Preview of 26th BFI Lesbian & Gay Film Festival 23rd of March to 1st of April

This is a preview I wrote recently  for What Culture.

After the phenomenal success of last year’s twenty fifth anniversary celebrations, the BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival returns this coming week for its twenty sixth instalment, with another internationally flavoured and diverse line-up.  Last year defied the recession and saw punters turn out to support the ailing festival which was under threat of being scrapped, luckily its back with a ten day slot devoted to the best new, old and experimental queer filmmaking. With a huge line-up of over sixty screenings and handful of talks and debates there is a lot to be seen,  so here I am just going to pick some key highlights and a few personal choices.

Obviously the opening and closing night galas are the most hyped and talked about, and this year it would seem, for especially good reasons. Opening the festivities (for a third time) is Canadian-American director Thom Fitzgerald with Cloudburst, a road movie about two septuagenarian lovers, Stella and Dotty. With Dotty declared legally blind her granddaughter Molly wants her to live out the rest of her days under the watchful eyes of an old people’s home.  Stella, however, has more radical idea; if they make the trip up to Nova Scotia to get married then Molly could no longer interfere with their relationship.  The film has been billed and reviewed as one of the most original and compelling road movies in years, with dazzling performances and beautiful photography, an appropriate return for one of the festival’s best loved filmmakers.

Winding things up on Sunday the 1^st of April will be the debut feature North Sea Texas by Belgian Bavo Defurne, a story of latent adolescent sexuality, which avoids the clichés of a gay desire that has to be punished. Set in small coastal town, Pim has grown up fatherless with an ex-beauty queen mother, whose mind seems more occupied by daydreams than by her young son. Pim’s bourgeoning sexuality find its focus in two disparate places, his older neighbour Gino and his mother’s new lodger the enigmatic and compelling Zoltan, who has also caught his mother’s eye. A tenderly acted and sensitively envisioned film, it is already being hailed as one of the queer films of the year.

American Translation (2010)

Other dramatic highlights include the French story of a chance encounter, and psycho-sexual murder, American Translation twists and distorts the lovers-on-the-run road movie sub-genre with uncomfortable and possibly polarising results.  Treading further down the dark path we find Israeli picture Joe + Belle. Concerning drug dealer Joe, who comes home to her apartment after a trip abroad to find Belle in her bath threatening to kill herself, she reluctantly lets her stay to save her from herself, but with the police hot on their tails it soon becomes clear they can’t stay in the same place for long. Away from the more nihilistic and violent fare, camp finds its ultimate embodiment in Leave it on the Floor a musical set in a world reminiscent of classic new queer cinema doc Paris is Burning. Taking its main aesthetic from the ever popular TV show Glee and musical cues from the worlds of hip hop, house and techno, it tells the story of Brad, recently kicked out of his home after coming out, he accidently falls into the ballroom and drag scene with dramatic, romantic and inevitably toe taping results.

The Erotic Films of Peter De Rome

Besides the big dramas, the festival has gone all out on their documentary strand this year, with a wide variety of subjects covered from the double life of infamous British writer W. Somerset Maugham in Revealing Mr Maugham.   To the trans-male porn star and self- proclaimed ‘man with a pussy’ Buck Angel, and his exploration of trans sexuality in Sexing the Transman. The two most interesting docs however are directly related to the history of queer filmmaking. Fragments: The Incomplete Films of Peter De Rome sees its world premiere in conjunction with the BFI’s DVD release of much his work. De Rome is candidly interviewed about his erotic and experimental films inspired by the French poet Jean Cocteau, accompanied by three of his shorts, a DJ set and on stage interview.  Infamous gay activist, film critic and historian Vito Russo is the subject of Vito by Jeffery Schwarz, which charts Russo’s life and his crucial role in gay activism and the historical revisionism of cinema from a gay perspective, which formed the basis for the Fantastic film The celluloid Closet.

The Celluloid Closet is also the jumping off point for much of this year’s archive screenings, highlights include a rare screening of Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus with the much debated and notorious ‘bath scene’ intact. The bi-sexuality inherent in Olivier’s performance is rendered far from subtle, and was cut out of from the film’s original theatrical release.  Other films returning to the big screen include: Queen Christina from 1933 in which Greta Garbo plays the eponymous 17^th century Swedish monarch, whose choice of dress and desire don’t exactly conform to the hays code.  And perhaps the most famous of early queer Hollywood film’s Morocco  from 1930, starring a tuxedo clad Marlene Dietrich, who’s gender bending performance and knowing looks still elicit the sensation they did all those years ago.

With these and many more delights to be had this year’s festival,  it looks like it’s shaping up to the one of the best conceived so far.

The BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival runs from Thursday the 23^rd of March to Sunday the 1^st of April. See www.BFi.org.uk/llgff for more details and to book tickets.

“Dames are always pulling a Switch on you.” Otto Preminger’s Laura

The long distinguished career of Austro-Hungarian émigré Otto Preminger is peppered throughout with masterpieces, some controversial, some defining their genre and some just plain brilliant examples of subtle nuanced filmmaking.  Laura, a tale of mystery, obsession and murder fits comfortably in the final category, still lulling audiences into its thick web of lies, deceit and doubles.

Gene Tierney plays the elusive Laura, a beautiful advertising executive, whose naive charm and allure entrance every man she comes into contact with. One such man is the film’s narrator Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), a malevolent and spiky newspaper columnist who claims to write his pieces with a ‘goose quill dipped in venom’, Lydecker’s obsession with Laura has come to define his life even after her  unexplained death . The puzzle of Laura’s death is to be solved by Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) a local homicide investigator, but with Laura’s fiancé Shelby (a young Vincent Price) and his older mistress Ann (Judith Anderson) also on the suspect list, McPherson has no idea who to trust and where to turn, even escaping into his own fantasies of the intangible Laura, who’s enigmatic presence comes to dominate every scene.

Along with the likes of Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon this ranks as one the great film noirs of the 40s, a taught subtly structured masterpiece of suspense and intrigue, with sharp acting, cinematography and direction that haven’t aged a day, even sixty years since its original release. Although set in the upper echelons of New York high society, the film possess a certain geographic anonymity lending it a timeless quality, striped of pretension and envisioned in a reserved classical way, Preminger knows when to cut, when to swish pan for effect, and how to build unease. All the elements that make this film great are still here and even more so given a new lease of life in this sumptuous looking restoration by the BFI. Beyond all these great reasons though the film is worth catching on the big screen for Gene Tierney, who unlike Ingrid Bergman, Rita Hayworth and other 40s screen  sirens seems to have faded form popular memory, this was perhaps her most famous and unforgettable role.

Laura  is re-released Friday 17th Feb

The Edge of Heaven: Bombay Beach, American film by Alma Har’el

Life on the poverty line in the American West isn’t the first subject that springs to mind when one thinks about recent American cinema. In times of recession it seems the number one public policy in Hollywood is escapism or at least some level of distraction.  But with the indie set having gone all ‘dark and grim’ at this year’s Sundance festival, establishing  a mood more fitting  for our times, it feels  appropriate to be seeing a film like Bombay Beach rearing its head from last year’s festival circuit, where it proved a surprising hit. Thankfully the film is not crushed under any weight of pitying self- importance, or indeed self-reflexive cries for social justice, it is more uniquely, a pleasant and enthralling hybrid of observance and expression, lending  a fractured and washed up community a portrait defined by its beauty and people rather than its dirt and politics.

Ostensibly the film follows three very different males, who reside in Bombay Beach, a small and insular town, whose namesake is the result of a flood at the turn of the last century.  Red is the first inhabitant we meet, and its looks as though he has been here the longest, a grizzled, hardened man who grew up in the dust bowls of 1930s California, red now makes ends meet by buying cigarettes tax free from an Indian reservation and selling them on. His HD face is rendered beautifully along with rest of Bombay Beach by Alma Har’el’s nuanced and often poetic camera work. Now at the tail end of his twilight years Red offers us a peek into a breed of American that the dream forgot, “Sometimes I wonder where my next meal is coming from, I’ve been like that my whole life... but I sure enjoyed it!” he confesses early on in voice over (the slight but significant touch of never interviewing people directly lends the film much of its floating, montage effect).

 Next we meet Benny Parish, a young resident who has spent his life in and out of foster care, thanks mainly to his dad’s preferred hobby of blowing things up in the desert and spending some time in prison for forming dubious militias. Benny is Hyperactive and possibly bipolar, in one of the film’s many segues away from pure observance, we are shown Benny in a choreographed dance sequence (hangovers from Har’el’s successful career as a music video director), Possessing boundless energy, and an inquisitive nature, if Red is the pessimistic old guard then Benny will be the future, though what form his fate will assume is uncertain.

Perhaps optimism is best espoused by Ceejay, an ambitious black teenager who moved to the area recently form LA to escape his former community, which was dogged by gang violence and dead end opportunities. Ever hopeful of a collage football scholarship and luck in love, Ceejay forms a kind of buoyant centre in a barren and dethatched land bereft of opportunities. Which though shot through with aesthetic beauty seems rotten, especially for the young and the hopeful.

This is not a documentary in the traditional sense; its form and style lend it more palpably to perhaps the essay film, or for the Malick inclined the tone poem. Har’el’s debut feature bears the marks of her past as a photographer; she clearly has a defined and robust aesthetic, but she has also weighed in, through careful observation and surreal touches, an acute account of life on the precipice of society. Whether here by choice or circumstance the inhabitants of this failed relic to social progress are treated not with pandering condescension, or as rhetorical tools in a political back and forth, they are shown in all their colours to be simply people, which makes a change.

Bombay Beach Will be on limited release from Friday 3rd Feb.

Shock Corridor, American film by Samuel Fuller.

This is a piece i wrote for whatculture.com's forgotten B&W film series, it’s not really forgotten by definitely needs to be more widely seen.

Now I realise that this film is not exactly forgotten, indeed it has just been re-released by the Criterion Collection in a lavish DVD/Blu-ray edition, but it isn’t an Easy Rider or Bonnie and Clyde, it’s not a picture that comes straight to mind when one thinks about 1960s American cinema, but it should be. Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor is a primitive, angst ridden allegory, fusing a noir inflected style with intense psychodrama which is still shocking and relevant today, “it has to be seen to be believed”  wrote Andrew Saris in the American cinema, such a phrase is simply apt.

With a performance as smouldering as hot coals, Peter Breck plays investigative journalist Johnny Barrett, an ambitious and daring reporter with his eyes on a Pulitzer Prize. Johnny envisions his prize winning piece as an exposé on a recent murder at a local mental hospital, to get the inside track Johnny has himself committed. With a false story of sexual deviance in place Johnny enters the asylum hoping to uncover the truth, believing there to be three witnesses to the crime he must balance his investigation with the shocking and disturbing behaviour of his interviewees and of life inside.  

Although Fuller has been the darling enfant terrible of cinéphiles the world over for decades, he is a director that has never been assimilated into the mainstream.  His work is too much of its time to be seen as timeless, and he has the unfortunate honour of making some of his best work during the downfall of the classical studio system, which paved the way for New Hollywood movie brats like Coppola, Lucas and Scorsese, ultimately leaving him overshadowed. Though French critics have spouted of his genius since the early 50s, this American master simply does not get the attention he deserves outside of the critical establishment.  If one film of his should bring him to a wider audience it is this one.

From its caustic opening moments to its unhinged crescendo of an ending Shock Corridor is a revelation. A deft combination of cutting social critique and bravura performances, it lifts the lid on American society, equating all of its ugliness: institutional racism, unfounded hyperbolic fears of invasion and unquestioned conformity, with madness. As Johnny is slowly but surely absorbed into the fabric of life inside, the inmate witnesses he questions expose him to a series of gruelling and unpleasant realties. The ‘street’ (the eponymous corridor of the film’s title) becomes a performance space for their fantasies and their delusions, a blank canvass on which to project the fears and anxieties of 1960s America.  One of the most daring and shocking of these comes towards the films close as Trent (Hari Rhodes), the first black student to be admitted to an all-white southern university, has become convinced that white is superior to black. Morphed into the archetypal southern racist, Trent marches the corridor complete with Klan mask in tow, calling for the expulsion and execution of ‘niggers’, that have polluted life in a pure traditional America.  It is testament to Fuller’s daring as a filmmaking that the scene still shocks, in the sanitised world of early 60s Hollywood convention, this scene sticks out like a sore thumb.

But there is more hear to recommend than a sheer distortion of convention, to view Shock Corridor today is to see a filmmaker at the height of his craft, a perfectly pitched level of melodrama and astute eye for claustrophobic composition give the film its real power, such contentious issues in the wrong hands would be rendered cumbersome and overwrought, but Fuller pitches his film perfectly. As a B-movie stylist he was innovative and incomparable, bringing an inventive frankness to bear on all of his subjects, in short he was one of the great post-war directors and is defiantly deserved of any film fans attention.

2011's Top Ten

There is only so much time and there are of course several films out there that I have yet to get around to, so the following is by no means exhaustive, just a sketch of what I liked best this year.

1.      The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)

Undoubtedly one of the most involving and intense experiences I have had at the cinema in a long time. Malick’s epic meditation on the spiritual, the family and the cosmos is rendered beautifully by cinematographer Emanuel Lubezki. In a film which possesses a kaleidoscope of breathtaking images and a stirring orchestral score, there is also a down to earth, humble seriousness rendering many of its quietest moments the most revelatory.

2.      The Decedents (Alexander Payne)

One of the best American filmmakers around today, Alexander Payne weaves an intricate and moving adaption of Kaui Hart Hemmings’ eponymous novel, imbuing its humanist themes with delicacy, brilliantly balancing comedy and pathos.

3.    Las Acacias (Pablo Giorgelli)

A surprisingly arresting debut from Argentina, its deceptive simplicity allows for the slow burn story of two strangers on the road to morph into a poetic and moving little film.

4.      We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsey)

Lynne Ramsey’s return to the big screen was much anticipated and worth the wait, avoiding the what, where and why of a high school massacre, Ramsey turns her attention to the killer’s relationship with Tilda Swinton as Eva, the boy’s mother. Asking difficult questions and shot in an austere way with an expressive colour palate, this is the year’s most unsettling picture and one of the most provocative.

5.      Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn)

A tight, well orchestrated genre movie is lifted further by a slick intelligence, style and existential angst.

6.      Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog)

Werner Herzog’s increasing penchant for documentary has meant him turning out some of his best work, and this is defiantly one of his best non-fiction films, and easily the best 3D film yet.

7.      Weekend (Andrew Haigh)

As fine a romance as I have encountered in recent cinema, this well played and directed British indie is shot through with a joyous lust for life.

8.      Tinker Tailor, Solider spy (Tomas Alfredson)

An atmospheric, dusty and ultimately thrilling adaption of La Carré’s cold war caper, a wordy, grownup tale of deception and detective work with a tremendous central performance from Gary Oldman

9.      Melancholia (Lars Von Trier)

If Von Trier can be accused of anything it is that he never makes a dull film, whether it’s the formal experiments of Dogville or the lunacy of Antichrist he keeps you on your toes. With his latest he doesn’t disappoint, fusing the story of two sisters into a brilliant, tedious, audacious and uneven film which is ultimately a rich and rewarding experience.

10.  The Ides of March (George Clooney)

Further proof that Clooney has some considerable talent behind the camera, the whipped up story of party political electioneering is short, smart and intelligently handled.

Special mentions go to two TV programmes Todd Haynes’ epic adaption of Mildred Peirce and the equally grandiose All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace by Adam Curtis. Cinematically to Midnight in paris and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Las Acacias Argentinean film By Pablo Giorgelli

‘Slow cinema’ has been around for a long time, from King Vidor to Ingmar Bergman, the use of the long take has served several purposes from the sublime to the philosophical, from the mediocre to the downright awful ( I am thinking here precisely of Vincent Gallo’s terrible the Brown Bunny from 2003). Of recent however the style of long takes, natural location and minimal dialogue is back in vogue. Filmmakers like Kelly Reichardt, Gus Van Sant, Bélla Tarr, Alexandr Sokurov and Apichatpong Weerasethakul are perhaps the most notable and popular of the contemporary slow cinema producers. With the success of his debut film Las Acacias Pablo Giorgelli should be added to that list.

A simple and emotionally beguiling road movie is the framework for Las Acacias, Rubén ( played with intensity by Germán de Silva) is a lonely long haul truck driver, he is about to set off on the long journey from Asunción del Paraguay to Buenos Aires. Rubén is joined by Jacinta, who has paid a steep fee to be taken across the border so she may visit her cousin and work in the Argentine capital. There is little to virtually no conversation between the two of them as they slowly but surely make their way from truck stop to roadside cafe on the long, seemingly endless journey across the barren, evocative plains of South America.

Minimalism as a style in the cinema can be decisively bland or stirring, with Las Acacias Giorgelli has produced a film of the latter quality. This is a picture which lulls you into its meditative world, as the embers of a relationship between Rubén and Jacinta are stoked and prodded into life. The two gradually begin to talk; Lucinda’s eight month old daughter who is accompanying them becomes a major point of contact, bringing Rubén out of his prickly shell. In one of the film’s most tentative moments, Rubén, alone with the baby, hushes it from crying, bringing a warmth and humanity to his until now cold machismo exterior. 

This is an assured and poetic film, which posses the maturity of a filmmaker well beyond their debut feature, its simple tale has tinges of loss and longing but builds to an overwhelming sense of hope. If Giorgelli continues down the road of slow cinema it will serve him well and serve us with some cinematic gems in years to come.

Las Acacia will be released in the UK on December 2nd

Zombie Nation

 The following is an article I wrote recently for www.whatculture.com for their 31 days of horror series.

Every film genre has its benchmark moments, game changing films which cause a seismic shift of re-evaluation, altering the way the films of that genre are produced and thought about from then on: Sci-fi has Metropolis (1927) and Star Wars (1977) (though many will argue that George Lucas’ space opera had ramifications well beyond genre cinema); the musical had 42^nd Street (1933), Singin’ In the rain (1952) and Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). However the horror genre can probably lay claim to more twists and turns than any other, but its most challenging, rewarding and downright devastating gift to us is George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead from 1968.

The massing ghouls

As much as I would hope this does not turn into a gushing eulogy (though I fear it might) I must make clear my bias - to my mind Night of the Living Dead is not only one of the great American films but one of the greatest films ever made. This may sound controversial but I hope to justify my claim in the following examination of its place within the genre, and its reaction to the turbulent times of its conception.

Beyond the film’s brilliant ability to scare the pants off viewers lie the core reasons as to why I believe it to be a masterpiece; unlike any horror film to come before, it comes preloaded with a deliberate and cutting socio-political critique, directly engaging with the far from irrational fears and concerns of the time. So often horror films are seen as reactions to the anxieties of their times, the jagged, mentally unstable images of German expressionism are often read as an allegorical reaction of the horrors of WWI, while the paranoia inflected invasion films of the 1950s. most notably Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), purportedly tell of the fears surrounding McCarthyism, communism and the cold war. Distinctly the film Night, is a product of its politically aware times, Romero later commented that the tumultuous times found their way into the picture as a result of the atmosphere on the set, discussions and debates about what was happening in their country. In short Romero attests “it was the sixties.” With Night Romero had not just invented the modern zombie movie but a new breed of astute, socially and politically aware horror films, sparking a golden age for the genre in the 1970s.

A potent examination of the times

At its most base level this is a truly terrifying, inventive and truly bleak horror film. The deceptively simply tale begins with Barbara (Judith O’Dea) and her brother Johnny (Russell Streiner)    visiting their mother’s grave in a secluded cemetery in rural Pennsylvania . Shot in grainy stock,  of  a vérité style, we are given no breathing space as almost immediately Johnny is attacked by an unknown assailant.  Johnny  is knocked unconscious by the lumbering attacker, who then sets his sights on Barbara, pursuing her in an agonisingly drawn out chase to an isolated farm house, where hiding she discovers the half eaten corpse of (presumably) the house’s owner. Fleeing in fright Barbara finds that a group of people similar to her attackers have menacingly gathered outside, advancing slowly but inevitably towards the house, but in a flash our key protagonist Ben (Duane Jones) arrives and gets Barbara back into the house barricading them in. We soon discover there are others hiding out in the house as well, a family: Harry and Helen Cooper (Karl Hardman and Carolyn Eastman) with their daughter Karen (Kyra Schon), who has been badly bitten by one of the marauding creatures, and teenage couple Tom and Judy (Keith Wayne and Judith Ridley). From here  Romero restricts the film to this house with fleeting glimpses of the creatures outside, it becomes less a creature feature in the vein of Universal’s monster cycle of the 1930s, and more a tightly orchestrated siege thriller akin to Howard Hawk’s Rio Bravo (1959). It is a wholly unsettling mixture of gore and tension unlike anything seen before in the horror genre, Romero situates terror as far from the European traditions of Dracula and Frankenstein, and the threats from outer space that pervaded genre films of the 1950s, taking the monstrous and locating it in the backyard of American everyday life. Though this uprooting of traditional setting was pioneered by Hitchcock in 1960’s Psycho, Romero here brings an unflinching realism and pioneering penchant for unadulterated and gruesome special effects, removing any trace of gloss and glamour, any stars and any comfortable resolution to allow the audience a comfortable night’s sleep.

The casting of Duane Jones as the film’s lead was a revelation in itself- although the prominence of Sidney Poitier had meant black actors were becoming a more common sight on the silver screen, it was still relatively unheard of at the time. But while Poitier’s work had themes of racial injustice at its core, they were never so blatant in their condemnation of racial prejudice; perhaps the scariest thing about the film is not the flesh eating ghouls but the relentlessly vicious rednecks and their feral looking attack dogs. The film’s powerful ending, unmatched by anything else in horror before or since, is one of the most heartbreaking and affecting both in its stark brevity and potent political message. When discussing the film’s political aspects this is, quite rightly, an area of major focus, civil rights is defiantly at the top of the film’s agenda, but there are plenty more playful comments on the time found in the film.

Duane Jones as the dommed Ben

One of the film’s best set pieces comes late on, Karen’s bite has incurred spontaneous transformation into a zombie, when her mother Helen come in to check on her she is mercilessly dispatched by Karen with a rusty trowel,  she consumes her with a dead blank stare on her face.  Romero would later comment on the subtext of the scene, that it reflected the youth movement of the time, he became obsessed with idea of a new generation “devouring the old”,  a reflection of the times, and of one of the most un-discussed elements of Romero’s work, his love of black comedy. Beyond this the film has gone on to be interpreted as allegory for the Vietnam War, and an examination into the collapse of the patriarchal nuclear family, the strongest relic of conformist 1950s society.

One could continue pontificating and musing over this densely packed and rich work of Horror cinema and indeed some have, but I will only highly recommend this film as the ultimate choice for your Halloween night’s viewing. It spawned a great many imitators and some terrible reinterpretations, but if you want a genius, visceral fusion of relentless horror and artistic ambition, then look no further than the original and the best.