Eden Court Theatre Cinemas, 15-18 November 2007

Seachd - The Inaccessible Pinnacle.

AT LAST the depth, range and quality of programming which has developed at Eden Court in recent times has a magnificent new home in The Playhouse and La Scala cinemas. This year’s festival heralds a new beginning not only in the opening of two supremely comfortable state of the art cinemas but in the possibilities of programming in two unique spaces, each with its own distinct character.

The warmth and intimacy of both venues provide a welcome alternative to the retail park experience of film, with a programme that reflects an ongoing commitment to providing access to the very best in world cinema.

Following their successful collaboration on the 4th Inverness Film Festival in 2006, co-directors Paul Taylor and Matt Lloyd have continued to develop the festival as a focus for Highlands and Islands filmmaking in a UK and international context.

Our unique location is the basis for inspirational storytelling through film and in a focus year of Highland Culture there is no better time to examine, affirm and redefine our visual culture in a global context.

The potential for collaboration between visiting filmmakers was also an important aspect of this year’s festival, with focused discussion on the future of Gaelic cinema both sides of the Atlantic. Workshops, masterclasses, discussion and screenings including eight Scottish and two UK premieres succeeded in delivering an exciting and incredibly diverse programme with many memorable highlights.

The Scottish Premiere of the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men christened the new La Scala cinema as the first screening on opening night. Beautifully shot to the point where you feel like you’ve got Texas dust and arterial spray in your eyes, the film is a thriller memorable for its characterisation and offbeat humour.

Featuring Kelly MacDonald, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson and Javier Bardem the film is driven by the tension of pursuit. The turbulent expanse of the Texan landscape provides a setting of visual unrest for the opening scenes of a drug deal gone horribly wrong.

Brolin’s performance as Llewelyn Moss is beautifully understated and is matched perfectly by Kelly MacDonald as his naïve wife. Bardem is the personification of cool psychotic menace as Anton Chigurh, although this role doesn’t display the range and depth seen in earlier work such as The Sea Inside. Bardem does deranged so well that he may now be in danger of typecasting.

The opening night mystery screening offered the opportunity to experience a film you would not see on wide release and encouraged the audience to take a chance on the unknown. La Antena is a visually stunning film combining live action and animation in homage to the language of silent film, German Expressionism and the surreal vision of Luis Buñuel with particular reference to Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic Metropolis.

The second feature by Argentinian director Esteban Sapir, the film took 11 weeks to shoot and a year to complete. This was clearly time well spent in post production layering image and text to achieve an extraordinary creative vision which you could spend the rest of your life analysing.

Pared down to black and white, with silent screen fade outs and the ever present hum of a clicking projector Sapir returns to techniques and soundtrack from the early years of cinema.

Inventive use of subtitles that interact with the action on screen, imagery presented as montage and the visible mechanics of animation create a vintage feel in an incredibly sophisticated and relevant contemporary film.

A modern fable for a digital age this film pays homage to film making of the past creating its own unique aesthetic in the process. The artificial world of the city seen through falling snow is exquisitely beautiful, fantastic and inventive.

The film’s imagery is both lyrical and angular, ranging from whimsical humour to hard social and political critique. The whole film affirms the most precious gift we possess in any age; imagination, reflected not only in Saphir’s creative process but in the choice of this film for opening night of the festival.

Education sessions during the festival including Animate Yourself-Animation Techniques, Techniques For Film Makeup for 9-12 year olds, Video Image Creation and Projection and Creating and Manipulating Images for over 15’s were complimented by screenings of 10 animated shorts as part of Tallest Story Awards.

Gaelic speaking primary school students from Dunvegan on Skye, Gairloch, Newtonmore, Islay and Stoneybridge in South Uist created five animated stories using a variety of techniques from black and white silhouettes, drawn image, fabric collage and mixed media.

These were shown alongside 5 animated films from rural India with over 5000 children in Scotland and India voting for their favourite film from each country.

Students from Newtonmore Primary were awarded the trophy for their film The Raven Stone, while 15 Gond artists from Bhopal India were awarded the trophy for their animated short The Best of the Best. The exploration of tribal stories and language through animation brought together storytelling traditions from Scotland and India with films translated into five regional Indian languages in addition to Hindi, English and Gaelic.

Placing Gaelic language in the context of world culture through the art of film was strongly reinforced by screenings and discussion at the festival. Saturday’s discussion “Is there a future for Gaelic Cinema?” chaired by Ishbel Maclennan (BBC Alba) brought together components of film production including funding, distribution and creation for a stimulating and timely debate.

Panelists included Simon Miller (director of Seachd), Nona MacDermid Marc Almon (repectively producer and writer & director of Nova Scotian 8 minute Gaelic Short Faire Chalum Mhic Leòid), Margaret Cameron from Seirbheis nam Meadhanan Gaidhlig (the Gaelic Media Service) and Martin Goff from Soda distributors, London.

The discussion introduced many issues relating to independent filmmaking. With the advent of DVD’s the life cycle of films beyond opening week at the cinema has greatly expanded, the internet, open market sites like YouTube and advances in technology mean that filmmaking is more accessible than ever before.

Reaching an audience beyond the multiplex is entirely possible through the creation of an online dialogue between filmmakers and their audience. Establishing an economy around Creative Industries such as Gaelic filmmaking and linking improvements in education to future development of the sector is of great importance.

Establishing partnerships or collaboration between artists and creative resources in Canada and Scotland will allow the momentum generated by films such as Seachd: The Inaccessable Pinnacle and Faire Chalum Mhic Leòid to be sustained and developed.

The universal appeal of storytelling through independent film has an increasing market worldwide and the need to create contemporary stories in Gaelic was discussed. The tendency to relegate the language and its culture to the past is an issue that all Gaelic Arts must address in order to maintain a living tradition. The discussion raised many questions relevant not just to Gaelic filmmaking but how culture is nurtured in a wider sense.

One of the pleasures of film festival screenings is the rare opportunity to see a selection of shorts. Two screenings Alt Highland: Shorts I & II featured a diverse range of films with Highland connections including Newspaper by Robert Goodwin, Sea of Glass by Donald Blair, Run Tony Run! by Simon Grohe and Scott Graham’s excellent Shell (20min 2007).

Graham’s second short film about a young woman set in an isolated petrol station manages depth and craftsmanship that films many times its length often fail to deliver. Minimal dialogue concentrates our attention upon human interaction in the story and the camera dwells beautifully on small details that add to the audience’s understanding of a scene. Shell is a film that shows great promise and I look forward to seeing Graham’s technique develop in future short and feature length productions.

Sunday’s screenings in Shorts 2 focused on artist’s films shot on 16mm and 8mm including a rare short by Orcadian artist Margaret Tait, The Big Sheep (Coara Mor) (1966), This Is My Land by Ben Rivers (2006) and two films by Matt Hulse, Sine Die (1994) and Hotel Central (2000).

A graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee, Hulse’s wonderfully edgy and surreal style in Hotel Central juxtaposes soundtrack and image to unsettling affect. The use of time lapse gives the whole film a stilted rhythm and intense energy all of its own.

A significant feature of this year’s programme was the presence of filmmakers to introduce or discuss their work including Arni Olafur Asgeirsson, Oliver Parker, Neil Jack, Cameron Fraser, Nona MacDermid and Marc Almon.

Audience contact with film makers and the opportunity to ask questions and discuss their work is a vital and fascinating component of any festival. Saturday’s Animation Masterclass with Ko Lik Films’ Neil Jack and Cameron Fraser provided an intriguing insight into the process of stop motion animation with screenings of their Scottish BAFTA award winning film The Tree Officer and Haunted Hogmanay.

The UK premiere of Icelandic director Arni Olafur Asgeirsson’s Thicker Than Water was another highlight of this year’s festival. This is a film that offers no gift-wrapped ending but is a beautifully realised study of what Asgeirsson described in his post screening discussion as “the damage of secrets” inherited by the next generation.

The relationships on screen are brought to life by a fine cast and the actions of characters however flawed are infused with such empathy that it is impossible not to have an emotional investment as their lives unravel. It is a compelling film that raises infinitely more questions than it answers, true to the complexity and often destructive nature of human behaviour.

Oliver Parker’s comedy-drama I Really Hate My Job has the intense quality of a stage play centring on the lives of five women working in a Soho restaurant. Concentrated within the interior setting and in the heat of a London summer the film features an excellent ensemble cast with Shirley Henderson, Alexandra Maria Lara, Anna Maxwell Martin, Oana Pellea and Neve Campbell.

The invisibility of three waitresses and two kitchen hands becomes a study in how we see ourselves laced with hysterical humour. With insipid chick flicks or underwritten support roles for women aplenty in mainstream cinema it is refreshing to see female characters define a film.

Castells, a debut feature by German director Gereon Wetzel, is an unexpectedly engaging film. This documentary centres on the Colla Joves of Catalonia as they compete with other communities to build the highest human tower. The camera work in this film cleverly progresses with the action drawing the audience in until we can see and feel the quivering tension in limbs and on faces holding up a mass of human bodies.

The audience becomes as involved as the filmed spectators, gasping as the tower starts to sway. Shots from the town’s balconies are particularly well composed, giving a sense of scale to the human drama below. As the camera captures the training, commitment and cooperation necessary to build the towers it equally defines the human qualities that could make the tower fall.

A film of great beauty and charm is Caramel by Lebanese director Nadine Labaki. Dedicated to her home city of Beirut, Labaki’s portrayal of the lives of four women working in a beauty shop is both intimate and personal, enveloping the viewer in an emotive circle of warmth and humour.

A hugely enjoyable and at times deeply poignant film, it reminds us of universality of love and human experience irrespective of culture or language. Labaki is a wonderful storyteller creating a film of subtlety through careful observation, capturing every nuance of expression in life and on screen.

In total contrast Saviours Square by Polish directors Krzysztof Krauze and Joanna Kos-Krauze is a bleak vision of urban life and social disintegration, relentless in its portrayal of individual isolation and despair. Grainy and drenched in the cold colours of winter, the film evokes a human scene of loneliness and loss familiar on the streets of all the world’s cities, and implies the ease with which our fortunes can be altered by “the maliciousness of fate”.

The film’s vision of family life is presented in terms of selfishness, manipulation and emotional violence with a strong sense of inevitability pervading the film, ending as it began in tragedy. Any hope of redemption through responsibility is negated by the overwhelming feeling of an endless cycle at work. This is a difficult film to watch but a story that is painfully relevant and needs to be told.

Although screenings such as the closing night gala The Assassination of Jesse James by The Coward Robert Ford starring Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Mary Louise Parker and Sam Shepard were well attended, less well known productions deserved a wider audience.

No doubt the reopening of Eden Court overshadowed promotion of the festival, and box office teething problems are still being resolved. IFF by virtue of its programming has the potential to become a destination but a much stronger and more integrated approach to marketing is required to equal that vision.

Where filmmakers are not well known it is essential to encourage audiences to take a chance on viewing films they might not immediately be drawn to. The introduction of a festival pass, online booking with payment, wider distribution of the festival brochure and easier navigation on the Eden Court website would go some way to promoting wider public access.

This year’s festival was thoroughly entertaining, engaging and challenging and a solid platform for future development of independent cinema in the North.

© Georgina Coburn, 2007

Links

• Inverness Film Festival
• Eden Court Theatre