BRADFORD INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2010 : Neil Young’s programming selections
The following films have been selected by Neil Young* for the 16th Bradford International Film Festival, which runs from 18th – 28th March 2010 at several venues in and around Bradford, including the National Media Museum.
More details are available here, and the full schedule will be online later this week.
(* With invaluable input from Anna Draniewicz and Sheila Seacroft.)
bold = Uncharted States of America
Animal Heart
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
The Blacks
Bonecrusher
China Town
Chip On My Shoulder : The Cautionary Tale of Slapshot
Constantin and Elena
Deep in the Valley
Donkey
Elkland
Fish Eyes
Fluke
45365
Freezer Fright
Green Waters
Home From Home
It was great, but I was ready to come home
The Last Action
Lowlands
The Man Who Would Be Polka King
The Mosque in Morgantown
New Muslim Cool
1
One Fast Move Or I'm Gone : Jack Kerouac's Big Sur
Park Shanghai
Perpetuum Mobile
Presumed Guilty
Prima Primavera
Redland
The Search
Splinters
Three Hams In A Can
Toto
Vortex
White On Rice
The Woman with the 5 Elephants
SHORTS PROGRAMME – 1
SHORTS PROGRAMME – 2
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Brochure entries
UK PREMIERE
ANIMAL HEART (Coeur animal)
Dir. Séverine Cornamusaz Switzerland 2009 95 mins (adv 15) Digital (HD-CAM)
Olivier Rabourdin, Camille Japy, Antonio Buíl, Franziska Kahl, Pierre-Louis Normand
A rural drama of high passions in the Swiss Alps, Animal Heart may strike a resonant chord with audiences who recently enjoyed Brit Peter Strickland's much-admired Transylvania-set Katalin Varga. A quietly bold and ravishingly beautiful feature debut by director/co-writer Séverine Cornamusaz, based on a novel by Noelle Revaz, it's the story of introverted farmer Paul (Rabourdin), a laconic misanthrope who's quite content to keep his distance from humanity. Indeed, as noted by Variety magazine's critic Dennis Harvey, "he treats his livestock considerably better than he does long-suffering wife Rosine (Japy) or new farmhand Eusebio (Buil), an easygoing Spaniard. When Rosine complains of belly pain, Paul assumes she's pregnant at last; it's Eusebio who realises she might instead be seriously ill." Turbulent complications quickly ensue in this "solidly crafted and acted picture… topped by excellent widescreen lensing of spectacular Alpine scenery," which won the much-coveted International Critics' prize at the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival. "Exceptional actors tell a seemingly archaic story so convincingly that it touches the audience's heart," noted the jury.
UK PREMIERE
THE BLACKS (Crnci)
Dirs. Goran Devic & Zvonimir Juric Croatia 2009 78 mins (adv 18) 35mm
Ivo Gregurevic, Emir Hadzihafizbegovic, Rakan Rushaidat, Franjo Dijak, Niksa Butijer
We're truly delighted and honoured to host the UK premiere of one the most acclaimed movies to appear on the film-festival circuit over the past year. Winner of three awards – including Best Director, Best Sound and Best Supporting Actor (for Niksa Butijer) – at Croatia's national film-festival in Pula, this inescapably nightmarish vision of war concentrates on a dysfunctional army unit (whose codename provides the picture's title) during the 1990s Balkan conflict. It was crowned Best Film at the ever-competitive Ljubljana International Film Festival and was selected for Film Comment magazine's latest survey of must-see gems currently doing the festival rounds – a list which also includes BIFF 2010 selections Lowlands and Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo – by leading German critic Olaf Möller: "A Croatian paramilitary death squad self-destructs: soldiers out for revenge suddenly start shooting at each other; things fall apart. A No Exit experience directed with rigour and precision down to the smallest detail, character movement, gesture, even the pronunciation of every word–it's perfection pure and simple. Tough, unflinching and fearless."
EUROPEAN & INTERNATIONAL THEATRICAL PREMIERE
CHIP ON MY SHOULDER : THE CAUTIONARY TALE OF SLAPSHOT
Dirs. Ian McFarland & Anthony Moreschi USA 2009 90 mins (adv 18) Digital (DV-CAM)
Documentary narrated by Dave Smalley
Named after – and very much inspired by – George Roy Hill's crunchingly violent ice-hockey comedy from 1977, four-piece Slapshot roared fully-formed out of Boston, Massachusetts in 1986 with their debut album Back on the Map. Punk rock, specifically the ultra-fast US variant known as hardcore, would never be quite the same again. Chip on My Shoulder is the compulsively watchable story of a band, a genre, and a juncture in musical-cultural history which has long deserved exactly this kind of intelligent attention. Slapshot's raucously confrontational live shows – built squarely around the take-no-prisoners persona of their snarlingly misanthropic tough-guy vocalist Jack "Choke" Kelly – quickly attracted controversy and legions of ardent fans, including quite a few right here in the UK. Their whole incident-packed, tragedy-punctuated story is chronicled in vivid detail by been-there-done-that directors McFarland (long-serving bassist of 'Blood For Blood') and Moreschi (vocalist for 'Ten Yard Fight'), mixing priceless archive-footage with interviews and cogent analysis from survivors and observers alike – with narration by hardcore legend Dave Smalley.
UK PREMIERE
CONSTANTIN AND ELENA (Constantin si Elena)
Dir. Andrei Dascalescu Romania 2009 102m (adv PG) Digital (HD-CAM)
Documentary
The award-winning Constantin and Elena is an evocatively reflective documentary from the highly talented, 26-year-old Romanian debutant Andrei Dascalescu. Showing real flair as editor and cinematographer as well as director, the precocious Dascalescu – who evidently learned much while worked as an assistant to the legendary sound/film editor Walter Murch on Francis Ford Coppola's Romania-shot Youth Without Youth (2007) – painstakingly crafts an empathetic study of his own elderly grandparents as they go about their business in a sleepy rural village. Though shot on video, Dascalescu's compositional "eye" is such that the picture is consistently striking to look at as, over the course of a year, we observe and adapt to the rhythms of a couple who've been married – not always in perfect bliss – for more than five decades. At once a tribute to much-loved relatives and a wry glimpse into a world that time seems almost to have forgotten, Constantin and Elena will linger with you long after the superb and quietly touching final scene.
UK PREMIERE
DEEP IN THE VALLEY (Yanaka Boshoku)
Dir. Funahashi Atsushi Japan 2009 125 mins (adv 12A) Digital (HD-CAM)
Nomura Yuki, Sato Mayu, Kato Katsuhiro, Ogawa Miyoko
This fascinating hybrid of documentary and fiction celebrates a specific Tokyo community while probing the history and soul of a nation. It's an ambitious but delicate delve into the geography and culture of Japan – one that's as intricately constructed, with as many layers, as the five-storey pagoda that is central to its interlocking narratives. A gently-paced two-hour affair shot on crisply monochrome DV – with some colour interludes – it has cast its quiet spell over audiences since premiering at last year's prestigious Berlin Film Festival. Writer-director Funahashi, working from a variety of sources, takes us into the semi-secluded Yanaka district of Tokyo, a sleepy area which has largely escaped the ravages of progress. Older residents have strong memories of Yanaka's most celebrated event – the burning down, in 1957, of a giant, landmark pagoda, which may or may not have been captured on 8mm film. What ensues is a kind of romantic detective story as Kaori (Sato) and Hisaki (Nomura) find themselves drawn together as they seek the elusive reels. Movie magic indeed!
DONKEY (Kenjac)
Dir. Antonio Nuic Croatia/Bosnia-Herzegovina/UK/Serbia 2009 90 mins (adv 15) 35mm TBC
Nebojsa Glogovac, Natasa Janjic, Roko Roglic, Ljubomir Kiki Kapor, Emir Hadzihafizbegovic
Yugoslavia, 1995 – the summer of the Balkan war's terminal stage known as 'Operation Storm,' and the setting for this outstanding drama which won three awards, including Best Cinematography and Best Screenplay, at Croatia's national film festival in Pula. The strifes of a single family on holiday in the wild hills of Herzegovina becomes a fable-like allegory for much wider conflicts, as we observe grizzled Boro (Glogovac) drive his wife Jasna (Janjic) and six-year-old son Luka to his ancestral village after seven years away in Zagreb. The ever-squabbling trio are here to visit Boro's paralysed brother Pero (Hadzihafizbegovic), who was injured when fleeing Sarajevo. A dramatic fortnight ensues across the heat-blasted terrain of the Herzegovinian summer – quite brilliantly captured by Mirko Pivcevic's colour-parched camerawork – in this vividly-etched tale of cruelty, greed and the possibility of redemption, the latter symbolised by the hapless farm-animal of the title who becomes little Luka's "pet" during his stay.
ELKLAND
Dir. Per Hanefjord Sweden 2009 60 mins (adv 15) 35mm
Jimmy Lindström, Anna Azcárate, Örjan Landström, Sara Arnia
Thomas Alfredsson's vampire classic Let the Right One In was one of the most sensational breakout arthouse hits in the UK during 2009, reminding us that Swedish cinema certainly didn't expire with its great maestro Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007). BIFF is therefore particularly proud to present, by special arrangement with the Swedish Film Institute, a unique triple-bill showcasing two of the nation's most promising younger filmmakers: Andreas Tibblin (Good Advice) and Per Hanefjord (Elkland and A Good Day.) Darkly humorous with an undertone of properly Nordic gloom, Elkland won the Honorary Foreign Film prize at the 36th Annual Student Academy Awards in Los Angeles. It follows the misadventures of a pair of estranged brothers, Henrik (Lindström) and Ronnie (Landström) who are brought together in a remote locale following the death of their father. Sibling rivalries rapidly escalate in a film – scored by cult pianist Mattie Bye, that skilfully juggles elements of thriller and farce – (did Hanefjord see the Fawlty Towers episode The Kipper and the Corpse by any chance?) with distinctive and atmospheric results.
NB: Elkland is showing between Good Advice (2009; Andreas Tibblin; 14 mins) and A Good Day (2005; Per Hanefjord; 17m).
UK PREMIERE
FISH EYES (Yu yan)
Dir. Zhang Wei China / South Korea 2009 75 mins (adv PG) Digital (HD-CAM)
Shen Mengyao, Shi Peiliang, Gu Xinhong
Bradford International Film Festival has for several years actively sought the very best from the legions of up-and-coming Chinese film-makers – such as Ying Liang and we think we've unearthed another real gem in the form of Zhang Wei, whose debut Fish Eyes is a deft meditation on a nation in the throes of near-permanent change. The story, concentrating on an old sunflower-farmer (Gu), his gang-connected motorcycle-riding son (Shi) and a wordless young woman (Shen) who unexpectedly arrives into their lives, is a classic case of "less is more." According to Variety magazine's Ronnie Scheib, Fish Eyes "testifies to the power of composition to enthrall in the virtual absence of plot, dialogue or even music. A sandscape of shifting dunes, a man leaning against a building, or rivers of dirt falling from a tractor form equally arresting tableaux; what little action there is occurs offscreen, obliquely reflected in angled surfaces, or in total darkness… [a] strangely moving minimalist study, visually sumptuous, confounding all technical expectations raised by its next-to-nothing budget."
UK PREMIERE
FLUKE (Mázli)
Dir. Keményffy Tamás Hungary 2008 93 min (12 adv) 35mm
Lukáts Andor, Gyuricza István, Kapácsy Miklós, Felix Theissen, Kerekes Vica
This crazy, cheerful comedy – mixing a nice line in political satire with a strain of knockabout humour – recalls classics of Ealing Studios. The people of Ogyármat, a scruffy village on the Hungarian border with prosperous Austria, are so downhearted about their future that they're on the point of selling their land to an Austrian company. Only stubborn farmer István stands out against it – but then he's always been an awkward old cuss. When he accidentally discovers an oil pipeline running under their churchyard, everybody comes together to tap the oil, and their joint future seems secure -until personal greed strikes and they each want the takings for themselves. A delegation from the oil company followed by TV cameras and reluctant police brings further chaos… István is played with terrific brio by veteran actor Lukáts Andor, also to be seen in BIFF via Prima Primavera. An impressive feature debut from Keményffy – beautifully paced, funny, and full of surprises from start to finish.
UK PREMIERE
GREEN WATERS (Aguas Verdes)
Dir. Mariano De Rosa Argentina 2009 90 mins (adv 15) 35mm
Alejandro Fiore, Diego Cremonesi, Milagros Gallo, Jorgelina Amedolara, Julieta Mora
Argentinian cinema has been one of the cinema success stories of the last decade, largely thanks to slow-paced artistic ventures that have been lapped up by conoisseurs on the film-festival circuit. Green Waters is something else: a raucuously engaging, genre-mashing tale that announces an exciting new talent. Bold, fresh and vibrant, it's only a tweak or two away from being a fairly mainstream comedy. But in the hands of writer-director Mariano De Rosa, whose first solo feature this is, Green Waters becomes something much more impressive and disturbing. It's a character-study of middle-aged dad-of-two Juan (Fiore), a stressed-out sort whose woes and paranoid insecurities reach boiling-point during a family holiday to the coast after his wife (Gallo) and teenage daughter (Mora) become friendly with a charismatic young drifter (Cremonesi). What follows owes as much to 1970s thriller cinema as much as classier forebears such as Pasolini's Theorem. Under De Rosa's careful control, the vivid score, kinetic camerawork and detailed sound-design combine for an unusually intense viewing experience.
HOME FROM HOME (Endstation der Sehnsûchte)
Dir. Sung-Hyung Cho Germany 2009 97 mins (adv PG) 35mm TBC
Documentary
An observational culture-clash documentary of the highest order, Home From Home is a wonderfully warm and entertaining crowd-pleaser. It proves that kimchi and bratwurst are an unlikely but irresistible combination as it introduces us to three senior couples – the women Korean, the men German – living in a "German village" at the southern tip of South Korea, relating a fascinating and little-known socio-historical story with great skill and emotional impact. In the 1950s and '60s, Germany invited thousands of "guest workers" to aid post-war reconstruction – most were manual workers from Turkey, but gastarbeiters from further afield included many nurses from South Korea, some of whom married local men and settled down. The film follows three couples as they return "home" to retire, taking up residence in a community constructed partly as a residential area, partly as an unlikely tourist attraction. The six "protagonists" make for winning company as we learn all about their lives and hopes, while director Cho's compositional skills and nimble editing make the 90-odd minutes fly by. A treat.
UK PREMIERE
THE LAST ACTION (Ostatnia akcja)
Dir. Michał Rogalski Poland 2009 95 mins (12A) Digital (Beta-Cam)
Jan Machulski, Alina Janowska, Marian Kociniak, Antoni Pawlicki, Piotr Fronczewski
Regarded as one of the funniest and most skilful Polish comedies of recent years, this entertaining romp is based on an urban legend from the 1990s, detailing how veterans of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising re-unite to help one of them to settle a score with the Mafia. Our unlikely hero is grandfather Zygmunt (Machulski), whose grandson Mateusz (Mysłakowski) and son Tomasz (Kalita) both fall foul of the mobsters' violence. Zygmunt's decides to contact his former "brothers in arms," who are always happy for a chance to feel youthful again, and enlists a couple of young-at-heart ladies to help with this one "last action." Rather more Guy Ritchie than Harry Brown, The Last Action portrays Warsaw so evocatively that it effectively becomes another character. In his feature debut, Rogalski elicits great support from a very experienced cast – with some rising stars cast in supporting roles – and crafts a superb late-career showcase for legendary Polish funny-man Machulski, who also produced.
UK PREMIERE
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE POLKA KING
Dirs. Joshua von Brown & John Mikulak USA 2009 69 mins (adv PG) Digital (DV-CAM)
Documentary
Pump up the Oompah! The Man Who Would Be Polka King is an irreverent look at the rise and fall of the Grammy-nominated polka-music superstar Jan Lewan, whose defection from Poland to Pennsylvania led to fame, fortune – and, eventually, an international Polka "Empire". But when Lewan's career collapsed under a cloud of scandal, the Polka world was stunned to learn of what the film-makers describe as "the greatest Polka-related financial crime in history." Recounting an often-hilarious story so bizarre it can only be true, directors von Brown and Mikulak take us right into the weirdly exotic – and decidedly cheesy – universe of Americanised Polka, with "Your Host Stan Tadrowski" providing a genial (if unshaven) tour-guide down memory lane. A cult hit on the American underground film-festival circuit, The Man Who Would Be Polka King has only once been shown outside the USA so far – in Poland, of course – and we're delighted to host its UK premiere right here in Britain's Polka capital, Bradford.
EUROPEAN AND INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
THE MOSQUE IN MORGANTOWN
Dir. Brittany Huckabee USA 2009 83 mins (adv 12A) Digital (HD-CAM)
Documentary
This urgently topical documentary examines a specific religious issue which has unfolded over the last couple of years in Morgantown, West Virginia. It's essentially the story of Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Normani, a close friend of Daniel Pearl – the journalist whose beheading an the hands of Islamist extremists was the subject of Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart. Reeling from this incident, and certain other traumatic developments in her personal life, Normani went back home to Morgantown – and discovered that the local mosque had been taken over by elements which she regarded as unacceptably radical in their interpretation of Islamic teachings. The film examines what happens when she, as she puts it, decided to "fight back," plunging herself straight into a simmering dispute between the mosque's moderates and more hardline forces, all of them coping the impact of September 11th 2001 on the USA's view of Muslims. The Mosque In Morgantown delves behind the headlines and over-simplified stereotypes to illuminate local debates which can have truly global ramifications.
UK PREMIERE
NEW MUSLIM COOL
Dir. Jennifer Maytorena Taylor USA 2008 76 mins (adv 12A) Digital (DV-Cam)
Documentary
Puerto Rican-American rapper Hamza Pérez pulled himself out of drug dealing and street life 12 years ago and became a Muslim. Now he's moved to Pittsburgh's tough North Side to start a new religious community, rebuild his shattered family and take his message of faith to other young people through hard-hitting hip-hop music. But when the FBI raids his mosque, Hamza must confront the realities of the post-9/11 world, and himself. Acclaimed documentary New Muslim Cool ("spellbinding" – San Francisco Chronicle) takes viewers on Hamza's ride through streets, slums and jail cells — following his spiritual journey to some surprising places in an America that never stops changing. According to Ginia Bellafante of The New York Times, "New Muslim Cool possesses a kind of beauty that sneaks up on you: it is in Hamza's humility, in the dignity with which so much of his misfortune, in his commitment to rehabilitating drug dealers because, in his mind, no one else will."
UK PREMIERE
1
Dir. Pater Sparrow Hungary 2009 91 mins (adv 15) 35mm
Mucsi Zoltán, Sinkó László, Kerekes Vica, Mácsai Pál, Balázs Zoltán
By the time of his death in 2006, Polish writer Stanislaw Lem was pretty much universally acknowledged as one of the titans of science fiction, taking high rank among post-war European authors from any genre (or indeed none). He's perhaps best known in the UK thanks to the two very different movies based on his novel Solaris – one by Andrei Tarkovsky, one by Steven Soderbergh – which were reportedly the only films he saw after 1970. It's a shame that Lem didn't live to experience 1, the mind-bendingly ambitious and superbly accomplished adaptation of his supposedly "unfilmable" essay One Human Minute. Written and directed by London-educated Hungarian Pater Sparrow, it starts in an antiquarian bookshop whose shelves are found one day to be filled with copies of a mysterious book entitled 1: an almanac describing what happens to the entire human race in the space of a minute. A police investigation begins, and the bookshop staff are placed in solitary confinement by the Bureau for Paranormal Research. Which is when the fun really begins…
UK PREMIERE
ONE FAST MOVE OR I'M GONE : JACK KEROUAC'S BIG SUR
Dir. Curt Worden USA 2009 98 mins (adv 15) 35mm
Documentary
He may have passed away in 1969, but Jack Kerouac's position as a cultural icon has only grown with each passing decade – cameras are finally set to roll on the long-gestating film version of his classic Beat Generation novel On the Road. But Kerouac was far from a one-book author, and many reckon that his 1962 Big Sur, recounting a period drying out in a cabin on the rugged California coast, is his masterpiece. One Fast Move Or I'm Gone is an exploration of how the novel's biographical basis and its on generations of writers, musicians and artists. The superb soundtrack including specially-commissioned songs from Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie) and Jay Farrar (Uncle Tupelo); there are contributions from Kerouac fans Tom Waits, Sam Shepard and Patti Smith; interviews with Beat Generation survivors Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Johnson and Carolyn Cassady. An obvious must-see for Kerouac devotees, One Fast Move is also an ideal starting-point for those eager to immerse themselves in the world of the enigmatic Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac.
UK PREMIERE
PARK SHANGHAI
Dir. Kai Kevin Huang China 2008 94 mins (adv 12A) Digital (HD-CAM)
Wei Yun, William Feng, Hou Wen-Ting, Michael Ohlsson, Ji Roger Wu
A kind of lo-fi Chinese version of Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill, in which several twentysomething students meet for a reunion party several years after graduation, Park Shanghai was actually begun as a university project by writer-director Kai Kevin Huang – who eventually completed the film half a decade later. It was specially selected for BIFF – along with The Search – by Ying Liang, one of the country's most acclaimed younger film-makers (Taking Father Home, The Other Half) and organiser of the Chongqing Independent Film & Video Festival, as an example of must-see cinema from today's China. "Mostly shot on a building rooftop and featuring the blurry uniformity of the Shanghai skyline as a symbolically weighty backdrop," according to Shanghai-based critic Morgan Short, this is "a beautifully bleak story, illustrating that no prizes are at the end of the tunnel for young people graduating to adulthood in Shanghai… Curiously stirring – a first film from a director who will no doubt go on to bigger and better things."
UK PREMIERE
PERPETUUM MOBILE
Dir. Nicolás Pereda Canada/Mexico 2009 86m (adv 12A) Digital (BETA-SP)
Gabino Rodríguez, Teresa Sánchez, Francisco Barreiro
Born in Mexico but based in Canada, 27-year-old writer-director Nicolás Pereda has quickly established himself as one of Spanish-language cinema's more distinctive and promising film-makers. His second feature-length work Perpetuum Mobile confirms that he possesses a truly original and worthwhile creative "voice." Set in Mexico City and shot on video, it's the deadpan, unashamedly lo-fi story of Gabino (Rodríguez), a hangdog, anything-for-a-quiet-life chap who, in his mid-twenties, is still living with his ever-nagging mother (Sanchez), while working as a removal-man with best-mate Francisco (Barreiro). Gabino and Francisco go from job to job in an episodic and wryly funny chronicle of modern urban life which, in unfussy and matter-of-fact style, presents Mexico City in all its scruffy splendour. Typically, the title - "always moving" in Latin – is a gag that works on multiple levels: this is a picture proceeds at its own steady pace, punctuated with sufficient delights (including a startlingly unexpected cameo from a certain English artistic eminence) to reward our patience and attention.
PRESUMED GUILTY (Presunto culpable)
Dir. Roberto Hernández, Geoffrey Smith Mexico 2008 90 min (12A adv) Digital (Digibeta)
The startling statistics from Mexico tell their own story: 95% of trials result in convictions. A highly efficient police force? No. Rather, the entire justice system is based on the idea that if you are picked up for a crime, you must have done it. When young stallholder Jose Antonio Zuniga was sentenced to 20 years for a murder he knew nothing about, his friends and family were so determined to prove his innocence that against the odds they secured the help of two US-based lawyers, Roberto Hernández and Geoffrey Smith, to submit an appeal. Amazingly, Hernández and Smith were allowed to film Zuniga's life inside prison – where he shared a cell with 19 others – and the retrial itself. The footage, moving and shocking, provides the raw material for this film – matching anything to be found in Jacques Audiard's A Prophet for sheer visceral impact. In the directors' hands the film becomes more than merely a documentary account, but an emotionally engaging, suspenseful and sometimes poetic experience, a glimpse into a world of banal corruption and a witness to how easily terrible injustices can be perpetrated by an authoritarian "democratic" system.
UK PREMIERE
PRIMA PRIMAVERA
Dir Edélenyi János Hungary 2009 86 min (12A adv) 35mm
Lukáts Andor, Vesela Kazakova, Antoine Kamerling, Börcsök Enikö, Máthé Erzsi
Veteran Hungarian star Lukáts Andor is Gábor, a middle-aged simple-minded chap whose life is suddenly thrown into chaos when his mother/carer is shot during a bizarre bank robbery – a traumatic event which he himself. Gábor then forms an unlikely alliance with Joli (Kazakova), a no-nonsense Ukrainian girl from the underworld.
Out of these dark beginnings the film blossoms into a charming yet unsentimental journey of escape. Gábor and Joli flee their old lives through the gorgeous countryside of southern Hungary, as Gábor seeks a place he remembers from his childhood as a sanctuary. Each discovers an unaccustomed freedom, but the bad old world they've left behind is always threatening to catch up with them and destroy their sometimes lyrical, sometimes comical idyll.
In real life the up-and-coming, unconventionally-beautiful Bulgarian actress Kazakova speaks not a word of Hungarian and so learned her script word by word, phonetically. It was worth the effort. She's a great foil to Lukáts, the star of two films at BIFF this year (the other being Fluke), who displays a great and disarming versatility.
THE SEARCH (Xunzhao zhimei gengdeng)
Dir. Pema Tseden (aka Wanma Caidan) China 2009 117 mins (adv PG) Digital (HD-CAM)
Dobe Dorje, Drolma Gyab, Manla Kyab, Lumo Tso, 'Tsondrey'
Irresistibly described by one reviewer as "part road movie, part love story, part X Factor," The Search is a rare example of today's Tibetan cinema. Along with Park Shanghai, it was specially selected for BIFF by Ying Liang, – one of China's most acclaimed younger film-makers and organiser of the Chongqing Independent Film & Video Festival. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Shanghai International Film Festival, this is, according to Hollywood Reporter's Maggie Lee – who compared it to the work of Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami – "an offbeat cultural album of Tibetan people as well as a cinematic pilgrimage to understand their lifestyles and religious heritage." The story concerns film-makers who travel to a remote village to cast their upcoming project, a biopic of a revered saint. From this simple premise, various romantic relationships are explored – interspersed with more comic sequences in which villagers audition for bit-parts in the upcoming epic. Superbly composed cinematography adds a further touch of class to this strikingly unusual but accessible example of "world cinema."
UK PREMIERE
SPLINTERS (Drzazgi)
Dir. Maciej Pieprzyca Poland 2008 103 mins (12A) 35mm
Antoni Pawlicki, Karolina Piechota, Marcin Hycnar, Tomasz Karolak, Krzysztof Globisz
A film that teaches us, once again, that money can't buy happiness, and that all we really need is love – but these quirky, jagged slices of life are a world away from the homilies of standard-issue Hollywood romcoms. We're in Silesia, the coal-mining area of Poland, where the very poor and the very rich live side by side, and an influx of Roma settlers is causing social tensions to rise among the more xenophobic elements of society. Splinters examines the situation by moving between three characters who at first appear to have no connection – it's only at the very end that we discover what links football hooligan Robert (Pawlicki), rich businessman's daughter Marta (Polish Film Festival award-winner Piechota) and gifted student Bartek (Hycnar). But the wait is very much worthwhile in this "homecoming" work from Pieprzyca, who returned to his native Silesia for his feature-film debut after earning great acclaim with his TV work, including The Feast of St. Barbara (BIFF 2006.)
EUROPEAN & INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
THREE HAMS IN A CAN
Dir. Kenta McGrath Australia/Japan 2009 80 mins (adv PG) Digital (HD-CAM)
Documentary
Summer 2008: three Australian experimental musicians (Chris Cobilis, Predrag Delibasich, Stina Thomas) travel to Tokyo for a tour. There they perform their music; eat, drink, go sightseeing, take photos, befriend strangers, and battle the humidity. Along the way no chairs are thrown, no hotel rooms are smashed, and nobody is arrested. Thus does Three Hams In A Can "upend the traditional format of both travel (TV) shows and concert-films," according to US critic – and planet-scouring expert on off-radar independent cinema – Mike Everleth: "[The] film is fascinating. What's different about this documentary from others of its ilk is that McGrath treats the viewer as if he/she is a member of the band, a quiet member who is palling around with the group, taking in the sights and experiences with no commentary or direction." Arrestingly fresh and original from the very first frames, Three Hams In A Can is as deadpan-offbeat as its title suggests – and thus makes an ideal companion-piece for another BIFF 2010 selection, Jessica Oreck's Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo.
UK PREMIERE
TOTO (Totí²)
Dir. Peter Schreiner Austria 2009 128 mins (adv PG) 35mm
Documentary
Three years after Bellavista (BIFF 2007), Austria's leading documentarian returns with another meticulous, monochrome, digital-video masterpiece. Though still relatively unheralded outside his native land, Schreiner is regarded in certain critical quarters as one of Europe's most important film-makers – and Toto looks set to win him new legions of fans. Taking a challenging and radically unconventional approach to seemingly unremarkable material – a middle-aged man travels from his Vienna home to his Italian birthplace – Schreiner's intense attention to detail yields startling sensory magic from everyday sights and sounds. He focusses minutely on his protagonist Antonio Cotroneo – quite literally so, as many shots are pore-examining close-ups – so that, while basic biographical data is thin on the ground, we feel like we're seeing the world through Cotroneo's poetic sensibilities. As we observe him take in the sun-dappled coastal ruggedness of his home-town Tropea (a bathing and fishing resort in Calabria) we hear his ruminations on life and death, his probing self-analysis, or sometimes just his breathing. This is documentary elevated to an exquisite art-form.
UK PREMIERE
VORTEX (Duburys, aka Waterhole)
Dir. Gytis Lukšas Lithuania 2009 142 mins (adv 15) 35mm
Giedrius Kiela, Oksana Borbat, Jevgenija Varencia, Jurate Onaityte, Valentinas Masalskis
In the year that Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon landed the Palme d'Or at Cannes, Lithuania offered its own meticulous, black-and-white, 140-odd minute examination of 20th century history – shot on beautifully expressive 35mm rather than the somewhat starker digital format. It marks revered 63-year-old writer-director Gytis Lukšas's return to prominence after a near two-decade hiatus since 1990's Vzglyad zmiya and was described by the Lithuanian selection-panel for the foreign-language Oscar – which nominated Vortex as the outstanding film of the year – as "the first telling of the story of how the Soviet times affected a human's soul and body." An adaptation of Romualdas Granauskas's novel, carefully structured into separate chapters it's the story of Juzik (Kiela) – a man whose travails come to represent the suffering of Lithuania under Soviet occupation. We see his childhood, his friendships, his work, his love-life and his struggle to deal with the oppressions of everyday existence, via award-winning, austere monochrome cinematography by Viktoras Radzevicius, that simply demands to be seen on the big screen.
UK PREMIERE
WHITE ON RICE
Dir. Dave Boyle USA 2009 83 mins (adv 12A) 35mm
Hiroshi Watanabe, Justin Kwong, 'Nae', Mio Takada, James Kyson Lee
A notable success with the public (it won the Audience Award at the San Diego Asian Film Festival) and critics (Jury Prize – Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival) alike over in the States, White On Rice is a most unusual "coming of age" comedy, in that the individual concerned is 40 rather than 14. Our hero is Jimmy (Watanabe), who – after being chucked out by his wife in Tokyo – seeks refuge with his sister (Nae) and her ill-tempered husband (Takada) in the States. Jimmy bunks up with his 10-year-old child-prodigy nephew (Kwong), and spends most of his time seeking a new wife – but let's just say that his social skills, and his English, leave a lot to be desired… Low on budget but consistently high on laughs, the irresistibly genial White On Rice kicks off with a side-splitting parody of martial-arts cinema that features voice-work by none other than cult-movie legend Bruce Campbell – his presence itself a vote of confidence in sophomore director/co-writer Dave Boyle.
UK PREMIERE
THE WOMAN WITH THE 5 ELEPHANTS (Die Frau mit den 5 Elefanten)
Dir. Vadim Jendreyko Switzerland 2009 93 mins (adv 12A) 35mm
Documentary
An instant word-of-mouth hit at all the festivals where it's been shown – from Vienna to the Norwegian Arctic and far beyond – The Woman with the 5 Elephants profiles Swetlana Geier, an octogenarian lady from the Ukraine who has dedicated to translating the great works of Dostoyevsky (whose "big five" novels are the "elephants" of the exotic-sounding title) from Russian into German. Nominated for Best Documentary at the European Film Awards, this is an accessible but endlessly thought-provoking journey into guilt and expiation, an irresisitible character-study of a woman who, even half-way into her ninth decade, continues to toil at her chosen metier. Gradually we discover the tragic events which led her into this particular line of work – involving some of the darkest episodes of the Second World War as they unfolded in Geier's native Ukraine. We watch as she returns "home" for the first time in over half a century – writer-director Jendreyko thus examining and illuminating the great sweep of history through the brilliant prism of a unique, charismatic individual.
UNCHARTED STATES OF AMERICA 2010
(also includes Blue Bus [2009] and Eggshells [1969])
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BEETLE QUEEN CONQUERS TOKYO
Dir. Jessica Oreck USA 2009 90 mins (adv PG) Digital (HD-CAM)
Documentary
Selected as one of current cinema's most notable "unknown pleasures" in a recent survey for Film Comment magazine (along with fellow BIFF 2010 selections Lowlands and The Blacks), this chronicle of Japan's insect-collecting mania is a fine example of how American independent film-makers have been venturing far beyond their nation's borders in search of inspiration. Wrote Michael Chaiken in Film Comment: "A kaleidoscope view of Japan's past, through the traditions and customs that survive to the present, Beetle Queen bristles with kinetic energy. Lightning bugs become flares in the night as the micro-world of insects is portrayed as an exalted and adventurous place. Boasting beautifully accentuated sound design, it's a film to be heard as well as seen." Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the CineVegas film-festival and nominated for the 'Truer Than Fiction' gong at the prestigious Independent Spirit Awards, Beetle Queen provides an oblique, outsider's take on present-day Japan – making it an apt companion-piece for Kenta McGrath's Three Hams In A Can.
EUROPEAN & INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
BONECRUSHER
Dir. Michael F Fountain USA 2009 72 mins (adv 15) Digital (DVD)
Documentary
British cinema has a fine tradition of films about coal and coalmining – indeed, there was an entire season of them mounted at the BFI last September under the banner King Coal, which then toured the country and stopped off at Bradford's National Media Museum in December. The list of American films dealing with the subject has been surprisingly skimpy, considering how central the industry is to certain parts of the country. The latter includes the Appalachian mountains of Virginia, whose inhabitants are the subject of the superb new documentary Bonecrusher. A profile of veteran miner Luther "Bonecrusher" Chaffin and his 25-year-old son Lucas – who's been forbidden by his father from following him "down the pit," it's an unblinking look into working lives and communities stretched to breaking-point by the current global financial crisis. According to Washington City Paper's Hilary Crowe, the results "tug at the heart as much as at the conscience," pungently evoking a truly "uncharted state" of 21st century America.
Uncharted States of America Double-Bill : China Town & Lowlands
CHINA TOWN
Dir. Lucy Raven USA 2009 52 mins (adv U) Digital (DVD)
Documentary
Bradford International Film Festival's Uncharted States of America strand was originally devised to showcase cutting-edge, adventurous, politically-engaged, geographically-aware film-makers such as James Benning, Travis Wilkerson and Sharon Lockhart. And now we can add the name of Lucy Raven to that illustrious company on the basis of her utterly remarkable debut China Town. Not to be confused with Roman Polanski's 1974 crime-thriller masterpiece – though the similarity in titles is of course 100% deliberate – this is avant-garde cinema at its most imaginative and lively, a real-life "animation" that clicks through over 7,000 still photographs to document how copper production is now a truly global affair. Our journey begins in the open-pit mines of eastern Nevada, and continues all the way to China, where the material is refined and processed into electrical wire. Issues of globalisation, conservation and nationalism are deftly explored in this visually arresting and meticulously executed example of an artist pushing her chosen medium into genuinely new and exciting areas.
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EUROPEAN + INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
LOWLANDS
Dir. Peter Thompson USA 2009 51 mins (adv 12A) Digital (HD-CAM)
Documentary
Selected by the US's most august film-critic Jonathan Rosenbaum as one of current cinema's most notable "unknown pleasures" (in a recent survey for Film Comment magazine – see also Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo and The Blacks) this beautiful experimental documentary-essay explores "the effects of war upon domestic and creative life" through Catharina Bolns, wife of Dutch master Jan Vermeer, "culminating in one of her dreams in the form of a masque and oratorio." According to Rosenbaum, this is simply "a marvel, by Chicago's best film-maker," delving into "1996 Bosnian war-crimes, Vermeer's paintings, and the startling rhyme effects between the two." The result is a unique hybrid of intense, intelligent research and sensitively delicate poetic imagery, drifting between chronological and geographical zones, historical incident and artistic creation – and represents must-see viewing even for those whose only experience of Vermeer is The Girl With The Pearl Earring (2003). Peter Thompson is one of American independent cinema's best-kept secrets – exactly the kind of individual that BIFF's Uncharted States of America always seeks to showcase and champion.
45365
Dirs. Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross USA 2009 90 mins (adv PG) Digital (Blu-Ray)
Documentary
Winner of no fewer than eight awards around the film-festival circuit, including Best Documentary at SXSW in Austin, Texas 45365 is a resident's-eye view of small-town America. It was made by a pair of brothers in and around their hometown of Sidney, Ohio (population 20,211 in the most recent census) – a town of unusually eclectic architecture, and whose postal zip-code is 45365. Filmed during the sun-dappled autumn of 2007, the film consists of brief, seemingly chance glimpses into ordinary lives, the Ross's HD cameras enjoying remarkable unhindered access to a wide variety of locations and environments – indeed, this is precisely the kind of access that only trusted "insiders" could obtain. The result is an invaluable time-capsule of ordinary American life in the earliest decade of the 21st century, "meticulously balancing cinema-verite intimacy and dreamlike reverie" (according to Variety's Joe Leydon) as it presents us "ineffably beautiful" images of a town that gradually becomes as familiar as our own neighbourhood.
UNCHARTED STATES OF AMERICA DOUBLE BILL : It Was Great, But I Was Ready To Come Home & Freezer Fright
EUROPEAN & INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
IT WAS GREAT, BUT I WAS READY TO COME HOME
Dir. Kris Swanberg USA 2009 61 mins (adv 15) Digital (HD-CAM)
Kris Swanberg, Jade Healy, Chris Trujillo, Nick Drashner, Caitlin Donohue
The Swanbergs – Kris and prolific writer-director husband Joe – are one of the busiest and best-connected couples in micro-budget American independent cinema right now, Kris acting in Joe's Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007) and now stepping behind the camera for her debut as writer-director, It was great, but I was ready to come home (which Joe has co-produced). Shot around the mountains and coastal-towns of Costa Rica, it's another example – along with Uncharted selections Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo and Lowlands – of adventurous American film-makers looking beyond their nation's borders. It's the story of best friends Cam (Healy) and Annie (Swanberg) as they deal with their emotions and their pasts while trying to enjoy a holiday away from everyday life's stresses and strains – with results that are less spikily combustible than, say, Mary Bronstein's Yeast (Uncharted States 2009) but no less penetrating in their clear-eyed analysis of female relationships. Featuring music from the Orange Mighty Trio and outstanding cinematography from Ben Kasukle, It was great… is a disarmingly fresh, invigorating miniature.
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EUROPEAN & INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
FREEZER FRIGHT
Dir. Nancy Silver USA 2009 57 mins (adv 15) Digital (DVD)
Documentary
If James Cameron's box office behemoth Avatar is the uber-ubiquitous "alpha" of US cinema anno 2009, Freezer Fright is the super-elusive "omega." Perhaps the weirdest – and cheapest – film ever programmed at Bradford (or anywhere else), this brisk blast of "ice-cold humor" has only ever been shown in public once before, when it was the sole local movie at Hot Spring's 1st Arkansas Underground Film Festival (a.k.a. ARKUFF!). A labour of love for Nancy Silver – an artist/violinist/sculptor/song-writer/guitarist/dancer (phew!) from Bonnerdale, AR (pop. 2,136) – it's half folk-art artefact, half cable-TV pilot. Silver, chatting away while toting a hand-held video-camera, probes her neighbours' fridges with results that are half Loyd Grossman, half David Lynch. Her gal-pals sport joke-shop disguises – sensible, considering some of the embarrassingly "adult" items nestling among peas and popsicles. You may love Freezer Fright (we do!) or be jaw-drop appalled. But, we confidently predict, you have never seen anything quite like this. Enter The World!
REDLAND
Dir. Asiel Norton USA 2009 105 mins (adv 18) 35mm
Sean Thomas, Kathan Fors, Mark Aaron, Lucy Adden, Bernadette Murray
If Stan Brakhage (DogStarMan), Terrence Malick (Badlands) and Russ Meyer (Mudhoney) had ever collaborated on a feature-film – and that prospect is too tantalising to contemplate – the end-product might well have resembled the overwhelming sensory experience that is Redland, one of American independent cinema's most astonishing eruptions of new talent. Ambitiously working with old-school 35mm celluloid – when nearly all of his cash-strapped contemporaries are content to settle for digital video – director/co-writer Asiel Norton has crafted a devastatingly brutal and heartbreakingly beautiful vision of farm-life during the Great Depression, a family chronicle of people battling through overwhelming hardship and personal trauma arising from the daughter's illicit affair. Himself raised – rather like Werner Herzog – in a mountain cabin with "no television, limited electricity and water obtained from a nearby stream", photographer-turned-filmmaker Norton was recently named as one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film, and was also one of three nominees in the Someone To Watch category at the Independent Spirit Awards. Just remember where you heard his name first!
INTERNATIONAL SHORTS, PROGRAMME 1 :
'Three new short films by Ying Liang, and three by Dietmar Brehm'
I Love Lakers (14 mins)
Medicine (12 mins)
Condolences (19 mins).
Digital (HDV) – dir. Ying Liang (China 2008/9).
Ozean (8 mins)
Instax : Camera Girls, London 1966 (6 mins)
Verdrehte Augen : Videoversion-2 (11 mins.)
Digital (Beta-SP) – dir. Dietmar Brehm (Austria 2008).
A pair of "triple whammies" from two directors with little in common other than their outstanding talent. China's YING Liang is well-known to regular BIFF attendees, as we've previously showcased his features Taking Father Home and The Other Half (at BIFF 2007) and Good Cats (BIFF 2009). YING has specially selected two features by his peers for BIFF 2010 – The Search and Park Shanghai – and we're very proud to host the UK premieres of own latest work, excellent miniatures which continue his searching analysis of modern-day urban China. These included the truly astonishing Condolences, recently named as one of three winners of the Tiger Award for Short Films at the prestigious Rotterdam Film Festival. Meanwhile from Austria, Linz's veteran and wildly prolific avant-gardiste Dietmar Brehm is represented by a trio of semi-abstract, eye-poppingly colourful, technically dazzling shorts that show why he's long been regarded as one of the masters of the form. The programme runs approximately 75 minutes and is certificated 12A (adv).
INTERNATIONAL SHORTS, PROGRAMME 2 :
'Lost and Found Worlds'
Last Stop (Siste stopp), dir. Eilif Bremer Landsend (Norway 2008; 8 mins; Digital – MiniDV)
Atlantiques, dir. Mati Diop (France 2009; 16 mins; Digital – HDCAM)
Final Destination (Destination finale), dir. Philip Widmann (Germany 2008; 9 mins; Digital – BETA-SP)
1110 Wien George-Washington-Hof, dir. Christoph Weihrich (Austria 2009; 4 mins; Digital – BETA-SP)
Palmes d'Or, dir. Siegfried A Fruhauf (Austria 2009; 7 mins; 35mm)
Lost World (Letí»nt világ), dir. Nemes Gyula (Hungary 2008; 20 mins; 35mm)
We present an eclectic selection of the very best shorts spotted by our intrepid traveller Neil Young on his annual tour of the festival circuit. These really are the film-makers of tomorrow, including Norway's fresh-faced prodigy Eilif Bremer Landsend – all of 18 when he wrote and directed the beautifully tender Last Stop – and France's Mati Diop, the young star of Claire Denis's 35 Shots of Rum, whose poetically topical Atlantiques (one of three shorts to win the Tiger Award at the recent Rotterdam Film Festival) reveal that she's as talented as she is beautiful. Neil describes Siegfried A Fruhauf's Cannes-kaleidoscope Palmes d'Or, meanwhile, as "perhaps the single most challenging, uncompromising and extraordinary thing I saw anywhere during 2009." The programme runs approximately 65 minutes and is certificated 12A (adv). Note: contains extreme flashing strobe effects throughout Palmes d'Or.