Aces High: Edinburgh Film Festival 2006 Preview

You’ve got a film festival to organise, time is tight and there’s so much schmoozing to do at all the festivals and events you visit around the year. So when that little inconvenience of actually programming the damn thing arrives, what do you do? Inspiration strikes from the bookshelf. Everybody has read Peter Biskind’s book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls about 1970s American auteur cinema, thereby guaranteeing an audience to a season of 1970s American films. The films are quite good too. A retrospective entitled ‘They Might Be Giants: Other Voices From The New American Cinema’ is born.

Sarcasm aside, Edinburgh’s decision to show a retrospective of underrated American film from the 70s has me foxed. Is this savvy film festival programming of the highest order or just a cheap cash in designed to put bums on seats? Or could it even be both? Upon first inspection of the Edinburgh 2006 programme I was distinctly unimpressed. Isn’t a retrospective of 1970s American films a bit of a populist move, especially in the wake of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls?

It took David Thomson writing about the retrospective in Sight & Sound (September 2006) to bring me round to my current state of quandary, promoting films like Night Moves, They Might be Giants and Electric Glide in Blue, all supposedly key films from the 70s which are now languishing in relative obscurity, in comparison to the works of the better known directors who frequent film histories of the period.

Enticingly the retrospective dangles very well regarded actors of the stature of Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and Jack Nicholson in the works of considerably less well known directors. If any of the lesser known films are as good as the better well known ones then this is probably a bold move that skirts perilously close to a very well trod area of popular cinema, pulling off the conjurer’s trick of making the past look different. Potentially an unforgettable move, if it works. So whether this is inspired programming or a tepid attempt to ensure audience numbers, it all hangs in the balance.

Conversely the German selection ‘Das Neu Wave’ shows considerable promise mainly because these are all unknown films from new directors. New German cinema has been exciting for years now reaching a recent commercial boom with Downfall and Goodbye Lenin. The films in this strand are of much lower budgets than the examples above and are described by the festival’s artistic director Shane Danielson as follows: “There’s a movement which is being referred to as The Berlin School and these films are exemplars of that…They’re intimate, focussed chamber movies that are informed by a minimalist, watchful tone."

As in previous years the contenders for the Michael Powell Award, Edinburgh’s award for the best new British feature in competition, are the usual mixed bunch. The one I’ve seen already, Brothers of the Head, is a great little documentary-styled fictional film about two Siamese twins who become punk rockers after exploitation at the hands of an old school pop promo Svengali. The Lives of Saints also shows promise, first off because like Brothers of the Head it was also scripted by Toni Grisoni. Of the others, Someone Else seems interesting if it truly does carry the banner of British television comedy, and London to Brighton is promoted in the programme as being ‘One of the discoveries of the year’. Well then, clearly one not to miss. What is sad is how so few of the nominees in the British Gala are world premieres; many of the bigger films have taken their chances elsewhere rather than wait to be debuted in Edinburgh or other UK film festivals.

Five to Watch

They Might Be Giants
As the film that gives its name to the 1970s retrospective this is going to have to be good to ensure that this strand works.

Lives of Saints
Toni Grisoni scripted crime fable in the British Gala.

3° Colder
One of the ‘Das Neu Wave’ new German films directed by cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister.

The Aura
Little seen film by recently deceased Argentinean director Fabian Bielinsky, the man responsible for Nine Queens.

Hotel Harabati
Laurent Lucas is fast becoming one of my favourite French actors with his taut guilty features. Watch him lose it once again in Hotel Harabati.