Hi Edd fans. It’s your old pal Edd here. Remember me from all those swell times we had last year? Course you do. Well those high times (Jamiroquai-style) have come again!! It’s almost September, and that means it’s almost the annual Cambridge Film Festival. The 35th year no less! Someone bake this baby a cake!
The program is out. If you are a frequenter of The Cambridge Evening News you will have noticed the new, swanky paper brochure in last Tuesday’s issue – specially adapted so you can get your felt-tips out and start scribbling all those barn-storming film bonanzas you have to see. But hold your horses just one darn second! Save the brightest red pen for old Eddy. Because right here, in this year’s first edition of the editors blog, we are going to be exploring some Themes Of The Festival!!
Of course, like every year, the festival has its strands – so we’ve got Victor Sjostrom, Lech Majewski, and Dark Pictures, as well as the time-honoured Lates, Contemporary German, and Catalan strands (Inside Tip for this year: I’ve previewed some of the Catalan films and can confirm that they’re sweeter than a pint of sangria). However, we at TAKE ONE like to scratch (and sniff) below the surface. We like to delve into areas even the suits of the festival office won’t go. And with that in mind, we present to you, this – The Under-The-Radar Themes of the 35th Cambridge Film Festival!
So, without further ado …
Homes in Disarray
El Café De La Marina; (The Long Way Home); He Who Gets Slapped/The Wind; Darkness on the Edge of Town; (Railway Children); 99 Homes; The Fire; Land Grabbing; The Lesson; The Second Mother; The Spiderwebhouse; (Welcome to Leith)
Where to begin? Well what about this cheery nugget – Homes in Disarray.
Yes, film festivals are times for people of similar interests to come together and bond, to share their love of the medium and maybe, just maybe, build a place and community of support and acceptance. And in true Cambridge style, the festival has decided to honour these lofty goals by presenting a slew of films about painful and fractured family relationships, and, in particular, Homes in Disarray. Well done Festival.
In fact, look a little closer and you’ll notice no strand is safe from the far-reaching effects of this destructive theme. From The Lates, DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN forges a western out from orphaned teenagers in green, green Ireland. From Sjostrom, HE WHO GETS SLAPPED depicts the betrayal of a prodigious scientist who has his work and partner stolen by his aristocratic financier. And from the Catalan strand, two films – EL CAFÉ DE LA MARINA and THE LONG WAY HOME – have protagonist distanced from their family due to social exclusion and tragedy. Even Movies on the Meadows is getting in on the act with the mother of all weepy, Broken Homes films – THE RAILWAY CHILDREN.
From the festival’s central programme, THE SPIDERWEBHOUSE combines childhood abandonment with mystical subtext. 12 year-old Jonas and his siblings are left to their own devices as their mother, Sabine, searches for mental harmony at the mysterious Sonnenthal. Director Mara Elbi-Eibersfeldt will be attending the festival. THE LESSON, a Greek-Bulgarian project, places a family’s financial mishap in the harsh economic environment of modern Greece. Relationships are put to the test amidst the relentless pressures of seemingly bottomless debt. Finally 99 HOMES – many writers’ pick for the festival – has Andrew Garfield attempting to earn back his family home from the very man who has stripped it from him.
As you enjoy this year’s festival, spare a thought for the TAKE ONE writing team. May we endure as the loving unit we are, amid what is clearly an underhand brainwashing tactic from the festival, desperate to tear us apart.
A Nostalgic Look Back
Eadward; Eisenstein in Guanajuato; From Hitler to Caligari; Pasolini; The Show of Shows: 100 Years of Vaudeville Circuses and Carnivals; Fassbinder – To Love Without Demands.
Like the Granddad who wistfully hands his toffee over his Grandson in the Werther’s Original advert, so Old Man Festival gives over his honeyed treats with a nostalgic glint in his mechanical eye. The Festival Previews began a few weeks ago with BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN and Vertov’s MAN WITH MOVIE CAMERA, and the inspection of cinema’s past continues in festival proper.
Eisenstein reappears with EISENSTEIN IN GUANAJUATO, Peter Greenaway’s reconstruction of the visionary director’s brief exploration of Mexico. Pasolini is similarly re-evaluated in Abel Ferrara’s PASOLINI, starring Willem Dafoe. The strangest reconstruction of a cinematic titan, however, may come in the shape of EADWARD. Kyle Rideout’s imagining of Eadward Muybridge, the photographical pioneer, becomes psychological thriller with obsession and murder all in the bread basket.
The festival’s documentaries also pay tribute to their filmic ancestors. Within the Contemporary German strand sits FASSBINDER – TO LOVE WIHTOUT DEMANDS. A must for any Fassbinder fan, the documentary features previously unseen interview footage with the legendary New Cinema director. Tracking back to the Weimar years, Rudiger Suchsland adapts Siegfried Kracauer’s legendary film text FROM CALIGARI TO HITLER. An exploration from expressionism to fascism, expect plenty of Pabst, Lang and Murnau.
Finally THE SHOW OF SHOWS: 100 YEARS OF VAUDEVILLE CIRCUSES AND CARNIVALS screens Friday 11th and Saturday 12th. Yes, they had lions and clowns and … candyfloss? But film also found some of its first showings in the travelling tent shows of the early twentieth century. Little mention of early cinema in the brochure blurb. But who knows, you might just get some context for our current medium’s earliest foundations with in its 72 minute runtime … If not there’s a nice soundtrack from Sigur Ros & co.
A Nervous Glance Forward
10 Billion – What’s On Your Plate; The Forecaster; I Am Spy; Land Grabbing; Ten Billion; The Visit; Atomic: Living In The Dread and Promise
Sarah Palin has kind of disappeared. There hasn’t been a world war in a while. Everyone has an IPhone. Reasons for optimism, right? WRONG! The future is a bleak and horrifying horizon and the Cambridge Film Festival is here to tell you why!!
Overpopulation and economic meltdown and all their cheery consequences are explored in a series of documentaries screening across the festival week. What happens when there are too many mouths in the world to feed? Will we all be reduced to eating the bits of fluff that get stuck in our belly buttons and under our fingernails?! These are the questions Valentin Thurn hopes to answer with his latest documentary, 10 BILLION – WHAT’S ON YOUR PLATE. Not to be confused with TEN BILLION, the festival’s Sunday lecture on population growth from Professor Stephen Emmott. The brochure caption for TEN BILLION optimistically reads “If we knew a meteor was destined to strike Earth by 2050, wouldn’t we try and stop it?” Well I would at least give it a go, Stephen.
Malthusian Confusion over with, we move on to the perplexing calculations of financial future prediction. THE FORECASTER, Marcus Vetter’s eleventh feature documentary explores Martin Armstrong, an economist with a canny knack for guessing global events through market tendencies. Should we be worried? THE FORECASTER says so. Although really there’s plenty to suggest all is already lost. I AM SPY, LAND GRABBING and Mark Cousin’s ATOMIC: LIVING IN DREAD AND PROMISE, focus on inter-state bureaucracy, land shortage and the bomb respectively, and none of them cut a pretty scene. I don’t wish to put a gopher in your golf-course but …panic. Panic a lot. PANIC MORE!!!!
After the Crime
Why Me?; All The Ways Of God; The Outlaw and His Wife; (16 Years Till Summer); The Company You Keep; The Fencer; The Last Executioner; The Clearstream Affair.
Is it really wrong to commit financial corruption? Is it really wrong to kill someone? Yes, yes it is. In fact if you were questioning these statements in anyway you should probably re-evaluate your morality system. The Cambridge Film Festival delves into justice with a series of films about moral and immoral acts, and those who deal with the consequences.
Two financial thrillers (an oxymoron, I know) observe the entangled mess of the corporate world. THE CLEARSTREAM AFFAIR recreates the French financial crisis of 2001, with journalist Denis Robert on the track of the some dodgy upper-class investors; whereas WHY ME?, the fifth feature from director Tudor Giurgiu, looks at legal corruption with the reconstruction of one of Romania’s most infamous trials.
Sjostrom’s THE OUTLAW AND HIS WIFE holds a more personal court. The great man plays a double-dealing farmer barred from his rural society. Joined in the wilderness by his love, the pair begin gay retreat from the concerns of day to day life. Yet, to no-one’s surprise, without community’s protection even worse felons come calling. An emotional outlaw is observed in ALL THE WAYS OF GOD. “A contemporary Judas” (describes the festival brochure) deals with his conscience amid a surreal encounter, in one of the highlights from the Catalan Strand. Identical themes – friendship, guilt and repentance – reappear in documentary form. The touching 16 YEARS TILL SUMMER, the tale of a recent ex-convict aiding his ailing father, is set to be one of the best of the home-grown features. And let’s not forget Robert Redford. A double appearer in this programme, the Sundance patron directs THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, the tale of a lawyer forced face the consequences of his criminal activist past.
Finally THE LAST EXECUTIONER looks at Chavoret Jaruboon, the last man paid to execute in Thailand. A taut and thrilling documentary, fans of Joshua Oppenheimer may see similarities to the spectacular THE ACT OF KILLING and THE LOOK OF SILENCE. Moral quandaries ahoy – don’t miss any of them!
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So that’s it Edd Fans. All my themes. If you have any you’d like to add to the pile, comment below. Or stick a post on our Facebook wall – we always like that. But til next time Edd fans … stay fans.
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