv 12) HDV
An der Schoenen Blauen Donau – Dir. Jakub Vrba 2011
1 min (adv 15) Beta SP
A to A – Dir Johann Lurf 2011
5 mins (adv U) 3D Digital
Empire UK PREMIERE- Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul 2010
2 mins (adv PG) 35mm
Etude – Dir. Siegfried A Fruhauf 2011
2 mins (adv PG) Beta SP
Film/Spricht/Viele/Sprachen – Dir. Gustav Deutsch 1995
1 min (adv U) 35mm
Hotel Room – Dir. Bernd Oppl 2011
6 mins (adv PG) HDCam
notes on film 04: Intermezzo – Dir. Norbert Pfaffenbichler 2012
2 mins (adv. PG) Beta SP
Strobogramm – Dir. Flora Watzal 2011
2 mins (adv PG) HDCam
The 3Rs – Dir. David Lynch 2011
1 min (adv 12A) 35mm
Tic Tac – Dir. Josephine Anhalt 2011
3 mins (adv. PG) 35mm
A Tribute to Stan Brakhage
“You can hear every cut
in a Brakhage film”
– Phil Solomon (filmmaker)
A Tribute to
Stan Brakhage
One of the most important American filmmakers of the
twentieth century, Stan Brakhage (1933 – 2003) produced
hundreds of short films that used ocular experience to connect
profoundly with the subconscious. Brakhage broke ground in
demonstrating the ‘continuous present’ of the film experience,
his methods leaching subtly but surely into advertising, and to
some mainstream filmmaking (early Martin Scorsese films, the
credits for David Fincher’s Se7en) This short tribute is in honour of
an extraordinary filmmaker and theorist who achieved greatness
by dedicating his entire working life to the singular potential of
abstract film.
Dog Star Man - An Epic of the avant-garde
Made across a three year period, and shot with an anamorphic
lens he acquired from Disney storyboarder and filmmaker Sidney
Peterson, Dog Star Man is Stan Brakhage’s epic of the avantgarde. Brakhage himself refers to the film in such terms, seeing
it as his own superhuman voyage through the dimensions of
time and space following in the wake of his heroes Homer, Ezra
Pound and James Joyce. The journey that the film takes us on is
a contribution to cinematic forays into the unknown by the likes
of early pioneers such as Georges Méliès and later experimenters
Alejandro Jodorowsky and Godfrey Reggio.
Stan Brakhage was a filmmaker, teacher and writer, responsible
for a body of some of the most astonishing short films ever
made, and an influence on mainstream filmmakers like Martin
Scorsese and Gus van Sant. He was a key player in the American
avant-garde and personally knew many of its major figures (Bruce
Connor, Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas). Brakhage spent his entire life
working outside both the studio film system and the world of
independent features. He worked obsessively on nearly 400 films
between 1952 and 2003 (still working as he lay dying, scratching
onto film stock with his fingernails), employing a great range of
techniques, most famously the painting directly onto film. It is
believed that the toxins from the dyes he used to paint onto his
film stock ultimately killed him.
“How many colors are there in a
field of grass to the crawling baby
unaware of “green”?”
– Stan Brakhage
For Brakhage film was a ‘blessed’ art form. He was searching
through the cinematic medium for a more sophisticated
understanding of what it means to be human and of our
confused place in the cosmos. Brakhage was a deeply spiritual
artist trusting in the sacred power of cinematic alchemy and Dog
Star Man is the film which most tries to capture that ‘blessed’
quality. Constructed in five parts, the film moves through
the highly personal actions of one man and the effect of his
seemingly minimal and inconsequential actions on vast cosmic
energies.
For Brakhage, film more than any other art form offered
the opportunity to see in different ways, especially if visual
perception could be liberated from renaissance theories of
perspective and so-called ‘classical’ methods of movie-making. As
the poet Robert Kelley observed after viewing some of Brakhage’s
films: “I see first of all and think later”. Brakhage defined this
phenomenon as metaphors of vision (also the title of his famous
essay on the subject of filmmaking). In Dog Star Man the point
was not to use the film camera to see as the human eye sees but
rather to see as the human mind ‘sees’ existence; a fragmentary,
surreal, impulsive and confusing experience. That is not to
say that the eye in Brakhage’s films is neutral or passive. On
the contrary, the sensuous nature of human experience often
comes via vision, and Brakhage has understood this, cramming
his films full of incredible real and unreal imagery drawn from
the universal realm. Using at the same time documentary and
fantasy elements, he offers a vision of the world and beyond
which is highly seductive.
As Brakhage was working during the early-mid 1960s Dog
Star Man naturally also has a luminous psychedelic quality.
Each careful constructed image of the film (Brakhage would
sometimes spend an entire day producing a quarter of a second
of film) passes by in a few frames producing an almost strobe
effect. The stunning colours, patterns and superimpositions/
multiple exposures in all parts of the film (perhaps emphasized
by the fact that the film is silent) produce a dazzling, trippy
experience.
Dog Star Man proceeds in the following way:
A Prelude sets out the esoteric premise behind the film.
Fragmentary images gradually form the symbol of the ‘World
Tree’ (the Tree of Life or Cosmic Tree fascinated Brakhage) and
pass by together with blasts of primal elements: fire, water, the
moon. The mythopoetic obsessions of Brakhage are presented
through a collection of powerful symbolic images, not all of which
are instantly recognisable (abstract shapes and colours play an
important part in the aesthetic of the film). The title of the film
(taken from a pulp novel Brakhage found on a magazine rack) of
course invokes Sirius, the brightest star of the night sky, a symbol
utilised widely in futuristic forms of cinema. The famed luminosity
of the star is celebrated in the film - there are frequent shots of
a glowing orb in a dark sky the ever-shifting colours of which are
hypnotic and beautiful. The power and mystery of the stars is
further projected by Brakhage using stock scientific footage of
solar activity (purloined form the university Brakhage worked at
in Colorado). The fact that the ancient Greeks believed that the
appearance of Sirius heralded the hot and dry summer and feared
its effects (namely that it caused plants to wilt, men to weaken
and women to become aroused) is not lost on Brakhage as Dog
Star Man is replete with images of destructive heat, the failure
of individual and universal man (Brakhage as he struggles up the
mountain) and fragments of the naked female form in various
states of ecstasy. The prelude offers a hyper-modern version of
the kinds of myths Brakhage loved be that Cademon or the early
Norse legends or the beat/’meat’ poetry of Michael McLure. In
the prelude Brakhage unleashes his trademark range of optical
tricks: negative footage, fish-eye lenses, time-lapse, slow-motion
and multiple exposures. Throughout it all the moon appears...
mysterious...all-seeing...frightening.
Part One is concerned with the great myth of the climb and
in it we see the protracted ascent by a man (Brakhage) up the
side of a snow-covered mountain. He is accompanied in this
possibly futile endeavour by a dog (naturally). This part of the
film combines some beautiful imagery of the landscape and
documentary type footage of the ordeal with over-painting effects
and decomposition of the film image. Part Two is concerned with
birth and appears as a surrealist home-movie of Brakhage’s first
child. Part Three is described by Brakhage as a “sexual dream”
and includes fragments of pulsing and glistening organs and
a frantic climax of montage. It is in essence a psychedelic sex
film. The final part is a collage of images previously seen, an
epic superimposition of the previous section - childbirth... the
man climbing... lactating nipples... the wild wilderness. The film
ends with an act of extreme violence. The man (Brakhage) hacks
brutally at the tree stump, ‘killing’ the already dead ‘World Tree’.
Like most experimental films, Dog Star Man does not ‘make
sense’ to the viewer in any conventional narrative way. Dog Star
Man is film as an experience, all the better for seeing it on a large
screen (as it was designed to be watched- or felt). The film is to
be read as a form of what Charles Olson calls proprioception: the
sense of self one derives from the perception of one’s own body.
Representations of our bodily cells and senses fill the screen and
are in turn affected by the film.
Dog Star Man, as with so much of Brakhage’s work, would be even
more difficult to make now, despite and in fact because of the
many technical tools at our disposal. The technologies Brakhage
employed, and their shimmeringly beautiful effects, depended on
the physicality of analogue film, a medium now in critical decline.
It is hard too to imagine filmmakers today undertaking the
extreme physical action involved in painting or collaging directly
onto celluloid, warping the material and shooting three or four
objects on the same frame of film. Brakhage’s was tough, tactile
filmmaking; he grafted hard to produce interplays of light, colour
and rhythm that could only be born of photochemical film.
“Every filmmaker is independent at heart, as surely as each
human being is alone, finally, in every activity that has any
personal meaning” - Stan Brakhage
Dr Mark Goodall, January 2013
A Tribute to Stan Brakhage
A Tribute
to Stan
Brakhage
DOG STAR MAN
Saturday 20 April 3pm, Bubbi Broccoli
Dir. Stan Brakhage USA 1961- 1964 75 mins (adv. 15) silent 16mm
Dog Star Man intercuts images from the superhuman scale
(clouds, a solar flare, the moon’s surface), the human scale
(childbirth, an arduous task on a snowy mountain) and the
subhuman scale (blood pumping through arteries, a heart
beating). It is, more than anything else, a world of overwhelming
natural forces that Brakhage presents. The feeling of the film is
unmistakable.
“Brakhage’s most beautiful film. A masterpiece. Perhaps it is
too much a masterpiece for me. It is too great. The mountain of
meaning contained by the film gets in the way of simply ‘looking’
at beautiful things happening. However, it is undeniably one of
the most important films ever made, and is technically brilliant
beyond description.” - Dan Clark, Museum of Art, Carnegie
Institute
MOTHLIGHT
Dir. Stan Brakhage USA 1963 2 mins (adv. U) silent 16mm
“Brakhage made Mothlight without a camera. He just pasted
mothwings and flowers on a clear strip of film and ran it through
the printing machine.” - Jonas Mekas.
THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
Dir. Stan Brakhage USA 1981 2 mins (adv. U) silent 16mm
This film (related to Mothlight) is a collage composed entirely of
mountain zone vegetation. As the title suggests it is an homage
to (but also argument with) Hieronymous Bosch.” - S.B.
NIGHT MUSIC
Dir. Stan Brakhage USA 1986 1 min (adv. U) silent 16mm
“This little film (originally painted on IMAX) attempts to capture
the beauty of sadness, as the eyes have it when closed in
meditation or sorrow. A work of hand-painted ‘moving visual
thinking’, colors and forms coursing, flowing. bursting, as if of fire
and water - of the earth, of the body, of the mind. - S.B.
RAGE NET
“Much of what has been said about the above film could be
repeated here, except than Rage Net arises from meditation upon,
rather than being trapped psychologically by, rage.” - S.B.
BLACK ICE
“‘I lost sight due to a blow on the head from slipping on black
ice (leading to eye surgery, eventually) and now (because of
artificially thinned blood) most steps I take outdoors all winter
are made in frightful awareness of black ice. These ‘meditations’
have finally produced this hand-painted, step-printed film.’” - S.B.
Source for all Brakhage films: LUX
Please note that all of these films will be shown as intended with
no soundtrack or sound accompaniment.
Mothlight, The Garden of Early Delights, Night Music and Rage
Net all feature rapid flicker effects.
See diary for dates and times.
Bradford After Dark
Bradford After Dark
The Rambler
Supported by
THE Boris Karloff
Foundation
Bradford
After Dark III
Bradford After Dark, the festival’s home of the creepy, the bizarre
and the fantastic, returns to BIFF with a handpicked selection
of horrifying delights to keep you awake at night. Each of this
year’s After Dark films (selected by programmer Robert Nevitt)
has something slightly different to offer those who seek out the
darker side of cinema. With treats including several unhealthy
doses of satanic panic, an alphabetised guidebook of doom and
a film best described as a waking nightmare, this year’s selection
embodies the best of contemporary genre cinema: brave,
courageous filmmaking from some of the world’s hottest genre
talents. Join us in the dark for Bradford After Dark III: late, loud
and scary as hell.
THE ABCs OF DEATH
+ THE 3 RS p.79
THE LORDS OF SALEM
Saturday 20 April, 10.45pm, Pictureville
Dir. various USA 2012
129 mins (18) some subtitles Digital
Cast: Various
Dirs: Nacho Vigalondo, Adrian Garcia Bogliano, Ernestro Diaz
Espinoza, Marcel Sarmiento, Angela Bettis, Noboru Iguchi,
Andrew Traucki, Thomas Cappelen Malling, Jorge Michel Grau,
Yudai Yamaguchi, Anders Morgenthaler, Timo Tjahjanto, Ti West,
Banjong Pisanthanakun, Bruno Forzani & Helene Cattet, Simon
Rumley, Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, Srdjan Spasojevic, Jake
West, Lee Hardcastle, Ben Wheatley, Kaare Andrews, Jon Schnepp,
Xavier Gens, Jason Eisener, Yoshihiro Nishimura
Twenty-six directors. Twenty-six ways to die. The recent
renaissance of the horror anthology continues with The ABCs
of Death, a gruesome assault on the senses that leaves no
blood-splattered stone unturned in the exploration of our fragile
mortality. Bringing together an impressive roster of horror
directors from across the globe - all of whom were given a letter
of the alphabet, a $5000 budget and carte blanche to create their
own vision inspired by death in one of its myriad forms – The
ABCs of Death is not only a thrilling rollercoaster ride through
virtually every form of grim demise you could dream of, but
also a unique snapshot of the contemporary horror genre and
the diverse directorial voices that work within it, including Ben
Wheatley (Kill List, Sightseers), Ti West (The Innkeepers), and
Srdjan Spasojevic (director of the infamous A Serbian Film).
Film Source: Monster Pictures UK/Ireland
Saturday 20 April, 8.15pm, Pictureville
Dir. Rob Zombie USA/UK/Canada 2012 101 mins (adv. 18) Digital
Sheri Moon Zombie, Bruce Davison, Jeffrey Daniel Phillips, Ken
Foree, Patricia Quinn, Dee Wallace, Maria Conchita Alonso, Judy
Gleeson,
Meg Foster, Richard Fancy
Hard rock radio DJ Heidi (Sheri Moon Zombie) spends her time
interviewing heavy metal bands and supposed experts on the
supernatural and the occult, maintaining a sceptical stance
along with her co-host (played by Dawn of the Dead’s Ken Foree.)
When the station receives a wooden box containing a vinyl
record credited to “The Lords”, she thinks nothing of playing it
on her show, but the sinister recording sends Heidi into a haze
of nightmares and hallucinations as the spirits of a coven of
ancient witches are awakened to seek their bloody vengeance
on the small town of Salem, Massachusetts. With a cast of bonafide icons of cult cinema (including E.T. and The Howling’s Dee
Wallace and Patricia Quinn – Magenta from The Rocky Horror
Picture Show) and a permeating sense of dread akin to Rosemary’s
Baby, The Lords of Salem represents the startling return of one of
modern horror’s most divisive directors.
Film Source: Momentum Pictures
MEMORY OF THE DEAD
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Valentin Javier Diment Argentina 2012 90 mins (adv.
18) subtitles Digital
Lola
Berthet, Gabriel Goity, Lorena Vega, Rafael Ferro
Following the premature death of her husband Jorge, grieving
widow Alicia gathers their circle of close friends to her home for
the reading of a letter written by the deceased. Unbeknownst to
the group, Alicia has an altogether different motive for bringing
them together: namely, to use each of them as a sacrifice to bring
Jorge back. Unfortunately no one ever said that resurrection
would be easy… As the clock strikes 12 the house becomes
surrounded by fog and the group are faced with ghosts from
their respective pasts intent on exacting bloody revenge. From
its surreal and gruesome opening right through to its blooddrenched climax, this visually arresting and highly ambitious
shocker from Argentina combines the wit and gusto of vintage
Sam Raimi with the stylistic tropes of the Italian giallo to create a
strikingly original piece of cinema.
Film Source: Valentin Javier Diment
+ DYSMORPHIA
+ YELLOW
Dir. Ryan Haysom Germany 2012 26 mins (adv. 18) Digital
Hester
Arden, Stephen M. Gilbert, Rocco Menzel
In this stunning neo-giallo, a reclusive man is on the hunt for a
vicious serial killer in neon-lit Berlin.
Film Source: Ryan Haysom
Dir. Andy Stewart UK 2012 12 mins (adv. 15) Blu-ray
Gordon
Holliday
A dark tale of love, loss and separation, Dysmorphia charts one
man’s quest to “better” himself... Film Source: Andy Stewart
Lee Hardcastle (T is for Toilet) and Simon Rumley (P is for
Pressure) will attend the screening
YELLOW
THE ABCs OF DEATH
THE 3 RS
DYSMORPHIA
MEMORY OF THE DEAD
THE RAMBLER
UK PREMIERE
Dir. Calvin Lee Reeder USA 2013 97 mins (adv. 18) Digital
Dermot Mulroney, Lindsay Pulsipher, Natasha Lyonne, James Cady,
Scott Sharot
After being released from prison, a solitary figure known only
as The Rambler embarks upon a cross-country journey to
reconnect with his estranged brother. As he negotiates his way
along treacherous routes through remote backwater towns he
encounters a procession of strange characters; from an eccentric
inventor who carries a machine he claims can record dreams
onto VHS tape to a mysterious young woman whose journey
overlaps and intersects with his. What begins as a story steeped
in the American pulp tradition soon segues into a nightmarish
travelogue through the darker recesses of the American heartland
as one man attempts to take control of his life while surrounded
by chaos on all sides. With rich cinematography and an immersive
soundtrack, The Rambler is a feverish, hallucinatory road movie
that combines a dreamy, hypnotic tone with sudden bursts of
bloody violence and dark humour to create a midnight movie for
the modern age.
Film Source: Anchor Bay Films
+ THE APOCALYPSE
Dir. Andrew Zuchero USA 2012 6 mins (adv. 18) HDCam
Martin Starr, Ella Rae Peck, Kate Lyn Shiel, Benjamin Pike, Chanel
Michaels, Duke Dlouhy
RESOLUTION
Friday 19 April, 8.15pm, Cubby Broccoli
Dirs. Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead USA 2012 93 mins (adv.
15) Blu-ray
Vinny Curran, Peter Cilella, Bill Oberst Jr., Zahn McClarnon
A trailblazing hit from the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, Resolution
is a genre-bending gem that will restore your faith in American
indie horror. After receiving a video of his best friend Chris strung
out on drugs in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, well-meaning
everyman Michael decides an intervention is needed and
embarks on a trip to help his friend. When Chris refuses to quit,
Michael handcuffs him to a pipe in the cabin and forces him to
go cold turkey. Things begin to go very wrong, however, when it
transpires that Chris never sent him the video in the first place
and a strange catalogue of events begins to unfold. As a bizarre
menagerie of characters intersect with them, Chris and Michael
attempt to decipher who or what is attempting to manipulate
them before it’s too late. A fascinating Lynchian nightmare that
you absolutely should not miss.
Film Source: Rockstone Films/Justin Benson/Aaron Moorhead
+ THE WHITE LADY
Dir. Arnaud Baur Switzerland 2012 15 mins (adv. 15) Digital
Inès Plancher, Nelly Uzan, Michel Cassagne
One night, Nathan gives a ride to a beautiful young hitchhiker
named Marie. During the trip, she tells Nathan he is about to die;
just as a car approaches fast in the opposite direction.
Film Source: Production Company
Four uninspired friends try to come up with a terrific idea for how
to spend their Saturday afternoon.
Film Source: Greencard Pictures
THE RAMBLER
THE APOCALYPSE
RESOLUTION
THE WHITE LADY
The Dodge Brothers
Live/Special Events
and Screenings
Live Events
Live Events
Live Events
AIDAN GOATLEY:
TEN FILMS WITH MY DAD
THE BEST OF BUG:
THE EVOLUTION OF THE MUSIC VIDEO
A warm, funny and personal comedy show fresh from much
praise at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Aidan Goatley and
his dad didn’t talk much when he was growing up, instead they
watched films. Illustrated with plenty of film clips, Aidan tells
of the ten films most important to this father/son relationship,
from Jaws and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, to Avatar via The
Blues Brothers. The show includes the ‘reimagining’ of some
classic scenes by Aidan’s dog Kimble.
Come feast your eyes – and, of course, your ears – as the sell-out
music video show BUG comes to Bradford for its debut show in
the city. Hosted by the brilliant Adam Buxton - one half of award
winning TV and radio comedy duo Adam & Joe, plus writer,
broadcaster and video director - BUG promises a set of aweinspiring music videos, astounding online nuggets and a unique
brand of sit-down comedy.
Sunday 14 April 9pm Cubby Broccoli
live show 60 mins
“This is highly recommended. And features a dog dressed as
Jake from The Blues Brothers. There is nothing in that image not
to love, and there is even less in the show not to love.”
– Will Howard, Fringe Guru
All tickets £8
Thursday 18 April 8.30pm Pictureville
live show 90 mins
BUG began in April 2007 as a series of bi-monthly shows at
London’s BFI Southbank. These celebrations of global creativity in
music video have since become a phenomenon as brilliant as the
visual ideas which the BUG team unearths. This special edition of
the Best of BUG is a selection of some favourite videos from the
recent BFI shows and some delightfully unbalanced commentary
from YouTube commentators, all interspersed with some gems of
Adam’s own making. It features peculiar clips rarely seen on a big
screen, some incredible online discoveries and hilarious insights
into the online community.
All tickets £17
THE DODGE BROTHERS
AND NEIL BRAND ACCOMPANY
THE GHOST THAT NEVER RETURNS
(Privideniye, kotoroye ne vozvrashchayetsya)
Sunday 21 April 5pm Pictureville
Dir. Abram Room Soviet Union 1929 67 mins (adv. U) b/w
silent with live music DVD
Boris Ferdinandov, A. Filipov, Karl Gurniak, E. Jakovski
The Dodge Brothers are back! Following their triumphant
appearances at BIFF 2012, rootin’ tootin’ skiffle band The Dodge
Brothers – featuring bass-slappin’ film critic Mark Kermode and
bolstered by silent movie piano champ Neil Brand - return to
accompany this classic 1929 Soviet train chase movie - a film
you may never have heard of but after seeing it, you will never
forget. The Ghost that Never Returns is set in an unnamed South
American country. Prison inmate Jose Real has been granted one
day of freedom, but the authorities have sent an assassin on his
trail. A chugalug train hoppin’ chase ensues…
“the audience whooped train whistles of appreciation.”
– a BIFF 2012 audience member.
Film source: The Dodge Brothers
See our website for clips of last year’s Dodge Brothers live busk
All tickets £17
Timecode: Hauntology 20 Years On
Timecode: Hauntology 20 Years On
Timecode
TIMECODE: HAUNTOLOGY 20 YEARS ON
Wednesday 17 April, 10am – 4pm, Cubby Broccoli
“The spectres of Marx. Why this plural? Would there be more
than one of them?” (Jacques Derrida)
Hauntology 20 Years On is a one-day symposium organised
to mark 20 years since the publication of Jacques Derrida’s
Spectres of Marx. Hauntology defies easy description but
embodies the idea of the ‘past inside the present’ and the
border between nostalgia and the enigmatic remoteness of
real or constructed pasts. It’s closely connected with certain
forms of cinema. The symposium will be accompanied by
screenings of hauntological films. The keynote speaker will be
cultural theorist Mark Fisher, editor of Capitalist Realism, the
K-Punk blog and author of Ghosts of My Life, a forthcoming
book on hauntology. Papers will explore Cinematic Hauntology,
Sonic Hauntology, Hauntology Online Being and Non-being,
Politics, Ideology and Hauntology and The Philosophy of
Hauntology
Free
DECASIA
SANS SOLEIL
An irreverent elegy to Walt Disney’s animated musical Fantasia,
Bill Morrison’s mesmerizing Decasia is a beautiful dystopian ode
to creation and decay. More pertinent now than upon its release
ten years ago, it is comprised of film images that have become
illegible through the decay of the film material itself. Set to an
original symphonic score written and performed by the Swiss
55-piece Basel Sinfonietta, Decasia is a formally rigorous film that
reflects and embodies the accidental beauty of our struggle for
immortality through film.
A female narrator reads letters telling of memories and
unusual observations, sent to her from a cameraman friend.
Found footage, non-synched sound and sequences filmed in
Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, Paris and San Francisco form
this endlessly intriguing essay film. A documentary freed up
to explore a wealth of ideas, it’s a cult film that’s always worth
exploring again. Directed by the highly influential film essayist
Chris Marker, who died in July last year.
Tuesday 16 April 5.35pm, Pictureville
Dir. Bill Morrison USA 2003 67 mins (U) b/w 35mm
TIMECODE is a seminar series in media. Run by the
Communication Culture and Media research group in the
Bradford Media School, School of Computing Informatics
and Media (SCIM), this regular seminar series explores the
increasingly important relationship between media, technology,
culture and society.
Supported by University of Bradford
The history of film is haunted. The following hauntological films
have been programmed to complement the above symposium.
“Decasia is what has happened already to so many silent movies,
newsreels and the like. The unexpected thing is that its dying, in
this shower of black-and-white psychedelia, is quite beautiful... a
truly original work” – Anita Gates The New York Times
Film source: bfi
+ notes on film 04: Intermezzo
Dir. Norbert Pfaffenbichler 2012 2 mins (adv. PG) Beta SP
see page 79
Wednesday 17 April, 4.30pm, Cubby Broccoli
Dir. Chris Marker France 1983 104 mins (15) subtitles 35mm
Arielle Dombasle
“Imagine getting letters from a friend in Japan, letters full
of images, sounds and ideas. Your friend is an inveterate
globetrotter, and his letters are full of memories of other trips.
Now stop imagining and go and see Sans Soleil.” –Tony Rayns,
Time Out
Film Source: bfi
Rights: Argos Films
+ DREAM OF THE WILD HORSES
(Le songe des chevaux sauvages)
Dir. Denys Colomb Daunant France 1960 11 mins (adv. U) 16mm
The horses in Denys Colomb Daunant’s dream poem are the
white beasts of the marshlands of the Camargue in South West
France. Daunant was haunted by these creatures. His obsession
was first visualized when he wrote the autobiographical script for
Albert Lamorisse’s award-winning 1953 film White Mane. In this
short the beauty of the horses is captured with a variety of film
techniques and by Jacques Lasry’s beautiful electronic score.
Film source: Dr Mark Goodall
Bradford Unesco City of Film Events
Bradford UNESCO City of Film presents:
Saturday Matinees
on the Big Screen
toy Story
Every Saturday 30 March – 4 May
10am Bradford City Park
Bradford is the world’s first UNESCO City of Film. This
permanent title bestows international recognition on
Bradford as a world centre for film because of the city’s rich
film heritage, its inspirational movie locations and its many
celebrations of the moving image through the city’s annual
film festivals. By 2020 Bradford will be the place to enjoy film,
learn through and about film, make film and visit because of
film.
Go back to the ‘80s with a series of free Saturday matinees
on the Big Screen in Bradford City Park. Every Saturday for six
weeks from 30 March. And on 30 March you can get up close
to a replica of the DeLorean car from Back to the Future.
FREE – no booking required
Saturday 30 March, 10am
Screenings will go ahead whatever the weather. There is some
natural seating around the screen but you are welcome to bring
fold up chairs. For the latest details on these events visit
www.bradford-city-of-film.com
twitter: @bfdcityoffilm
(featuring a replica of the DeLorean car from the film!)
Back to the Future USA 1985 111 mins (PG)
Saturday 6 April, 10am USA 2012 94 mins (PG)
Madagascar 3 - Europe’s Most Wanted
BIG SCREEN
GAMING FUN IN CITY PARK
Daily throughout the Festival (12-21 April) 12 - 1pm, City Park
Saturday 27 April, 10am USA 1991 94 mins (U)
Have fun using your whole body to control characters in
computer games on the Big Screen. These simple, free to play
games are designed to work with the motion sensor cameras that
sit behind the Big Screen in City Park (Centenary Square). Take on
the role of a secret agent in the spy genre game, defeat Robotzilla
in the monster movie game or swing through the jungle on vines
in the Tarzan game! You can play on your own or in teams. This
takes playing computer games to a whole new level and pays
homage to some of the great film genres we love at City of Film. Saturday 4 May, 10am USA 1995 81 mins (PG)
Games produced in partnership with the Working Academy
at University of Bradford and Gas Light Games.
Saturday 13 April, 10am USA 2012 75 mins (U)
Tinkerbell and the Secret of the Wings
Saturday 20 April, 10am USA 1992 90 mins (PG)
Aladdin
Beauty and the Beast
Toy Story
BILLY LIAR
50TH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING
Dir. John Schlesinger UK 1963 94 mins (PG) b/w Digital
Tom Courtenay, Julie Christie, Wilfred Pickles, Mona Washbourne
Bradford City of Film marks the 50th anniversary of the classic
Billy Liar, originally filmed in Bradford in 1963 (see p.??), with this
special screening to launch a new edition of the film on DVD
and Blu-Ray. Billy Fisher is an undertaker’s clerk who dreams of
the bright lights. Yet his personal world is in chaos thanks to the
outrageous lies he weaves to brighten up his mundane existence.
At war with his parents and engaged to two girls at the same
time, Billy concocts ever-more grandiose fibs to hide the truth.
In partnership with StudioCanal ten copies of the anniversary
DVD will be given away as part of a prize draw at the screening.
THE LEOPARD
(Il gattopardo)
Thursday 18 April 7pm Bradford 1 Gallery
Dir. Luchino Visconti Italy/France 1963 187 mins (U) Blu-ray
Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon, Paolo Stoppa, Pierre
Clémenti
This Burt Lancaster classic tells the story of The Prince of Salina
(The Leopard), a noble aristocrat of impeccable integrity, who
tries to preserve his family and class amid the tumultuous social
upheavals of 1860’s Sicily. The film will be screened amidst an
exhibition by artist Ken Currie
Curie’s A Gate, A Door and A Window will be exhibited in Bradford
for the first time. These three large paintings form the starting
point of a wider series titled Immortality. Currie’s enigmatic
paintings use a distinct language to convey their own vision of
the world, a vision of power, darkness and immortality.
Artist Pip Dickens will give an introduction to The Leopard,
highlighting the strong influence The Leopard has had on Ken
Currie’s work and the links between his paintings.
INSIDER KNOWLEDGE – FESTIVAL SPECIAL
Yorkshire Film Archive presents:
Opportunities for Women
in Film and Television
A One-Day Seminar
In partnership with
Bradford UNESCO City of Film and Cine Yorkshire
Friday 19 April, 7pm, Bradford Cathedral
Dirs. various UK 1897 – approx 1970 approx 90 mins (adv. U) DVD
Friday 19 April 10am - 4pm Bradford 1 Gallery Studio + screening
of Faith, Love and Whiskey 8.55pm, Cubby Broccoli
This one-day seminar will provide insight into opportunities for
women in film and TV production. Receive advice on getting into
the industry, join in discussions and take the chance to network
with industry professionals including Liz Molyneux (Business
Development Lead, BBC), Caroline Cooper Charles (CEO and
Producer Universal Spirits and Warp Films), Satwant Gill (Head
of Industry and Partnerships, London Indian Film Festival) and
Alison Brodie (chair of The Production Managers Association). The
seminar includes entry to a screening of Faith, Love and Whiskey ,
which is in competition for the European Features award.
£10, £8 concessions
BRADFORD ON FILM
The Yorkshire Film Archive is delighted to host a special evening of
films amidst the dramatic backdrop of Bradford Cathedral. From
early moving pictures of Bradford’s Town Hall Square in 1897,
Bradford City’s 1911 FA Cup triumph and recently discovered local
animated adverts to the 1935 Silver Jubilee celebrations and 1954
royal visit. The screening will also feature 1960s footage reflecting
a city looking to the future, Harold Wilson visiting the University
of Bradford in 1965, Billy Liar (see p.98) filmed on location and a
colourful look at local student life at the time.
All tickets £5.
To book contact Bradford Cathedral box office 01274 777720
Supported by
Tickets £5, £3 in advance.
To book contact 01274 437800 bradford1gallery@bradford.gov.uk
BIFF by Night
The National Media Museum Intermission café is ‘festival central’
during BIFF. This year we have invited Bradford’s own BCB Radio
to programme your evening non-film entertainment. Expect a
rosta of creative DJ sets and live broadcasts that complement the
BIFF film programme.
BIFF by Night
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, INDIAN CINEMA!
Kath Canoville - Global Meltdown World Music & Global Beats
Karl Dallas - Swing Easy Jazz – nice
Albert Freeman - Eclectic Mainline A wide range of new releases
Tareck Ghoneim - Sticks and Stones Classic, contemporary tracks
Griff’s Magic Theatre Playing the coolest alterative underground
sounds from the 60s
DJ Iqbal - Asian Beats Bhangra and Bollywood Remixes
Karol Wyszynski - Eastern Block Balkan Beats
Illustrated talk
Saturday 13 April, tbcpm
approx 60 mins
This one hour talk will offer some context to the Happy Birthday
Indian Cinema! strand as well as insights into the Bollywood
Icons exhibition, which features the posters from the majority
of films featured here. The talk will set the scene for Raja
Harishchandra, widely regarded as the first feature film of
Indian cinema, as well as giving you some on- and off-screen
background to iconic figures like Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Dilip Kumar,
Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan. Using selected song and
dance sequences, Irna Qureshi will explain why the Bollywood
films films in this strand are the ones everyone must watch. Led
by Bollywood expert and curator of Bollywood Icons, Irna Qureshi
Free
Live acts
AIDAN GOATLEY IS FEELING BETTER NOW
Confirmed BCB DJs
Imani Hekima Memorable songs, soulful vocals, tasteful piano,
lyrically conscious.
Darren Dutson Bromley - “The Jazz virtuoso”
www.darrendutsonbromley.com
Jasmine Kennedy jasminekennedy.co.uk
Live lounge – Three-piece acoustic trio playing a range of chilled
out acoustic covers in arrangements you won’t have heard before!
www.liveloungemusic.co.uk
Steph Stephenson - www.stephstephenson.com
Unfinished Drawings - Mixing the lighter moments of dubstep
with the heavier moments of acoustic music, Toby has developed a
brand new sound.
Waiting for Wednesday – A female folk duo, acoustic guitar and
two vocal harmonies.
Stephanie Hladowski Singer and vocal coach http://www.
myspace.com/stephaniehladowski
Sarah Carey - Acoustic singer-songwriter
Check www.bradfordfilmfestival.org.uk for up-to-date
announcements.
(preview) Stand-up comedy
Sunday 14 April, 7pm approx 20 mins
Aidan Goatley, performs 10 Films with My Dad, will preview a
small section of his new show Aidan Goatley is Feeling Better
Now. Find out the benefits of having a nervous breakdown, how
Bon Jovi can be used to control children & how to get revenge on
bullies by working in a library.
Free
BEST OF VIRGIN MEDIA SHORTS
Monday 15 April, 5pm
The Virgin Media Shorts competition gives twelve talented
young filmmakers the chance to show their work in independent
cinemas nationwide for a whole year. Plus, the lucky winner of
the Grand Prize lands £30,000 to make their next film, along
with some expert mentoring from the UK’s leading film body, the
British Film Institute. We will show previously shortlisted shorts.
Free
DR MARK GOODALL
– HAUNTOLOGY DJ SET
Tuesday 16 April, 7pm TBC
Approx 90 mins
A Senior Lecturer at the University of Bradford, Mark is a specialist
in cult and experimental films of the 1960s and 1970s and the
organiser of TIMECODE: Hauntology 20 Years On. Mark also
writes and records with the group Rudolf Rocker, whose music
was used on the BBC2 series The League of Gentlemen. His new
book, Gathering of the Tribe, on the role of the occult through
key albums, is out now published by Headpress. Mark will play a
selection of weird and freaky music, some of which will contain
spectres.
Free
CLOSING WEEKEND PARTY
WITH THE DODGE BROTHERS
Saturday 20 April, tbcpm
BIFF’s favourite skiffle troubadours and all-round dapper-Dans
The Dodge Brothers slick up their quiffs and bring BIFF to an
(almost) close in rootin’ tootin’ style. The Dodges delighted festival
crowds last year with their now-legendary busk in the National
Media Museum foyer. This year they’re back for their unmissable
main show), and fresh from recoding their new album, The Sun
Set at Memphis’ Sun Studio.
Free
All Members @ National Media Museum receive 10% off at the
Intermission Café. To find out more about Membership please
visit the website or call 01274 20 33 44.
at space to meet
The museum café is a gre
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friends, relax between scr
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grab a bite to eat. It stocks
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BIFF by Night
Introduction
Following the success of our 2012 Filmmaker’s Weekend,
Bradford International Film Festival (BIFF) presents another
packed weekend of master-classes, talks and practical workshops
in the world’s first UNESCO City of Film. This year’s event will
offer sessions aimed at anyone working, or wanting to work,
in independent film, as well as sessions targeted specifically
at writers, directors and producers. So, whether you’re taking
tentative steps with your first short film, or developing a feature
film project, our industry experts and guest speakers will offer
you practical tips and valuable insider knowledge.
Delegates will need to apply as a writer, director or producer, with
screenwriters being asked to submit a short script ahead of the
weekend.
Filmmakers’ Weekend passes include entry to the BIFF Shine
Short Film and European Features award screenings. Delegates
can also claim 20% off tickets for any Bradford International Film
Festival screenings (terms and conditions apply).
Keep checking the website for updates to the programme and
announcements on special guest speakers.
Sponsored by the Northern Film School
at Leeds Metropolitan University
The Northern Film School, part of the new School of Film, Music
and Performing Arts at Leeds Metropolitan University, is one of
the UK ‘s longest established and leading schools in practical
filmmaking.
From the outset the School’s provision was set at an advanced
level, and sought to provide a regional – and subsequently
national and international – opportunity for young people to
study film and television production in the North of England.
There was undoubtedly an excitement about redressing this
regional imbalance, and strong ties were established with the
television industry and long-term partnerships here in Yorkshire
and with BBC North. That linkage with industry was key to the
early success and growth of the School and also to its talent pool
nationally and internationally. Today, the Northern Film School
can proudly boast of alumni making major award-winning
contributions to the texture and palette of the film and television
arena across the world.
Alumni include Fabian Wagner, nominated for an Emmy Award
for Outstanding Cinematography for a Mini Series or Movie 2012
for his work on Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia! Fellow alumni
student, director Rajesh Shinde’s short film “Tell My Story” was
short-listed for nomination for an Academy Award last season.
Saturday 20th April
WELCOME TO THE BIFF FILMMAKERS’ WEEKEND
The Northern Film School, Filmmakers’ Weekend sponsors, and
David Wilson, Director of Bradford City of Film, will officially open
the Filmmakers’ Weekend. Our speakers will give an overview
of the opportunities available to individuals and production
companies interested in shooting their films in Bradford.
PRODUCER’S TOOLKIT – PRODUCING MASTERCLASS
In this master-class, producer Ed Barrett of Hook Pictures will
share his experiences in the film and TV industry. Giving an
insider perspective on how to build a career in producing, Ed will
use his recent film ‘The Rise’ previously known as ‘Wasteland’,
being released by Momentum Pictures in July, as a case study in
producing a successful independent film.
SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER – PAUL ANDREW WILLIAMS
We are delighted to have award-winning Writer / Director Paul
Andrew Williams kicking off the Filmmakers’ Weekend. Paul
will discuss his career from short films to successful low budget
features such as London To Brighton and The Cottage, through
to the recently released film Song for Marion starring Gemma
Arterton, Christopher Eccleston and Terence Stamp. Offering an
insight into the British film industry, Paul will share his some of
experiences and give advice to up and coming filmmakers.
DIRECTOR’S TOOLKIT - WORKING WITH ACTORS
Casting the right actors for your film is crucial, but after the casting
process has been completed, the work has only just begun. Often
a daunting part of the process for new directors, this practical
workshop from Director and Casting Director, Suzi Catliff, author
of The Casting Handbook, will look at audition and rehearsal
techniques and working effectively with artistes on set using
professional actors.
RECESSION-PROOF FILMMAKING –
DEVELOPING LOW BUDGET FEATURE PROJECTS
Representatives from some of the major film organisations in the
UK and independent filmmakers, will discuss the challenges of
creating successful feature film productions on a low budget. Our
panelists will look at new and forthcoming initiatives, funding
and other schemes for filmmakers, as well as engaging private
investors, tax break schemes and crowd funding.
SOUNDTRACK – MUSIC IN FILM
Using the right music for your film helps the audience to navigate
the emotional journey of the narrative. Hosted by Ian Sapiro of
the University of Leeds School of Music with a guest industry
composer, this session will look at how producers and directors can
find suitable composers for their projects, define the right sound
and style for the film, and learn about the method of creating
musical compositions for film.
WRITERS’ TOOLKIT – MASTERCLASS
WITH OSCAR WINNING SCREENWRITER SIMON BEAUFOY
A fantastic opportunity for screenwriters to hear from Bradford’s
own Academy Award winner and writer of hit films such as
Slumdog Millionaire, The Full Monty and Salmon Fishing in
the Yemen. Simon will share his industry experiences and his
expertise in creating memorable and engaging scripts for the big
screen.
IT’S ALL ABOUT WHO YOU KNOW… NETWORKING EVENT
Sponsored by Black Sheep Brewery
Making contacts in the film industry isn’t just useful, it’s vital.
This networking event, with a talk from director Jon Rosling of Eye
Films, will provide a chance to get to know your fellow delegates
and Filmmakers’ Weekend speakers in an informal atmosphere
with drinks and nibbles.
Sunday 21st April
ACCESS TO SKILLS
Can’t afford the fees to attend university or Film school, or
lacking practical skills in a particular area? Find out more
about the range of short courses that will be available at The
Northern Film School’s Summer Academy, and hear from
Creative Skillset about the bursaries and schemes they have
available to help you access further film and TV training.
REACHING AN AUDIENCE –
EFFECTIVE DISTRIBUTION STRATEGIES
How do you plan and create an effective strategy to get
your film out to an audience? This roundtable discussion
with distributors and sales agents will look at options
for exhibition and distribution for UK independent films,
including online platforms.
DIRECTOR’S TOOLKIT –
VISUAL LANGUAGE & CONSTRUCTING A SCENE
The session will consider the working relationship between
the Director and the Director of Photography. Delegates
will have the opportunity to construct and shoot a scene
working with professional actors, Director and Director of
Photography. Local kit hire company, Provision, will also
discuss and demonstrate digital workflows with HD cameras
such as the Red and the Alexa.
WRITERS’ TOOLKIT –
DEVELOPING SUCCESSFUL SCREENPLAYS
Over the last 13 years Rocliffe has been delivering writing forums
across the UK in partnership with BAFTA. Using delegates’ own
short scripts, Rocliffe founder, Farah Abushwesha, will look at
how a script works and unpack the development process. Farah
will explore how to create writers’ groups and effective networks,
including using online communities and resources as script
development tools.
PRODUCER’S TOOLKIT MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR BUDGET
This practical workshop for producers will look at creating and
managing a professional feature film budget. Yorkshire based
producers Colin Pons and Rob Speranza will reveal clever, simple
ways to stretch smaller film budgets such as negotiating pre-sales
and cast fees, as well as looking at some common pitfalls - and how
to try and avoid unexpected costs.
YORKSHIRE AFTERNOON TEA WITH…
Sponsored by Yorkshire Tea
This special Sunday afternoon tea session will be an opportunity
to hear from, and put questions to, one of this year’s BIFF festival
guests in a relaxed informal environment with a pot of tea or coffee
and some lovely cakes.
BE INSPIRED - SHINE SHORT FILM &
EUROPEAN FEATURE FILM AWARDS
Join us for the closing night of BIFF and the award ceremonies and
screenings of the Shine Short Film Award and European Feature
Film Award (included in Filmmaker’s Weekend ticket price).
Family Film Fundays: Tom and Jerry
Family Film
Fundays
BIFF’s Family Film Fundays return with more classics from the
golden age of American cartoons. In 2013 we celebrate the early
Hanna-Barbera years of Tom and Jerry. You can also have a go at
making a magic lantern and lightwriting in our family activities.
Special price - £2 per ticket
with free activities after the screenings
TOM and JERRY PROGRAMME 1
Saturday 13 & Sunday 14 April, Pictureville
Dirs. Joseph Barbera, William Hanna, USA 1941–1944
approx. 55 minutes (adv. PG) HDV
Voices: Lillian Randolph, Martha Wentworth, William Hanna
The Midnight Snack (1941)
Fraidy Cat (1942)
Dog Trouble (1942)
The Bowling Alley Cat (1942)
The Lonesome Mouse (1943)
The Yankee Doodle Mouse (1943)
The Bodyguard (1944)
TOM and JERRY PROGRAMME 2
Saturday 20 & Sunday 21 April, Pictureville
Dirs. Joseph Barbera, William Hanna, USA 1945–1947
approx. 54 minutes (adv. PG) HDV
Voices: Lillian Randolph, Billy Bletcher, William Hanna, Buck Woods
Family Film Fundays: Tom and Jerry
Free family activities:
TOM AND JERRY
MAGIC LANTERN SHOW
Thursday 28 March - Sunday 21 April
11.30am; 12.30, 1.30 and 2.30pm
Approx 30 mins
Discover how light and shadow has been used for
hundreds of years to project images to tell stories; from
hand shadow puppets around camp fires to magic
lanterns at the cinema. Then it’s your chance to create
your own Tom and Jerry Magic Lantern slide and
see the Magic Lantern in action!
Please book in advance
Suitable for Families with children ages 7 – 11
TOM AND JERRY LIGHTWRITING
Thursday 28 March - Sunday 21 April
10am – 12pm & 1pm - 4pm
Approx 20 mins
Jump into the action with Tom and Jerry and create your
own fantastic photo where you can write with light!
Photographs will be available to download from flickr
Drop – in
Suitable for families with children ages 7 – 11
Quiet Please! (1945)
Solid Serenade (1946)
Cat Fishin’ (1947)
Part Time Pal (1947)
The Cat Concerto (1947)
Salt Water Tabby (1947)
A Mouse In The House (1947)
black sheep
www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/membership
Oﬃcial Beer of the
Bradford International Film Festival 2013
Follow us on Twitter @blacksheepbeer
www.blacksheepbrewery.co.uk
Spellman Walker are
delighted and extremely
proud to be associated with
The National Media Museum.
In particular, as printers and
sponsors of this catalogue,we
wish the 19th Bradford Film
Festival every success.
Graphica House, Chase Way,
Bradford BD5 8SW
Tel: 01274 722555
email: info@spellman.co.uk
Web: www.spellman.co.uk
?
Thanks Staff and Thanks
Festival
Honorary President
Thanks
PRESS OFFICE
Lord Puttnam of Queensgate CBE
Press Officer Phil Oates
Press Officer Clare Wilford
Steve Abbott
Simon Beaufoy
Alex Cox
David Nicholas Wilkinson
Michael G. Wilson
NMeM PROJECTION TEAM
Patrons
NMeM EXECUTIVE
Director of Museum Jo Quinton-Tulloch
ADVISORY BOARD
Maggie Ellis, Film London
Dr. Mark Goodall, University of Bradford
Kevin Matossian, SilverCrest Entertainment
Julian Richards, Prolific Films
Liz Rymer, Wildlight Pictures Ltd
David Nicholas Wilkinson, Guerilla Films
Andrew Youdell, BFI
GUEST CONSULTANTS
Widescreen Cinema Consultant Bill Lawrence
Bradford After Dark Programmer Robert Nevitt
Filmmakers’ Weekend Consultant Abbe Robinson
Bradford UNESCO City of Film events David Wilson
Technical Consultant Andy Atkinson
Digital Cinema Consultant Darren Briggs
Projection Team Manager Duncan McGregor
Senior Projectionist Tony Cutts
Projectionists: Roger Brown, John Cahill, Dave Chambers, Symon
Culpan, Allan Foster, Raymond Hattrell, Tom Perkins, Andrew Walker,
Jennifer Weston-Beyer.
FESTIVAL STAFF
Directors Tom Vincent and Neil Young
Festival Producer Fozia Bano
Film Manager Kathryn Penny
Short Film Programmer and Film Festivals Assistant Rebecca Hill
Film Sales Executive Jennifer Hall
Director, Bradford Animation Festival Deb Singleton
Widescreen Weekend Programmer Duncan McGregor
Film Transport Coordinator Jennifer Weston-Beyer
Visitor Experience Coordinator Sarah Jarvis
Film Bookings Assistant Gillian Reid
Rural Cinema Project Manager Rachel McWatt
Senior Marketing Executive Sophie Cann
Communications Executive Shona Stevens
Head of Development Rob Shaw
Senior Development Executive Daphne Mayer
Web Producer Pete Edwards
Senior Web Content Coordinator Emma James
Web Designer Patu Tifinger
Web Developer Jaspal Sahota
Community Learning Programmes Coordinator Elaine Richmond
Curator of Broadcast Culture Claire Hampton
Graphic Designer Janet Qureshi
Media Developer Emma Shaw
Thanks
Bradford International Film Festival wishes to gratefully
acknowledge the support of the following individuals and
organisations:
Special Thanks to:
Bradford UNESCO City of Film (David Wilson), Bob Brook
(Otley Courthouse), Bradford Community Broadcasting
(Mary Dowson, Albert Freeman, Daniel Carroll and all DJs),
Sam Buckland (AMPAS), Brigitta Burger-Utzer (sixpackfilm),
, Wendy Cook (Hyde Park Picture House), Jonny Courtney
(Hebden Bridge Picture House), The David Lean Foundation,
Dr. Mark Goodall, Thomas Hauerslev, Aly Hirji and The Dodge
Brothers, Raisa Fomina (InterCinema), Tom March, Mike
McKenny (The Plaza Cinema), Sarah McKenzie (Creative Screen
Associates), Minicine (Michael Wood), Dan Montgomery
& Kazik Radwanski (MDFF), Mike Ott, Vladan Petkovic, Irna
Qureshi, Sarah Read (Impressions Gallery), Peter Schreiner,
David Sin (Independent Cinema Office), David Strohmaier,
Robert Todd, David Nicholas Wilkinson, David Wood, Yorkshire
Film Archive (Graham Relton, Jonty Carr, Andy Burns)
Thanks to:
Carmen Accaputo (Cineteca di Bologna), Jordan Alber, Argos
Films (Anne-France Mournet) Arrow Films (Tom Stewart),
Artificial Eye (Ben Luxford), Arts Alliance Media (Darren Briggs),
Carol Barker, James Benning, Beth Brash (New Zealand Film
Commission), British Film Institute (Andrew Youdell, Fleur
Buckley, Christine Whitehouse), Andrew Brotzman, George
Bucur, Bob Byington, Cellule Expositions (Fanny Popieul),
Celluloid Screams, Lina Chaabane (Nomadis Images), Victor
Correal (Umbilical Productions), Creative England (Jay Arnold
& Sally Folkard), Stephen Dalton, Eros International (Bhavna
Mistry), Daniela Elstner (Doc & Film International), Kevin
Jerome Everson, Filmbank, Franzi Florack, Alessandro Gagliardo
(Malastrada.film), Uta Gildhuis (endorfilm), Marine Goulois
(Les Films du Losange), Helen Grace, Sabine Gruffat, Karen Haney,
John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson, Joanna Hogg, Hannah
Horner (Doc & Film International), Impressions Gallery (Sarah
Read, Anne McNeill), Konstantinos Iordanou, Jar Pictures (Vishesh
Agrawal), Tom Jarmusch, David Jones, Richard Jones (Front
Row Home Entertainment), Mark Kermode, Chow Keung (PAD
International), Gesa Knolle (Arsenal Distribution), Laser Hotline
(Wolfram Hannemann), Wolfgang Lehmann, Johann Lurf, LUX
Distribution (Gil Leung), Mara Pictures (Roopa Saini), Madeleine
Molyneaux (Picture Palace Pictures), National Film Archive of
India (Prashant Pathrabe), Kristina Nikolova, Otley Courthouse
Arts Centre (Bob Brook, Gill Leggat, Alex Leggat), Mike Ott, Olga
Pakina (Tramway Studio), Park Circus (Nick Varley, Elizabeth Gault,
Mark Truesdale), Marc Price, Sandeep Ray, Reliance MediaWorks
Ltd. (Venkatesh Roddam, Naresh Malik), Bérénice Reynaud,
Henning Rosenlund, Dave Strohmaier and Randy Gitsch, Ken Ross
(Dreamland Pictures), Markus Ruff (Arsenal Berlin), Sheila Seacroft,
Toril Simonsen (Norwegian Film Institute), Joanna Solecka (Wajda
Studio), Steve Strauss, StudioCanal (Tommy Delcher, Adam
Hotchkiss, John Scrafton), Gina Telaroli, Joost van Ginkel, Verve
Pictures (Sarah Freeman), Viennale, Withoutabox (Mary Davies),
Yuki You, All Rights Entertainment, Landon Zakheim
All National Media Museum Members.
Particular thanks also to the directors and producers of the
selected films, and to all of the other filmmakers who submitted
films for consideration.
Festival identity: design by Joanna Houghton
Animated trailer by Scott Lockhart
Film selection by: Rebecca Hill, Robert Nevitt, Kathryn Penny, Tom
Vincent and Neil Young.
Catalogue text by: Mark Goodall, Rebecca Hill, Kathryn Penny,
Robert Nevitt, Irna Qureshi, Graham Relton, Tom Vincent, David
Wilson and Neil Young
Venues
Venues
National Media Museum
The National Media Museum contains Pictureville, Cubby
Broccoli and IMAX cinemas, TV Heaven, Intermission Café and
Room at the Top
Bradford, BD1 1NQ
Tel: 0844 856 3797
E-mail: talk@nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
How to get there: The museum is a 5 minute walk from Bradford
Interchange and a 15 minute walk from Bradford Forster Square
Station. If travelling by car follow the brown tourist signs on your
approach to Bradford. The nearest car parks are on Sharpe Street
and Radwell Drive behind the Museum.
Accessibility: All areas are wheelchair accessible with designated
disabled parking outside. Front of house staff are trained in
disability awareness and if you have specific requirements
please call our Access Co-ordinator on 01274 203359
Venues
Impressions Gallery and
Bradford 1 Gallery
Centenary Square, Bradford . BD1 1SD
Tel: 01274 737843
E-mail: Impressions enquiries@impressions-gallery.com
Bradford 1 maggie.pedley@bradford.gov.uk
www.impressions-gallery.com
www.bradfordmuseums.org.uk
How to get there: Impressions Gallery and Bradford 1 Gallery
share a building which is in the heart of Bradford City Centre, and
is a 5 minute walk from the National Media Museum. If travelling
by car, follow directions to city centre and then brown heritage
signs to City Hall.
Accessibility: Wheelchair access to all public areas. Disabled
parking for blue badge holders is available immediately outside
Town Hall.
Bradford Cathedral
1 Stott Hill, Bradford , West Yorkshire. BD1 4EH
Tel: 01274 777720
E-mail: info@bradfordcathedral.org
www.bradfordcathedral.org
How to get there: Situated in the centre of Bradford, Bradford
Cathedral is well signposted and easy to find. The nearest train
station is Bradford Forster Square which is just a short walk away
from the Cathedral.
Accessibility: Most of the Cathedral is accessible by wheelchair
via ramps. There is also a disabled WC.
Bradford City Park
www.centenarysquare.co.uk
How to get there: Bradford City Park is located in Centenary
Square and is a public space in the centre of Bradford. It is
adjacent to the Town Hall and just across the road from The
National Media Museum. There is easy access to the area from
both train stations and a number of car parks are in very close
proximity.
Otley Courthouse
Courthouse Street, Otley, LS21 3AN
Tel: 01943 467466
E-mail: admin@otleycourthouse.org.uk
www.otleycourthouse.org.uk
How to get there: The nearest train station to Otley Courthouse
is Menston. Direct trains to Menston go from Bradford Forster
Square and take approximately 20 minutes. The 967 bus goes
from Menston Train Station to Otley every half an hour.
Venues
Hyde Park Picture House
73 Brudenell Road, Leeds. LS6 1JD
Tel: 0113 275 2045
E-mail: info@hydeparkpicturehouse.co.uk
www.hydeparkpicturehouse.co.uk
How to get there: Located in the suburb of Headingly, Hyde
Park Picture House is 2 miles from Leeds City Centre. From the
city centre, the 56 bus stops right outside the cinema entrance.
Alternatively Burley Park Rail Station is a 3 minute walk from the
cinema. Direct trains to Leeds city centre leave from Bradford
Interchange.
Accessibility: Wheelchair access is available via Brudenell Road,
and there are four wheelchair spaces in the cinema. Guide dogs
are welcome with water bowls available upon request.
Bradford City Park
Otley Courthouse
The Plaza Cinema
My Impact Centre, Cross Lane, Bradford. BD7 3JT
Tel: 08458 052194 / 07886 864951
E-mail: film@joshuaproject.org.uk
joshuaproject.org.uk/film
How to get there: Cross Lane is located just off Great Horton
Road, over the road from Great Horton Library. Situated 1.5 miles
out of Bradford centre, it is easily accessible on the following
buses, all of which depart from the centre of Bradford and go up
Great Horton Road (you can get off just after the library) - 576,
610, 611, 612, 613 and 614
The Plaza Cinema
Hyde Park Picture House
Hebden Bridge Picture House
Accessibility: The building allows easy access for wheelchair
users and space is provided in the seating area. Guide dogs are
welcome
Hebden Bridge Picture House
New Road, Hebden Bridge. HX7 8AD
Tel: 01422 842807
E-mail:picturehouse@calderdale.gov.uk
www.calderdale.gov.uk/leisure/entertainment/picture-house
Bradford Cathedral
Impressions Gallery and
Bradford 1 Gallery
How to get there: Located in the small town of Hebden Bridge,
The Picture House is 30-40 minutes from Bradford city centre.
There are direct trains from Bradford Interchange to Hebden
Bridge, and the Picture House is a 10 minute walk from the
train station.
Accessibility: There is wheelchair access on the right hand side
of the building, press key unit to alert staff for assistance. Up to
5 wheelchair spaces.
Accessibility: The auditorium, café and toilets are all wheelchair
accessible.
Salts Mill, Bradford
Bradford
where to eat and stay
How to get here
By Plane
By Car
There are two major airports which are close to Bradford.
Bradford district is served well by motorways and main trunk
roads. Bradford’s own motorway the M606 brings you within 1.5
miles of the city centre and links with the M1, A1 and M6 via the
M62. There are many car parks within walking distance to the
National Media Museum.
Leeds Bradford International Airport
Tel: 0871 288 2288
E-mail: customerservices@ibia.co.uk
Website: www.leedsbradfordairport.co.uk
Leeds Bradford Airport is between Leeds, Bradford and Harrogate
and is easily accessible by all major public transport routes. There
are direct Airport shuttle buses which travel to and from Bradford
Interchange every day and leave every hour. For information on
airport bus services contact Metroline: 0113 245 7676
By Train
There are two train stations in Bradford City Centre.
Bradford Interchange is a 5 minute walk from the National
Media Museum and accommodates rail, train and taxi services. It
has direct trains to Leeds Rail Station which links to most major
cities and airports.
Bradford Forster Square is a 15 minute walk from the National
Media Museum and accommodates rail, train and taxi services. It
has direct trains to Leeds Rail Station which links to most major
cities and airports. Bradford Forster Square is useful for accessing
the surrounding villages of Bradford. For further information
on travel services at Bradford Interchange and Bradford Forster
Square, contact Metroline on: 0113 245 7676
Manchester International Airport
Tel: 08712 710 711
Website:www.manchesterairport.co.uk
Manchester is accessible by all major public transport routes.
Trains go to and from Bradford Interchange to the airport (change
at Leeds Train Station). The Skylink moving walkway links the
airport station to all terminals. For further information on train
services to Manchester International Airport, contact National
Rail on: 08457 48 49 50
Jurys Inn
2 Thornton Road, Bradford. BD1 2DH
Tel: 01274 848500 jurysinnbradford@jurysinns.com
Website: www.bradfordhotels.jurysinns.com
Jurys Inn is our official festival hotel and is a 5 minute walk from
the National Media Museum in Bradford city centre. From Jurys
Inn there is easy access to all transport routes.
BIFF Offer During the festival Jurys Inn are offering a special rate
to visitors starting at just £49 per room (not including breakfast).
Book via the Jurys Inn website using the promotional code FEST
or by calling them on 01274 848500.
Where to eat
Omar Khan’s
30 Little Horton Lane, Bradford. BD5 0AL
Tel: 01274 390777 E-mail: info@omarkhans.co.uk
www.omarkhans.co.uk
Omar Khan provides quality Asian cuisine with emphasis
on nostalgic tradition, authentic culture, and the creative
combination of culturally enriched ingredients. Thoughtfully
created dishes using home ground spices and fresh ingredients
create a vast range of choices for your pure enjoyment.
BIFF Offer Dine at Omar’s and receive a 10% discount off your
total food bill (excluding drinks) on production of a festival ticket
or pass.
National Media Museum Intermission Café and bar
Bradford. BD1 1NQ
Tel: 0844 8563797
Website: www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
The menu at the Intermission café includes sandwiches, soup,
a salad bar, hot meals and vegetarian options, plus a mouthwatering selection of homemade cakes, all freshly prepared onsite by our dedicated team of chefs.
The Russian Restaurant
15 Manor Row, Bradford. BD1 4PB
Tel: 01274 733121 E-mail: reservations@rurest.co.uk
Website: www.rurest.co.uk
La Romantica Italian Restaurant
48-50 Great Horton Road, Bradford. BD7 1AL
Tel: 01274 304040 E-mail: info@laromanticaonline.co.uk
Website: www.laromanticaonline.com
Dragon Thai
20 Aldermanbury, Centenary Square, Bradford. BD1 1SD
Tel: 01274 723888 E-mail: info@dragonthai.co.uk
Website: www.dragonthai.co.uk
Forster’s Bistro & Deli
9 Aldermanbury, Centenary Square, Bradford BD1 1SD
Tel: 01274 739788 E-mail: bookings@forster.ac.uk
Website: www.forster.ac.uk
Image courtesy of
www.westyorkshireimages.co.uk
Cinerama Holiday
Friday 26 April
Sunday 28 April
10:00 The Longest Day (169mins + intermission)
2:30 The Great Escape (172mins)
5:35 Widescreen Reception (100mins) Kodak Gallery
7:30 The Sound of Music (174mins + intermission)
10:00 Cineramacana (120mins)
1:30 The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm
(135mins + intermission)
4:45 How to Marry a Millionaire (95mins)
7:45 The Guns of Navarone (158mins)
Saturday 27 April
10:00 Remnants (36mins)
11:00 Seven Wonders Demo (45mins) 1:30 Cinerama Holiday (129mins + intermission)
5:00 In the Picture + Presentation (90mins)
7:45 Hello Dolly (129mins + intermission)
Monday 29 April
10:00 Gettysburg Part One (136mins)
1:30 Gettysburg Part Two (118mins)
Widescreen Weekend
Friday 26 - Sunday 28 April 2013
- see separate brochure for details
Index of Films and Events
170 Hz
1913 Massacre
The 3Rs
A to A
The ABCs of Death
Addicted
Agypten
Aidan Goatley: 10 Films With My Dad
Aidan Goatley is Feeling Better Now (preview)
Alfredo
Aladdin
The Apocalypse
An Anthropological Television Myth
An der schoenen Blauen Donau
Another Bullet Dodge
Babylon
Back to the Future
The Ballard of Maria Lassnig
Ballhead
Beauty and the Beast Bellum
The Best of Bug; The evolution of the Music Video
Best of Virgin Media Shorts
Big Screen Gaming Fun in City Park
Billy Liar
Black Ice
Blue Monday
A Bradford Filmmaker - CH Wood
Bradford on Film
Cargo 200
Century
Cheap Tickets
Chronomops
The Chess Players
Citadel
Closing Weekend Party with The Dodge Brothers
Coming Attractions Cursed be the Phosphate
The Dancing Soul of the Walking People
Dangerous Light
A Day or Two
Decasia
44
29
79
79
86
79
79
92
100
33
97
88
44
79
31
45
97
79
79
97
68
93
100
97
98
83
68
74
99
36
31
68
79
18
44
101
78
45
27
28
68
95
Doctor Bucketman
Dodge Brothers & Neil Brand + The Ghost...
Dog Star Man
Dr. Mark Goodall – Hauntology DJ Set
Dragonflies with Birds and Snake
A Dream’s Merchant
Dysmorphia
Dream of the Wild Horses
East Hastings Pharmacy
Empire
Etude
Exposed
Family Film Funday: Tom and Jerry programme 1
Family Film Funday: Tom and Jerry programme 2
Fata Morgana
Film/Spricht/Viele/Sprachen
Four Hours Barefoot
Foxes
The Garden of Earthly Delights
Gone Wild
Habitat
A Hijacking
Happy Birthday, Indian Cinema! Illustrated Talk
Hotel Rooms
I Have Always Been a Dreamer
I.D.
Inertia
Insider Knowledge - Festival Special
Kalpana
Khaana
Kill Me
La Playa DC
The Last Dogs of Winter Last Night
The Leopard
Life Doesn’t Frighten Me
Little World
The Livelong Day
The Look of Love
20
68
93
82
100
45
47
87
95
56
79
79
79
47
108
108
77
102-107
79
68
69
83
47
28
57
100
79
49
21
69
99
16
69
49
49
50
69
98
69
50
33
8
The Lords of Salem
Love Is All You Need
The Love Songs of Tiedan
Luisa Is Not Home
Machination 84 Madagascar 3 – Europe’s Most Wanted Magpie
A Marriage
Master Plan
Me and You
Me Too
Memory of the Dead
Mother India
Mothlight
Mouse Palace Much Ado About Nothing
Mughal-E-Azam
Mumbai’s King
My House Without Me
Night Music
A Night Too Young
Nor’Easter
notes on film 05: Conference notes on film 04: Intermezzo
One Way Boogie Woogie Our Trip to Africa
Outerspace
Out of Frame
Paradise Later Pearblossom Hwy
The Perfectionists
Pincus
Rage Net
Rain
Raja Harishchandra
The Rambler
Rauch und Spiegel
Reconnaissance
Reindeer
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Remote... Remote
Resistente
87
50
52
69
78
97
52
69
28
52
37
87
17
83
78
53
18
21
57
83
53
29
78
79
31
79
79
70
78
31
70
33
83
70
16
88
70
77
70
10
79
70
Resolution
Return
Sans Soleil
Self Mutilation
Shine and European Features
Awards presentation and screening
Short of Breath
Silsila
sixpackfilmclassics
sixpackfilmcontemporaryclassics
Solo Piano - NYC
Somebody Up There Likes Me
Something in the Air
Sometimes City
Sommerurlaub (Vaginale VII)
Spark
Strobogramm
A Stoker
The Sound of Old Rooms
This Ain’t California
A Throw of Dice
Tic Tac
TIMECODE: Hauntology 20 Years On
TinkerBell and the Secret of the Wings
To Kill a Beaver
Tokyo Waka
Toy Story Tower
Traveling Light
Trees in Autumn
Tuesday
Under the Weight of Clouds
Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
Vargtimmen - After a Scene by Ingmar Bergman
Vegetarian Cannibal
What Happened to this City?
The White Lady
Widescreen Weekend
Yellow
zounk!
89
71
95
79
40
62
71
19
79
78
71
53
55
33
78
71
79
37
20
55
16
79
93
97
55
56
97
56
29
79
71
57
58
78 58
19
89
122
87
78
Diary
Diary
19th Bradford
International Film Festival
11 - 21 April 2013 in partnership with
time
event
venue
page no.
Thursday 11 April
19.30 The Look of Love Pictureville
8
Friday 12 April
12.00 Cursed be the Phosphate + Strobogramm
Pictureville
13.55 Mumbai’s King + Rain
Pictureville
15.55 To Kill a Beaver + Four Hours Barefoot
Pictureville
15.55 Sometimes City + Alfredo
Cubby Broccoli
18.25 A Throw of Dice + Raja Harishchandra
Pictureville
18.25 Somebody Up There Likes Me + A Marriage
Cubby Broccoli
18:25 The Dancing Soul of the Walking People + Rauch und Spiegel IMAX
19:00 Babylon + Notes On Film 04: Intermezzo
Impressions Gallery
20:15 Memory of the Dead + Dysmorphia
IMAX
20.25 Me and You + Film/Spricht... + An der schoenen Blauen Donau
Pictureville
45
21
55
33
16
53
27
45
87
52
The Look of Love
BIFF diary 2013
Saturday 13 April
10:00 Shine Award shorts
Pictureville
11.20 Master Plan + Habitat + Dangerous Light
Cubby Broccoli
12.00 Family Film Funday: Tom and Jerry programme 1
Pictureville
14.00 Dragonflies with Birds and Snake + Addicted
Impressions Gallery
13.05 One Way Boogie Woogie + Century
Cubby Broccoli
13.15 The Last Dogs of Winter + Foxes
Pictureville
15.30 A Night Too Young + Film/Spricht/Viele/Sprachen + Le Souffle Court Pictureville
15.30 Little World + Mothlight
Cubby Broccoli
16.00 Happy Birthday, Indian Cinema! Illustrated Talk
Museum Café
17.20 Kalpana + Rauch und Spiegel
Cubby Broccoli
17.25 Love is All You Need + A to A
Pictureville
18:15 Kill Me + Last Night
IMAX
20.25 Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning + Mothlight + Empire
Cubby Broccoli
20:30 A Hijacking + Hotel Room
IMAX
Sunday 14 April
Monday 15 April
62
28
108
45
31
50
53
50
100
16
50
49
58
57
10.35 sixpackfilmclassics
Cubby Broccoli
79
10.50 Billy Liar + Khaana
Pictureville
98
Pictureville
108
12.25 An Anthropological Television Myth + Citadel
Cubby Broccoli
44
14.30 Mother India + Etude
Pictureville
17
15.15 I Have Always Been a Dreamer + Mothlight + Out of Frame
Cubby Broccoli
49
15.30 Something in the Air + Night Music
Hyde Park Picture House 55
18.15 La Playa DC + A Day or Two
Pictureville
49
18.15 Pincus + The Livelong Day
Cubby Broccoli
33
18:25 I.D. + Luisa Is Not Home
IMAX
21
19.45 Love is All You Need + Film/Spricht/Viele/Sprachen
Hebden Bridge 50
20.30 Much Ado About Nothing + Film/Spricht... + The Perfectionists
Pictureville
53
20:45 The Love Songs of Tiedan + The 3 Rs
IMAX
52
21.00 Aidan Goatley: Ten films with my Dad
Cubby Broccoli
92
13.30 The Last Dogs of Winter + Foxes
Pictureville
50
14.10 Under the Weight of Clouds + My House Without Me
Cubby Broccoli
57
14:35 Vegetarian Cannibal + Tuesday
IMAX
58
16.00 Cargo 200 + Bellum
Pictureville
36
16.00 Gone Wild + Spark
Cubby Broccoli
47
16:45 Tower + East Hastings Pharmacy
IMAX
56
17.00 The Best of Virgin Media shorts
Museum Café 100
18.10 One Way Boogie Woogie + Century
Cubby Broccoli 31
19.15 Mughal-E-Azam
Pictureville
18
19:15 A Dream’s Merchant IMAX
47
19.45 Little World
Otley Courthouse
50
20:15 Nor’Easter + Rage Net + Return
Cubby Broccoli
29
Tuesday 16 April
13.35 Master Plan + Dangerous Light + Habitat Cubby Broccoli
13.40 Tokyo Waka + Reindeer
Pictureville
15.20 Kill Me + Last Night
Pictureville
15.20 The Sound of Old Rooms + Night Music + Resistente
Cubby Broccoli
15:45 I Have Always Been a Dreamer + Out of Frame IMAX
17.35 Decasia + Notes On Film 04: Intermezzo
Pictureville
17.35 Traveling Light + 1913 Massacre
Cubby Broccoli
17:45 Something in the Air + Hotel Room
IMAX
18.00 Me and You + An der schoenen Blauen Donau
Hyde Park 19.00 Dr Mark Goodall - Hauntology DJ Set
Museum Café 20.15 The Chess Players + The Garden of Earthly Delights
Cubby Broccoli
20.30 La Playa DC + Film/Spricht/Viele/Sprachen + A Day or Two
Pictureville
20:45 The Love Songs of Tiedan + The 3 Rs
IMAX
28
56
49
20
49
95
29
55
52
100
18
49
52
Diary
BIFF diary 2013
Diary
Friday 19 April
Wednesday 17 April
10:00
11.55
13.55
15.55
16.30
18.20
18:20
18.45
19.00 20.20
20.45
20:45
TIMECODE: Hauntology 20 Years On
Somebody Up There Likes Me + A Marriage
Faith, Love and Whiskey + Life Doesn’t Frighten Me Sans Soleil + Dream of Wild Horses
A Stoker + Empire
The Sound of Old Rooms + Resistente
Silsila
To Kill a Beaver + Film/Spricht/Viele/Sprachen + Four Hours Barefoot
Pearblossom Hwy + Another Bullet Dodged
Under the Weight of Clouds + My House Without Me
Cubby Broccoli
Pictureville
Pictureville
Pictureville
Cubby Broccoli
Pictureville
IMAX
Cubby Broccoli
The Plaza Cinema
Pictureville
Cubby Broccoli
IMAX
93
74
53
47
95
37
20
74
19
55
31
57
10.30 Senior Citizens: Billy Liar + Khaana
Pictureville
10:55 Little World + Mothlight
Cubby Broccoli
12.55 Nor’Easter + Rage Net + Return
Cubby Broccoli
13.10 Magpie + Doctor Bucketman
Pictureville
15.10 Traveling Light + 1913 Massacre
Pictureville
15.10 A Dream’s Merchant Cubby Broccoli
18.00 Me Too + Inertia
Pictureville
18:00 Gone Wild + Spark
IMAX
18.30 sixpackfilmclassics
Cubby Broccoli
19.00 The Leopard
Bradford 1 Gallery
19.45 Much Ado About Nothing + The Perfectionists
Hebden Bridge 20:20 170 Hz + Blue Monday IMAX
20.30 The Best of BUG
Pictureville
20.30 What Happened to This City? + Cheap Tickets + Black Ice
Cubby Broccoli
98
50
29
52
29
47
37
47
79
98
53
44
93
19
Thursday 18 April
10.00 Insider Knowledge - Festival Special
Bradford 1 Gallery
12.00 Cursed be the Phosphate + Strobogramm
Pictureville
12.00 sixpackfilmcontemporaryclassics
Cubby Broccoli
13.45 An Anthropological Television Myth + Citadel
Cubby Broccoli
14.15 Dragonflies with Birds and Snake + Etude + Addicted
Pictureville
15.50 170 Hz + Blue Monday
Pictureville
15.50 The Dancing Soul of the Walking People + Solo Piano - NYC
Cubby Broccoli
15:50 Me Too + Inertia
IMAX
18.0 5 Vegetarian Cannibal + Tuesday
Pictureville
18.05 Tokyo Waka + Black Ice + Reindeer
Cubby Broccoli
18:05 Mumbai’s King + Rain
IMAX
19.00 Bradford on film
Bradford Cathedral
19.00 Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge
The Plaza Cinema
20.15 Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning + Empire
Pictureville
20.15 Resolution + The White Lady
Cubby Broccoli
20.55 Faith, Love and Whiskey + Life Doesn’t Frighten Me
IMAX
22.45 The Rambler + Film/Spricht/Viele/Sprachen + The Apocalypse
Pictureville
22.45 Memory of the Dead + The Garden of Earthly Delights + Dysmorphia Cubby Broccoli
99
45
78
44
45
44
27
37
58
56
21
99
20
58
89
47
88
87
Diary
BIFF diary 2013
Saturday 20 April
10.10 Babylon + Notes On Film 04: Intermezzo
Pictureville
45
Pictureville
108
13.00 Magpie + Doctor Bucketman
Cubby Broccoli
52
13.55 Sometimes City + Alfredo
Pictureville
33
15.00 Dog Star Man
Cubby Broccoli
82
15.55 Cargo 200 + Bellum
Pictureville
36
18.15 A Night Too Young + Film/Spricht/Viele/Sprachen + Short of Breath Pictureville
53
18:15 This Ain’t California + Tic Tac
Hyde Park 55
20.15 The Lords of Salem + Yellow
Pictureville
87
20.30 Pincus + The Livelong Day
Cubby Broccoli
33
20:45 A Stoker + Empire
IMAX
37
21.00 Closing Weekend Party with The Dodge Brothers
Museum Café
101
22.45 The ABCs of Death + The 3 Rs
Pictureville
86
22.45 The Rambler + The Apocalypse
Cubby Broccoli
88
Sunday 21 April
10.10 I.D. + Luisa Is Not Home
Pictureville
Pictureville
12.30 Fata Morgana + Reconnaissance
Cubby Broccoli
15.00 2013 Shine short Film Competition
Otley Couthouse
15.30 This Ain’t California + Tic Tac
Hyde Park 15.30 sixpackfilmcontemporaryclassics
Cubby Broccoli
17.00 The Dodge Brothers & Neil Brand + The Ghost that Never Returns
Pictureville
17.30 Shine and European Features Awards presentation and screening
Cubby Broccoli
18:00 Pearblossom Hwy + Another Bullet Dodged IMAX
19.45 A Hijacking Hebden Bridge 20.10 Tower + East Hastings Pharmacy
Cubby Broccoli
20.00 The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Pictureville
21
108
77
62
55
78
93
40
31
57
56
10
All programme information is correct at the time of going to print.
Please check www.bradfordfilmfestival.org.uk for updates

the BIFF 2013 brochure

Transcription

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