A Festival Diary - Thursday 13 March 2014

Thursday 13 March 2014
The Passing of the Year / Winter Nomads / Ilo Ilo

Abbbots Bromley hobby horse ©Simon Garbutt

Another free event: Barrie Gavin presents a documentary (The Passing of the Year) he made for Omnibus in 1973. Working with folklorist A. L. Lloyd (or Bert as he knew him) Gavin made six films for the BBC, recording British folk traditions and World Music before it was categorised thus. It was a fascinating and touching forty-five minutes. Most of these traditions continue but they have been relabelled as quaint, co-opted by the tourist trade or, in the case of the trade union movement’s May Day marches, ignored by today’s chroniclers. It’s usual to mourn for lost times at this point. It is not the haircuts or clothing that have changed. It’s the effort people used to put in: an hour practising madly complicated dances every week every year.

Winter Nomads

Winter Nomads is a soothing documentary about two shepherds leading 800 sheep, four donkeys and three dogs across Switzerland. It’s not the first film about shepherds that Borderlines has shown. Its tone – people who are happy in their work because it’s tough – reminded me of Être et Avoir, another award-winner. The subject of that documentary did not like the end result. I wonder what Miss Pastoral Chic and the Philosopher King made of this. It’s as unbelievable as Man of Arran – I can’t believe the worst a sheep suffered was a nip from their dog. Animals wandering in the wrong direction always raised a chuckle. Forgot the sudden, random appearances of snipers and suicides, in terms of audience reaction, the moment the donkey slipped over registered the highest level of concern during the whole festival. There are plenty of films with donkeys in them.

My back was feeling the pace during Ilo Ilo. This is why film critics are crotchety. Alfred Hitchcock said that a film’s length is related to the size of the human bladder. When a critic reappraises a film it means he had trapped wind the first time he saw it. Ilo Ilo is notable for having two unappealing characters. The boy is a brat and his mother distrusts most of the people around her. To her, one ‘rightly’ justifies a thousand slights. The story provides a snapshot of Singapore during its late-1990s economic crash. A family and their Filipino maid adapt to changing circumstances. A family of three hire a maid; it becomes a family of four that can’t afford one. The boy’s behaviour is troubled: self-mutilation in the expectation of framing a teacher is not normal. (The lack of pupil care in Singapore schools was not good.) The maid is the only person with the time to work with him but has to deal with his received prejudice first. Racism is another strand through this festival’s line-up: horrific in 12 Years a Slave and The Golden Dream.

Ilo Ilo

The boy is incapable of expressing his fears with words but shows his displeasure through actions. Unfortunately, his parents have problems enough. His mother puts her faith in a motivational speaker. His slogan is 'Hope is Within Yourself' and he picks her, a pregnant woman, out from the crowd. He’s a professional. The father is not the kind of person who can exploit a recession. It ends: the maid returns home to her son; the parents have a new child to raise; the boy, at least, has had feelings for someone other than himself. Some films feel like the director needed to put something on the record.

Ten films from eight countries. I look forward to next year, by which time the organisers will have sifted through a few thousand more titles. We get to watch the best ones.

Robin Clarke (Festival Volunteer)

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)

First Night 2014

1st screening at Borderlines 2014 - 12 Years a Slave

The sun shines on snowy Hay Bluff in the distance and Borderlines kicks off with a record 9000 advance bookings.  My first film is 12 Years A Slave and the 230 strong audience watch in utter silence, transfixed by the story, which is beautifully told period drama, without the gush and clamour of a Hollywood soundtrack.  Then Like Father, Like Son - family drama in contemporary urban Japan, and The Golden Dream - young people leaving South America, driven by the dream of a new life in the USA - a stunning film, of trains and landscapes.  Windows on very different worlds - Borderlines trademark.  BBC Midlands Today gives the festival a great plug in the evening - bringing the best of film culture to the rural areas, some of it made here in Herefordshire too.  And Emma Watkins, half of our great film programming team from the Independent Cinema Office, arrives to introduce films and soak up the buzz at the Courtyard.  Another 16 days to go and many more worlds to visit.

The Golden Dream