The Stables and other venues, Cromarty, 30 November – 2 December 2012

THE FIRST weekend in December starts with mulled wine in a boat store and ends with curry and malt whisky in Resolis.

IN BETWEEN there are screenings of an eclectic selection of films, so eclectic it’s hard to pick out a common thread. Not so surprising when you see who’s chosen them – this year the guests are a human rights lawyer turned screenwriter (Paul Laverty), a comedian who’s also an author (Rhona Cameron), a fireman turned horologist and automata expert (Michael Start) and an armourer (Carl Summersgill).

Zeffirelli's La Traviata

The guest whose screenings sold out in a matter of minutes, however, is that national icon of tea-drinking, pipe-smoking and political integrity, hereditary peer turned Labour politician, Tony Benn. Or ‘God’, as director Don Coutts calls him.

He’s here to talk about the documentary film of his life story, currently in production, entitled Last Will and Testament, of which an extended trailer has been made exclusively for the Festival. It’s screened again the following morning, introduced by its producer, Sanjay Kumar; it’s already plain this is going to be an inspiring and, judging by the surreptitious deployment of handkerchiefs, moving account of someone once described as “the most dangerous man in Britain”. “I got a death threat the other day”, he confides cheerfully. “I hadn’t had one for ages – I was so chuffed’.

Benn’s words have a ringing clarity that is generally lacking in today’s carefully groomed and focus-grouped politicians. He walks through a room that symbolises his life and reminisces about discovering that ‘being in government is not about changing things but about running the system better’. Unforgettable.

Michael Start's Maraccas Monkey and a head from Hugo (Jennie Macfie)

But this film festival is as full of unforgettable moments as a Christmas pudding is full of dried fruit. The workshops by masters of their craft are enthralling glimpses behind the curtain – who could fail to be beguiled by Michael Start’s antique automata? The cat that shines boots, the maraccas monkey, the rabbit in the cabbage and the tiny feathered singing bird in a silver snuffbox outshine even his tales of working for Scorsese on Hugo .

This year for the first time the Screen Machine has rolled up to Cromarty as a venue. It’s a big lorry which expands, Tardis-lke, into a small but comfortable screening room and every year brings film to communities across the outer reaches of the Highlands and Islands, tens or hundreds of miles from the nearest cinema.

On Friday night it’s sold out for Benn and for his choice, Brassed Off‘, and nearly full for the late nighter, The Woman in Black. Beyond the queues outside waiting to buy their popcorn are the lights of oilrigs in the Cromarty Firth. Meanwhile, just around the corner, short films are screening on the curved tower of the Cromarty Lighthouse, their reflections flickering on the rain slicked street. You just don’t get this in Cannes, or Sundance…

Archive screenings at the Old Brewery (Jennie Macfie)

The other venues are even more atmospheric. The Festival Hub at the Old Brewery has a large-ish room upstairs where the projector is ingeniously and effectively slung from the roof beams in a supermarket shopping basket. It becomes a time machine as archive films reveal a time when heavy horses pulled milk carts through the cobbled streets of Edinburgh and the tones of Harry Enfield’s Mr Chumleigh-Warner were commonplace.

Scottish ‘couthy films’ are screened inside tiny local restaurant Sutor Creek, and the old Stables up the hill shows films as diverse as Zefffirelli’s luscious, extravagant La Traviata and the 2012 remake of Clash of the Titans (its armourer, Carl Summersgill, lets pre-film workshop attenders wield a real sword).

The grand finale in Resolis Hall sold out nearly as quickly as Tony Benn’s event. A screening of Ken Loach’s The Angel’s Share, partly set in the Balblair distillery, a long term supporter of the festival, is, after curry from Gabi’s in Avoch and a raffle drawn by Rhona Cameron, introduced by its writer, Paul Laverty. He closes with a salute to the Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi, banned and imprisoned purely because his work does not please his government; the audience raises a toast to Panahi in Balblair ’02. It’s a typically Cromarty Film Festival moment, a mashup of wildly contrasting cultures that works, because it all comes from the heart.

© Jennie Macfie, 2012

Links

• Cromarty Film Festival