Sundance and other goodies

So I’ve been away for a little while – working hard, travelling and more – which has led to me regretfully neglecting the blogging. However it’s the beginning of the year and we are slipping into my favourite season – good film time. As all the key award ceremonies, and a number of important festivals, creep closer, there is no more exciting time to be writing about film.

I started this article about Sundance a little while ago, but am going to lock it down today.

70 shorts were chosen from 6092 submissions, which was an 8% increase from last year. Sundance has an incredible reputation for discovering the hottest directing talent when it comes to shorts – and while it does seem to be especially welcoming to celebrities getting behind the camera (it is Robert Redford’s festival after all), I have usually been able to discover a gem from someone whom I wouldn’t have expected.

One day I’ll get to Sundance, but it won’t be this year. However, due to the high profile nature of many of the shorts (and the fact that a number sit outside the traditional distribution system, and are designed as exposure seeking calling cards rather than commercial properties) there is a good chance of seeing a large part of the programme online. The festival had a partnership with iTunes last year which saw them release a number of the shorts for download through the portal during the festival – alas I don’t think it’s running again this year. In the interim, I thought I’d give you the lowdown on my most anticipated shorts, and point you in the direction of some interesting works from different directors’ back catalogues.

The fact that this year’s programme will showcase James Franco’s directing debut has dominated the headline of most articles dealing with the programme. I hope his film “Herbert White” lives up to the expectations that have inevitably been bestowed on it. In terms of theme, we know that “Based on a poem by the same name, a man struggles with his inner demons while trying to live a normal family life”. Is it a poem by Frank Bidart that inspired the film, a poet that Franco discovered at college:

“This teacher brought it into class, and everybody was kinda shocked. It’s very dark and it’s about this guy. He’s a murderer, a necrophiliac, and it’s in a poem, right?” said Franco. “What struck me is that it’s a kind of a confessional poem, or a dramatic monologue. It’s as if the poet is using this crazy man as a mask to express certain feelings and go to an extreme place where those feelings could be felt.”


He later met Bidart, who told him that he’d based the poem on a case study he’d read and injected his own feelings about being a young gay man in the closet. Michael Shannon, who is most memorable for me as the mentally unstable son of the neighbour in Revoutionary Road, plays the lead.

Also in the US dramatic shorts category is Family Jewels by Martin Stitt. Stitt himself is British and a very interesting character. We spent some time together at the Tampere Film Festival in 2006 (notably at the airport), where his first short film ‘What does your Daddy do?’ was showcased. Stitt and I bonded rather quickly when we realised we’d both been to Oxford (where I remembered reading about his success in the student newspaper), and had much to discuss about abandoning the traditional Oxford career paths in favour of film. Stitt had actually started out as a banker, whilst maintaining a keen interest in photography. He eventually left banking to travel the world as a press photographer, which evolved into his directing of shorts. Whilst perhaps not the most financially sound career diversion (at least at that stage), he said that he was incredibly happy with his decision. Hence I’m really very pleased that he’s not a one short wonder, and that his next film is making waves. I can't embed 'What does your Daddy Do?' but you can watch it fromthe UK here

The anticipation for another short by Spike Jonze is not unexpected, with stills being leaked just last week. Jonze is really incredibly inventive filmmaker – I haven’t liked all of his stuff, but the things I do like, I really like. One of his lesser known works is ‘How they get there’ – directly inspired by a certain scene in Paris, Texas, but with rather more tragicomic consequences.




Of course more recently Jonze’s talents were brought to our attention for his work with Kanye West. ‘We were once a fairytale’ had all the ingredients to light up the blogsosphere, an apparently coded mea culpa after Kanye’s unwelcome outburst at Taylor Swift, this film shows him in self-aware mode, his flaws on display like open wounds. It’s official posting on Vimeo was taken down, for some reason, so I’m embedding it from somewhere random:



Here is your trailer from 'I'm here'



Rob and Valentyna in Scotland comes to us from London-based US director Eric Lynne. Signed to the supercool Partizan production company, his short film ‘Neighbour’ is a classic and shows a talent for comedy that I imagine has only improved in the 4 years since Neighbour:



Jim Owen is another London-based filmmaker I met during my Future Shorts days. Working for commercial production company BCD, Jim teamed up with Chris Durban to direct a Straight8 film, ‘Class of 2005’. Straight8 is a great scheme leading the super8 revival – directors entering the competition shoot their 3 minutes of film and are not allowed any editing. They add sound separately and the first time they watch the finished production is with their audience. Some of the best films have been taken to Cannes for a showcase in recent year. Once of the best Straight8 films I’ve ever seen is Heel by Mexican Director Diego Arredondo, but Class of 2005 is one of the most eloquent and touching. The images fit perfectly with the texture of Super8, and the choice of haunting music is excellent:

Class of 2005



Trailer for ‘Can we Talk?’



Finally, it’s worth giving a shout out to David O’Reilly for his short ‘Please say Something’. Depicting a troubled relationship between a cat and a mouse set in the distant future, this animation is the latest in a series of cyberpunk neon adventures from the Berlin-based Irish director who won the Golden Bear at Berlin last year. Whilst in my own heart, for some reason there is something stopping me from warming to O’Reilly’s warped and witty technicolour style (I was definitely in the minority during the Berlin Film Festival screening), I know that this guy is going to be a huge talent in the years to come.



Update 24.01.10: Anticipation for the Spike Jonze short has gone up yet another notch: read this

Update 25.01.10: More shorts now online courtesy of Sundance!

Also learned that Jonze's short was produced with Absolut Vodka - brands funding short films is becoming a more and more common business model.

Music videos that got me high this week

This is currently my ultimate playlist for starting Saturday night:

MSTRKRFT – Featuring John Legend from vincent haycock on Vimeo.

Hard to Swallow

Another great treasure from the archives - someone shuold really put this on YouTube to get it more exposure.

MyMovie MashUp Short Film Entry

A Shaded View on Fashion Film

Following on from my article on Diane Pernet earlier this year, I attended her Fashion Film festival yesterday, catching the Competition sections entitled 'Reflection' and 'Communication'. The festival aims to showcase moving image works featuring fashion, a domain so traditionally associated with the still image. I think it's a great idea and I saw some massively inspiring clips. Below are some of my favourites and you can read more about the festival here.

Way Too Blue - Pelican Video

This blew me away - takes fashion advertising to a whole new level, although I wish I could have appreciated it when it came out (05/06) and the track wasn't overplayed!



Gareth Pugh AW09 - Ruth Hogben

This is what happens when 2 immensely talented creators join forces - astounding, especially at 6:40.



Mareunol's Nightmares

This struck a chord - love the girl hanging on the washing line.

Flora Gucci - Chris Cunningham

Was a bit disappointed to realise that this was an ad at the end! But Chris Cunningham strikes gold again.



Making of



Le Coq Sportif - Born to Film

Alas this isn't available to embed but you can watch it here. It was less the video than the incredible music that enchanted me here. The track (Boxon Say Hello by Eclier) is available to hear on Spotify.

Finally I was dazzled by "Chapter 12: Velvet Revolution" by Andrea Splisgar - it was premiered at the festival and unsurprisingly isn't available online yet but as soon as it is, I'll let you know.

Looking forward to the Award Ceremony at the Pompidou Centre now on October 8th...

About Elly

Last night I went to see this rather good Iranian film.

Incidentally, with that little phrase I am excited to possibly announce the beginning of a new era of good international cinema, which should usher out the strange urges I've had to see American toss recently.

I don't think I would have plumped for it had I not seen the trailer a coupe of weeks earlier, and observed that it looked like a pretty interesting thriller. I've been telling myself to check out some Iranian cinema for a while, and this seemed like a good starting point.

The below review may contain some plot spoilers, although nothing will be revealed that you can't already gauge from the trailer, and I won't reveal the end, of course.

At the time of writing, no UK distributor has picked it up, so any UK readers may well forget anything I reveal by the time it comes out on DVD.

So the story begins with a large group of couples (4, I think), plus some small children, arriving at a remote beach cottage where they plan to spend the weekend. Aside from the couples, there are 2 single people there - the rather dishy Ahmad, and Elly, the tutor of key character Sepideh's children. It turns out that following Ahmad's divorce, Sepideh is keen to set them up.

Everything is going well until the following day Elly confirms that she was only able to stay one night and needs to leave. But Sepideh implores her to stay. Before Elly's proposed departure, she is asked to keep an eye on the children for a little while. Suddenly one child runs over to the parents, very distressed, and shouting her brother's name. He is in the sea and in danger. Thus ensues a mad dash to rescue him. As soon as they have pulled him out of the water they realise that Elly was supposed to be watching the children, and she too is missing. The rest of the film revolves around trying to figure out what happened to Elly - is she in the water or could she have left without telling anyone? A web of intrigue ensues.

It's a fairly classic thriller narrative but I really enjoyed watching it play out in unfamiliar territory. I've never really seen Iran on screen, except in the news. It interested me to see that while some features were unexpectedly western (our key characters are all very pleasing to the eye), and others more predictably Iranian, they didn't shy away from some uncomfortable situations and, dare I say it, stereotypes - for example, two of the women are at different points humiliated by their husbands (indeed, the likeable Sepideh is physically attacked) in front of their friends. I might have expected that a film with international ambitions would attempt to dispel this myth about a husband's dominance over his wife in Iran. Furthermore, Sepideh's abusive husband looks considerably older than her which raises some eyebrows about how on earth she may have ended up with him.

All in all I really enjoyed the film - for the first time in a while I didn't feel the 2 hours drag - and I'm recommending it. A deserved winner of the Silver Bear at Berlin this year - I hope it can translate festival success into a healthy international audience (hmm).

Les Regrets

I had been secretly looking forward to this film for a while: I'd enjoyed Yvan Attal in 'Ma femme est une actrice' and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi in '5x2' and I don't mind a decent romantic drama from time to time. So I ended up going to see it with a friend last night, the opening night.

In French there is the perfect word to describe this film - 'bof'. It's an expression of indifference - a bit like saying 'whatever', but not quite.

So the gist is Mathieu (Attal) spots Maya (Bruni-T) from across the street one day. Evidently they know each other. She sees him, doesn't speak to him but ends up inviting him over for a glass of wine. And so, predictably, despite them both being married, begins their affair.

But at every critical turn of the relationship, we have a nice cliched 'volte-face'('about face') where the character leaves the other one and you think it's all over, then halfway down the road they turn around and go back for a passionate clinch.

Lots of sex, as you'd expect from the director of L'Ennui which I saw a while back.

One of the most interesting things about this film was the way it dealt with modern communication - namely, text messages. There was some very classic and European about this film - by which I'm referring to the way that such films are often hard to date, as if they are removed from a time frame. Yet so often contemporary films fail to acknowledge the role of modern communication in our lives: pretty much everyone texts, and emails, and yet we rarely see it on screen. Texts particularly can be so instrumental in the development of a liaison or reltaionship, and yet we just seem to be ignoring them! Maybe LCD screens just aren't sexy enough?

Anyway in this film I was pleasantly startled to see that when the recipient was reading his/her text, we heard a voiceover from the sender. It was a really small thing, but it really stood out, and I liked it. Indeed we did view a screen from time to time, but the voiceover helps to mix it up.

It's very European-naturalistic - very little make-up, lots of tortured faces - both the lead actors look about 10 years older than in the films I mentioned in the first paragraph. But even the direction continues the naturalism with lots of those scenes that are redundant narratively, but help to set the scene. We also avoid confrontation scenes, like the one between Mathieu and his wife which we feel we are building up to. But i like that. Not giving us exactly what we want and expect.

There's nothing remarlable in the plot. I think the title pretty much give it all away. It was an entertaining little ride, but I'm not going to be shouting about it from the rooftops. Perhaps it's for the best that it doesn't look like it's going to make it to anglophone shores any time soon.

Unlimited cinema

About 3 weeks ago now, I finally invested in the unlimited UGC card. For a one-off fee of 30euros, then 19.80 per month, I can now see as many films as I like at UGC/MK2 (chain) cinemas and a selection of independent cinemas in France (and even abroad, where there is a UGC chain) with no restrictions whatsoever. 19.80 is practially nothing for someone like me who can go to the cinema 2 times a week with ease. I don't know how many other countries this exists in, but it doesn't surprise me that France makes the effort to make as much cinema accessible to as many as possible.

But typically, as soon as I get it, I survey the cinematic landscape and realise that there is practially bugger-all interesting on at the moment. I'm hoping tha tit's going to pick up soon though.

In the interest of making this blog more visual, here is a UGC card.