The achievment of 2014

Audiences at The Courtyard © Christopher Preece www.unlimitedphotography.co.uk 2014

With enthusiastic audiences, talk of “the best festival yet” and still another weekend to go, I had to ask, does this mark a highlight in contemporary cinema, or is Herefordshire becoming increasingly affectionate about this springtime film marathon?

The answer is not so simple and cannot be resolved with certainty here, but that shouldn’t stop one trying.

The crucial point that drives cinema sales across the country and has dramatically benefited Borderlines in recent years has been the awards season and the fanfare and interest that is created around a handful of films.

Before this year, the best example of a film which combined a successful awards season with a triumphant appearance in Hereford was The Artist in 2012 (winning  five Oscars). Up to now this is the best performing film in the 12 year history of Borderlines. However 12 Years a Slave is coming ever closer!

Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong'o and Chiwetel Eljiofor in 12 Years a Slave

Looking at the film release schedule for January and February 2014 it reads like a film of the year list.  In the space of 3 weeks from mid January to early February, the heavyweights - 12 Years a Slave, Dallas Buyers Club and The Wolf of Wall Street (not playing at Borderlines) battled it out garnering 19 Oscar nominations between them and sharing four of the key six awards; Best Film (12 Years a Slave) Best Actor (Matthew McConaughey - Dallas) Best Supporting Actor (Jared Leto - Dallas) and Best Supporting Actress ( Lupita Nyong'o - 12 Years.)

Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey  in Dallas Buyers Club

Bookmarking these three were American Hustle, the Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis and Her with Joaquin Phoenix. It has been a phenomenal period for cinema with film playing a much greater role in cultural life, interjecting daily conversations and a massively expanded media coverage. Of course this is a seasonal, industry-led distribution cycle that we see every year and Borderlines is perfectly poised to reap the benefits.



In terms of box office the main benefactors of the Oscar attention were 12 Years and Dallas, although this is somewhat stating the obvious as both won awards, yet it is inevitable a summer or autumn release would have been seriously detrimental to their performance? The awards fanfare was less critical for Llewyn Davis and Wolf of Wall Street due to the reputation and historical success of their respective directors, the Coen brothers and Martin Scorsese.

National UK Box Office
1.    The Wolf of Wall Street - £21,970,632
2.    12 Years a Slave - £18,921,943
3.    Dallas Buyers Club - £4,490,052
4.    Inside Llewyn Davis - £2,411,016
5.    August: Osage County - £1,890,549
6.    Nebraska - £995,000

And how does this national popularity compare to the taste at Borderlines? As of Tuesday 11 March film sales compared to audience rating at Borderlines (at the Courtyard Hereford only, many of these films were also shown at other venues)read like this:
Clearly 12 Years is the outright winner for audience reaction and ticket sales. The gem that is Nebraska was neglected by UK audiences but fared better at Borderlines. The melancholic and mopey Llewyn Davis did not warm to Hereford despite selling a good share of tickets
Had Wolf of Wall Street been in the program would it have fared better than 12 Years? Highly unlikely and perhaps its performance would have been closer to Nebraska in 5th place, in contrast to its national box office domination.

My conclusion, yes, 2014 has seen an incredible plethora of film, however the success of Borderlines is not limited to a group of glossy American films.

As anyone reading this must be thinking, to bang on about numbers, box office and to pay such attention to the Oscars is to completely miss the point about Borderlines. Strong audiences crossing French classics (La Belle et la Bête), independent UK features (Kiss the Water) and Hereford’s own offerings (Chewing the Cud and Rural Media/BFI Film Academy) illustrate the point. Spanning 2,000 square miles of Herefordshire and Shropshire rural bliss, projecting Jean Luc Godard, Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett across venues from Oswestry and Ledbury to Wem Town Hall is part of the magic.

Finally I take nothing but sheer delight from the fact that the Harry Dean Stanton documentary, depicting the fragile soul of Paris Texas, Alien and Twin Peaks is currently winning the audience award.

Harry Dean Stanton in Paris Texas

Incredible Borderlines!

Luke Doran (Borderlines board member)

A Festival Diary - Wednesday 5 March 2014

Wednesday 5 March 2014
BFI Film Academy / Le Jour se Lève / The Patience Stone / The Golden Dream

Rural Media/BFI Film Academy

It’s the first highpoint of the year: I award myself a day’s leave, drive to Hereford and watch a few films. The first event is free. The Rural Media Company (based five minutes’ walk away) had recruited local, teenage film-makers; the BFI Film Academy provided additional expertise from the very top-drawer. Their work, three shorts, was screened and then a panel of Tony Lawson, Richard Greatrex and Naomi Vera-Sanso supplied constructive criticism, advice and guidance. You can look up Tony and Richard on IMDb and be amazed. Naomi, of course, has been the Producer, then Director of the Borderlines Film Festival since day one.

I waded through a lot of home-made shorts fifteen years ago for a film society doing its bit. The acting was usually good (of the central casting variety), the editing acceptable and the scripts so-so to pretty poor. There were a lot of genre pieces and traditional jokes: the audience is there and they’re easier to make. The big advance is in presentation: today’s low-budget films look far better. If you’re thinking of making one: give the actors more to do and get them to do less. Film-making is far cheaper and swifter than in the Super-8 era. Would it be prohibitive to have a first draft?

The next film was hand-picked by Francine Stock (of Radio 4’s The Film Programme, repeated at 11pm, Sundays) for Borderlines. What fun to see the Institut Français name-checked alongside various local government bodies. Le Jour se Lève is French, black and white, made in 1939, established the dissolve as film language for reminiscence, scripted by a poet, populated with adults and features the iconic film-star representations of their respective genders: Jean Gabin and Arletty. Borderlines screened an Arletty film, Les Enfants du Paradis, last year – another film with a character who believed he could talk his way into or out of everything.  I hope there’s more from Gabin and Arletty next year.

Jean Gabin and Arletty in Le Jour se Lève

I like to book my tickets early, remember nothing but the date and time, then discover more about the film whilst watching it. As the opening credits of The Patience Stone shared the screen with sun-bleached curtains I thought it could be a documentary until ‘based on a novel’ came up. Like the previous feature most of the film takes place in one room – because it’s too dangerous to leave it. And the lead, practically a one-woman-show from Golshifteh Farahani, talks about the events that led to this point. You’d think that festival programmers organised these coincidences deliberately. Having seen Osama (Afghanistan, 2003) last year, at an Amnesty International do, I can report the Afghan woman’s daily life make the adventures of your favourite all-action hero look silly. Mass-production means I can scan the shelves of a bombed-out building in the Middle East and spot a lemon-squeezer just like one my grandmother had. The Patience Stone contains two-and-a-half sex scenes and one joke – a bit like “The Boat That Rocked”.

The Patience Stone

After spending hours watching noble people getting shot at in claustrophobic circumstances The Golden Dream was almost a relief. Think of The Incredible Journey or Stand By Me but with Guatemalan teenagers making their way through Central America, either using Shanks’s pony or riding the deck, to ‘the golden dream’ of a migrant labourer’s position in Los Angeles. The Spanish title, “La jaula de oro”, translates as “the golden cage”. Caged birds turn up a lot in movies: a female resident, with pet, making her retreat in Le Jour se Lève – it’s no place for a budgie; the fighting quails in The Patience Stone that pinpoint a girl’s place in a patriarchal pecking order. You could fill a festival with caged bird movies.

The Golden Dream

The lives of the immigrants in The Golden Dream are valued even lower than Taliban girls. Loose ends are not resolved but it’s probable they will end terminally. The film is the debut feature of Diego Quemada-Diaz, camera assistant to Ken Loach. A couple of days later I attended a lecture by Barrie Trinder, an authority on the Industrial Revolution in the Midlands, about bargemen on the Severn. They worked, stole and gave street performances, no different to the travellers in this film.

Robin Clarke (Festival Volunteer)