The beauty of documentary is that no matter how brilliant an author or how talented a screenwriter, there really is no competing with real life. In the case of Joyce McKinney, no author in the world could even begin to dream such a surreal tale.
Part of the 31st Cambridge Film Festival’s retrospective on the Dutch film director Jos Stelling, THE ILLUSIONIST (1984) sets the spectator straight away into an oneiric world in pure Fellinian vein.
In 1909, the Electric Cinema in Birmingham opened, and through the decades, wars, eras and films, took on different titles and roles within the film exhibition world, finally now remaining the longest running cinema in the UK. Tom Lawes’ THE LAST PROJECTIONIST is in essence the story of this cinema.
Romanian master Lucian Pintilie constructs a “Theatre of the Absurd” darker and more acerbic than any from Eugene Ionesco’s imagination.
Set in an unspecified near future, Croatian director Nevio Marasovic’s THE SHOW MUST GO ON begins with a daunting play on the familiarity of a certain reality television show; a handful of contestants stuck in an enclosed space where their every move is exposed to both a variety of cameras and projected to thousands of baying voyeurs.
The Dutch entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Academy Awards (though it didn’t make the final shortlist), TIRZA stars Gijs Scholten van Aschat as Jörgen Hofmeester, a weary, bemused man who is deemed superfluous both at work and at home, not least by his demanding ex-wife.
Attempting a somewhat strict dogmatic stance to the state, or lack there of, of nuclear power stations and their rigorous maintenance, Volker Sattel’s second documentary is a serene, sterile and stimulating assessment of such a hotly debated subject in modern society.
Jim Ross reviews Christoph Hochhäusler’s THE CITY BELOW (UNTER DIR DIE STADT), an interesting film with some fine acting performances that falls slightly short due to its muddled approach to a serious but confused script.
Claire Henry reviews David Fincher’s ZODIAC (2007) which expands and extends on the 2005 feature about the Zodiac serial killer, THE ZODIAC.
Every year at CFF we screen a surprise film. Nobody except Tony Jones knows what the film will be until the very last minute. We like to have a stab at writing up a preview anyway. That’s the way we roll.
