Festivals and Events

The East End Film Festival is still going strong, still showcasing an incredibly eclectic selection of first and second films, shorts, docs and other cinematic gems. The full programme is available on the festival’s website. We will be posting reviews, interviews and some audio on the website so keep an eye out, and there’s no better place to start than with a phone interview with head programmer Andrew Simpson. More to come!

The Reed Short Film Awards were hosted by writer, TV and radio presenter and all-round funnyman Danny Wallace, who was certainly on top form last night. Introducing the shortlisted films, Wallace took the opportunity to celebrate the short format and the "admirable struggles" of short film makers ("making a short film is like watching a Danny Dyer film: awful"). The first screening of the night was of last year’s winning entry, Rhys Edwards’ amusing rural romp A Good Bitch, followed by (…)

Interview with Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia, directors of Semaine de la Critique winner Salvo. Interview with Daria Belova, director of Come and Play (Komm und spiel)

The title of Héctor Gálvez’s second feature film refers to the shorthand used to designate unidentified bodies, in this case, the unclaimed remains of a man exhumed by a team of forensic pathologists in Peru.Team leader Fidel is intrigued by an unspoilt black and white photograph of a young woman found in the pocket of the shirt worn by the victim and sets out to uncover his identity. The film is a muted, restrained and touching ode to the nameless victims of state-sanctioned brutality in (…)

Brussels’ Anima Festival kicked off with a masterclass presented by Disney 3D animator Marlon Nowe. Nowe was one of the lead animators on Frozen (2013) and created the online animation school Animsquad. I have found that Frozen’s world of shifting polygons and sophisticated material simulations hold none of the beauty found in the pre-CGI, hand-drawn Disney features. Clearly, a lineage is maintained from some of the more successful productions of the 90’s in terms of narrative, character (…)

In 1981 Vito Russo adapted his travelling lecture The Celluloid Closet into a book of the same name. The lecture and the book represent the first concerted effort to look at the history of cinema from a queer perspective. Years later the book was made into a documentary, finished and released after Russo’s death from AIDS. A young assistant editor on that project, Jeffrey Schwarz, went on to make Vito, a film about Russo’s life which revealed its subject to be a key activist in the struggle (…)

Out To Win is a pumped-up documentary, primed to convince sports fans of the need to address homophobia within various games and to praise and support LGBT players brave enough to come out. Whether it converts non-believers into sports fans is another matter. I found the opening montage of out-and-proud athletes strutting their stuff (in a sporty way) to Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’ to be rather exhilarating, and my ears pricked up when an interviewee explained that the appeal of sport lies in (…)

In a documentary with a deliberately suspect premise – one man seeks to de-gay his voice – that quickly gives way to a fun and enlightening delivery, David Thorpe uses voice as a hook to examine gay male identity – or is it gay? It turns out that 40% of male voices perceived to be gay belong to men who identify as straight and vice-versa. One explanation offered by one of the language experts interviewed by Thorpe is that our voices are a collage of the kind of voices we were most drawn to (…)

A film described as ‘unflinching’ is of course one that makes you flinch. The four shorts and one music video in BFI Flare’s ‘Dark Rivers of the Heart’ programme all deliver on those face-screwing, look-away-can’t-look-away moments. Kai Stänicke’s eye-catching promo for The Hidden Cameras’ Carpe Jugular features a sexually democratic dance floor where everyone gets off with each other, except that for ‘getting off with’, read ‘beating the shit out of’: not so idyllic. The remaining films in (…)

Whatever you do, you will always be some man’s bitch. This is an observation coolly relayed by a female character in Céline Sciamma’s five-act drama, set in the outskirts of present day Paris and centring on a sixteen year old girl. Every scene of Girlhood (Bande de Filles) resists and subverts this pernicious epigram as we follow the cruel trajectory of protagonist Marieme, who becomes known as Vic while she graduates from girl gang member to professional drug supplier. This is taut, artful (…)