sneersnipe film review

As the Festival Director put in his introduction to the programme: “…another fine mess”. The 2007 edition of the Cambridge Film Festival may have lacked the easily digestible structure it has had previously but as the Cambridge Film Trust started to flex its muscles, by mess he likely meant transition and where the big two UK film festivals, London and Edinburgh, may still have the lion’s share of the funding for such events, Cambridge possesses a programming brio that money can’t buy. A very fine mess indeed in that case, of the kind that dared to show something new not just titles packing column-inches in Variety.

Befitting a festival with its roots in exhibition, music and the moving image were among the defining moments this year. From the opening event with a pink socks wearing Michael Nyman accompanying Kinopravda 21 and A Propos de Nice through to the Youth Movies live performed soundtrack to a collection of film clips which they cut together themselves, the onus was on film as spectacle and experience. Both these examples were events that can’t be repeated – music no doubt to the ears of the people involved with theatrical cinema exhibition. As the battle between the next generation DVD format rages, here was a festival that instead of ironically throwing in the towel as Rotterdam did earlier in the year, was actively fighting for the cinema experience. By all accounts the Youth Movies concert was a highlight of the festival with doubt raging over whether repeated clips of a bubbling river was in fact from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or Ghostbusters 2 (I have it on good authority that it was the latter).

Unlike last year’s bunch of smaller UK features seeking theatrical distribution (of which The West Wittering Affair succeeded, and Powerless and Flirting with Flamenco have both made it to DVD); this year included a wider collection of UK features, some of which disturbingly have also had similar problems. Chromophobia, for example, the second feature by Martha Fiennes was shown at Cannes in 2005 and then dropped off the radar despite having a cast so strong that the festival screening sold out with barely anyone knowing anything about the film (Damian Lewis, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ian Holm and many more).

Less high profile, The Killing of John Lennon received its World Premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2006 and would appear to have been sitting on the shelf ever since. A thoughtful film not least because it refuses to cash in on the celebrity power of the Lennon depicting the fragmentation of a psychopath erringly well. In the intervening year the documentary The US Versus John Lennon was released but of Andrew Piddington’s film no word until this festival outing. Elsewhere domestic films included Sarah Turner’s art-film Ecology, a fascinating work with twisting narratives and multiple versions, and Under the Mud a community based film that has won over audiences at other film festivals with its lively sense of place and did exactly the same here.

Although it is hard to tell, this year’s festival included more direct submissions giving the programme a much rawer feel than previously. Films like The Elephant King, Tengers, The Melon Route or Military Intelligence and You all gave the festival a level sense of programming not cherry-picking. And this is of course where the probable [at the time of writing this hasn’t been announced yet] Audience Award winner for 2007 originated – Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Way of the Tosser. A World Premiere and an amiable mixture of character comedy and documentary, it was an out-and-out crowd pleaser helped by the cast and crew who turned up at the festival to promote their film. Through hard work (on their part and the festival’s) and word of mouth each screening grabbed more audience numbers, and then an additional screening sold out.

Back to reality a burning question was whether the Surprise Film would ‘surprise’ the spoilt Cambridge audience as much as last year, where the utterly unexpected Neil Young concert film Heart of Gold totally blindsided a mostly twentysomething expecting a multiplex surprise in arthouse clothing. So the actual Surprise Film this year was both. Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn is a gung-ho war adventure (man against all odds etc) but it was made by Herzog giving it all a subversive air even if the film itself is extremely straight, including the ‘we got one of our boys back’ ending on the aircraft carrier. Although mostly positive, some audience members were downbeat, just going to show that you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Even when they’re meant to be surprised.

Judging a festival by what one missed as opposed to saw is always a fruitful exercise because this left some interesting gaps that I may not be able to fill easily. The New French Cinema strand certainly seemed compelling with Bruno Dumont arriving on the scene to talk about Flanders followed by Once Upon Tomorrow and Transylvania. The New German strand likewise – of the frugal two I saw, Warchild may have been generic but packed a vicious emotional body blow whilst Longing was sublimely something else. A simple tale of a man torn between two women, long takes of the male protagonist wordlessly stumbling through his emotions made it unforgettable.

Something that nearly did pass me by was the History of Children’s Film and Television programme. Dr Who, Gerry Anderson, Cosgrove and Hall all disappeared in the past but the last one a compilation of Tom and Jerry, TV show The Buccaneers, and the Children’s Film Foundation film 4D Special Agents more than made up for it. To discuss just one, 4D Special Agents, although of a sadly retreating era (1980 very bizarrely) it was shot on location on the Thames waterfront in London. My metropolitan geography is shady but witnessing a silly adventure unfurl on and within broken warehouses and deserted wharfs now probably converted into the Docklands redevelopment in the late 1980s gave the production a sense of historical document and was actually exciting in its own right.

Elsewhere, the FrightFest continued to prove that horror wasn’t being left behind with a Pakistani film Hell’s Ground (Zibahkhana), an 80s slasher throwback All the Girls Love Mandy Lane and the ubiquitous Motel Hell – not an 80s throwback but an 80s antiquity described as ‘unmissable’ by more than one patron who endured it.

Lastly the World War 2 Reminiscence project deserves mention for its impressive integration of film and education. The festival screened the culmination of this project, a film made by Cambridgeshire school children documenting their work with old people who remembered the war and their take on propaganda films from the period. Normally such schemes can appear to be tokenistic exercises in ‘box ticking’ to justify the grant money but when the young people’s own short propaganda films were screened it became obvious that some thought had been generated.

Coming as close as it does after Cannes, Cambridge has an improved choice of titles at the expense of organisation time. With a loyal local audience who will turn out and support their festival perhaps nothing should be changed but if the festival can do what it does on a pittance of what Edinburgh and London have, maybe the eye should be on the bigger prize.

Comparing the Cambridge Film Festival to other festivals or even itself in previous years is a tricky task because it is so firmly itself even as it changes. Sounding nonsensical as this does, it shows the kind of films you are unlikely to have seen elsewhere. And so to answer the stalwart – was it as good as last year? Yes, but I’m biased.