Cromarty, Black Isle, 2-4 December 2011

CROMARTY is a small town perched on the tip of the Black Isle, known to most people because of its regular mention in the shipping forecast.

That may be changing, though as with every passing year, the Cromarty Film Festival’s reputation grows and grows – this year it was third on The Big Issue’s “Best Things To Do in Scotland” list for the week.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs

Like all the best things in life it runs on enthusiasm. The steering committee share a passion for film which borders on the messianic. Undeterred by the lack of an actual cinema, they show films anywhere and everywhere. Outside, on a convenient gable end wall, or the Cromarty lighthouse. Indoors in cafes, the converted Stables arts centre and Resolis village hall. Once, memorably, on the ferry which carries one car in solitary splendour across the narrows of the Cromarty firth to Nigg. Any sizeable object round here is, in the first weekend of December, likely to find itself covered in projected images.

The programme is always eclectic, full of hidden gems and half-forgotten treasures. Fellini’s 8½, chosen by ‘Inbetweeners’ producer Chris Young, was a revelation to those who hadn’t seen it before and as fresh and exciting as ever to those who had. The same couldn’t quite be said of Bridesmaids which followed it, but it was nonetheless one of the better Hollywood comedy offerings in recent years with its wry look at female friendships and American rituals. I laughed – a lot.

Brilliance of an entirely different kind was on offer the next day when director Kenneth Glenaan introduced Summer starring Robert Carlyle in a role which his Hollywood agent would probably have thrown straight into the bin, that of a semi-literate carer. Glenaan, director of episodes of Spooks and Being Human, started his career as an actor alongside Carlyle, and perhaps this friendship was the key to the star’s nuanced, sensitive, very moving performance. A film which should be shown in all teacher training colleges.

The Sunday finale at Resolis Hall was, as last year, preceded by vast quantities of curry and a free glass of wine.  That alone made a £5 ticket price look like good value, yet there was more to come, a screening of Micmacs, chosen and introduced by author Ian Rankin. The film, aiming at the same targets as Wikileaks, delicately and effectively skewered them by the charming device of wrapping them up in a 21^st century fable told with a generous sprinkling of fantasy and humour, illiuminated by the central performance of Dany Boon. Fellini’s legacy, purely on the evidence of this and the entire Cromarty Film Festival, endures.

© Jennie Macfie, 2011

Links

Cromarty Film Festival