More excellent UK shorts were being shown at the Stevenson Theatre to start off this, the last day of the Festival, at the British Museum today.

Films such as ‘Companion of Kings’, about the people who frequent the dog tracks, somewhat of a hidden British tradition, and ‘Peter in Radioland’, a mish-mash of styles overlapping to create a representation of the closing-in world of Peter, an ex-teacher retreating into the safe, non-modernised world of “analogue”, were indicative of experimental styles of documenting experience. They often used voiceovers of the subjects, played over images of them not speaking, which gave the effect that they were sending you their thoughts.

A slight sense of déjà vu as we started this afternoon’s pieces with ‘Pollphail’, a brief piece about the abandoned and never-used purpose-built Pollphail village in Scotland, built to house the army of oilrig builders that never came, their usefulness becoming moot as the industry changed while their homes were being built. An artist, Mick McCraw, was building models and creating an exhibition of disappearing photographs of the empty buildings. The village looked coincidentally like that spraypainted in style by Agents of Change at Wednesday’s Horse Hospital showing of ‘The Ghostvillage Project’, so if the landlord really was keeping the location secret, as Timid was suggesting, the secret could be out. (EDIT: It is.) It’s exciting when these visual links are made and stories overlap – the bigger picture of the UK as a whole.

It was refreshing to sit in the reclaimed Horse Hospital building in Bloomsbury last night and enjoy some UK shorts. As Festival Director Patrick Hazard explained, there sadly haven’t been enough UK features to dominate at our venues, but there are an abundance of exciting short pieces. The films were all between five and twenty minutes long, meaning the evening was fantastically varied and stimulating.

Part 1 of this evening started with the unlisted, quirky and timely ‘Credit Crunch’, which featured individuals giving sound bytes about their most personal possession, their purse, with stories entertaining and touching forming along the way, despite the owners of the purses not being pictured. James Newton’s ‘The Space You Leave’ (2009) was even more affecting, telling the personal stories of mothers and fathers and their families left in a limbo of unknowing when their children, in this case their sons, disappear without trace.  Neither of the mothers, expressing their feelings of loss, could bear to look at the camera, although Tim Reilly, whose son has been missing for far longer, and whom was featured in another documentary last year, could look at us directly and imploringly and enquire about his son. Read the rest of this entry »

Still photography is a new addition to the Festival this year, with an exhibition at the Free Word Center – Salt Water Tears by award winning photographer Munem Wasif – during the Festival, reminding us of the potency of the simple photograph: sans voiceover, sans split screen, but still a lasting effect. The Shoot Experience runs fantastic photography competitions with an edge that I’ve been wanting to participate in for ages. You pay to register, then get a group of friends together, give yourself a funny group name, and head off round the chosen area of London with your cameras with a pre-written story and take pictures of your interpretations of the answers. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Playground’, Libby Spears’ 78 minute expose on the child sex industry, has been aptly programmed in to coincide with the Filmmaking for Social Change: Pakistan series at the next-door Stevenson theatre. The childish cartoon illustrations immediately give way to a damning story of an American who paid to get himself off the charge of child sex offender after opening a child abuse establishment – one of the 25% of child sex tourists who are US citizens. We are then brought back to the US to meet those fighting the shockingly thriving child sex industry there – this isn’t a film about “somewhere else” as many on this side of the Equator presuppose documentary filmmaking to be about, but instead is focussed on the Western world. Read the rest of this entry »

In the newly-refurbished (and looking rather sparkly) Lumière at the Institut Francais, this surprising film was partially, it seemed, a Taarab music video, and partially an extended interview with legendary midwife, healer and singer Bi Kidude, there is very little interference from the filmmaker; no voiceovers, no direct interviews, no talking heads, no background information on what you’re seeing. In fact, the role of the panel that sat onstage afterwards consisting of a Research Fellow studying questions of identity in Zanzibar amongst of the places, and an Ethnomusicologist from SOAS, seemed to be to enlighten us as to what we had spent 85 minutes watching and enjoying; the instruments, traditions and languages of the amazing Taarab singers and musicians. Much of the film reflected the slow pace of life in Zanzibar: playing dominoes with other musicians; cycling along the not-too-busy market streets; fishing in the azure sea, before later images reflected the professional life of the musicians, originally court players until the revolution in the 1920s when this heavily-layered style of music was reinvented for the people with similarly lavish court-style-size orchestras of violins, basses and zithers, playing at large gatherings, weddings, and street concerts. At all times, fun seemed to be being had. The first female singer was a woman who sang a sad song about happiness, a typical Taamar subject, occasionally opening her beautiful violet eyes and gently dancing. The next was Bi Kudude herself, a tiny, wizened old lady with the voice and presence of Nina Simone, Read the rest of this entry »

The 64-minute Isolation is a mixture of telling clips and camera shots as Directors Joseph Bull and Luke Seomore follow ex-soldier Stuart Griffiths around the country interviewing fellow ex-servicemen about their experiences since leaving the army, mostly after injury. Shot in extreme clarity and focus, uncomfortable notes rising as a disconcerting, disconnected voice matter-of-factly lists the detritus of modern life, following with the disturbing fact that ‘it’s easy to disappear among them’. We creep slowly into the subject matter; ex-soldier Stuart Griffiths travels seemingly through the night and into day, interviewing homeless and dispossessed ex-soldiers. Read the rest of this entry »

‘Space Tourists’ by Christian Frei won this year’s Best Documentary Director Award at the Sundance Film festival, and this eclectically structured piece highlights both the dream of mankind to reach the stars and the divisions that exists between rich and poor as represented by their aspirations in connection to that dream. The film mainly tells the story of Anousheh Ansari, a wealthy businesswoman who ploughed $20million of her own money into an 8-day stay on the International Space Station, and, to a lesser extent, that of Charles Simonyi, co-creator of Word and Excel, who is twice visitor to the Station and well versed in the practices of space training. Following them, literally picking up the scraps of their experience, are the inhabitants of rural Kazakhstan, building shepherding hides and selling scrap from the pieces of the rocket engines that fall, spent, to the ground after the rockets take off from Baikonur Cosmodrome. Read the rest of this entry »