London, Capital of Film

Right now feels like a great time to be a film fan living in London. October is always an exciting time due to the London Film Festival, which seems to be going from strength-to-strength (and this year is no exception). But in addition to the looming 53rd LFF there are also a number of other great film events currently going on in the capital. Take, for instance, The National Gallery's Paradise Lost film season, which started on Saturday with Jerzy Kawalerowicz's 1961 masterpiece Mother Joan of the Angels, and which continues over the next couple of months with two classic Bergman's (Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light), Bresson's masterful Procès de Jeanne d'Arc and my favourite Buñuel (Simon of the Desert), amongst several others. Meanwhile, over at the Tate Modern there's the UK's first retrospective of the acclaimed Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa. According to Sight & Sound's recent article on Costa, DVDs of his work are going to start trickling their way into the UK market (his debut, O Sangue is now available courtesy of Second Run), but this retrospective offers a great opportunity to discover these hard-to-see films on the big screen. I find it interesting that these two great seasons are happening in art galleries and not in cinemas, and I wonder what it says about the cinema scene in the UK – but that's a topic for another day.

So, what else there to be excited about? Well (in a facetious way) how about the new monthly networking and screening night that I'm running? No? Okay, well, on a more serious note, how about a Barbican 'Directorspective' on Wojciech Has? In my opinion, Has is one of the most cruelly overlooked directors of all time. In recent years, his work seems to have been undergoing something of a 'rediscovery' thanks to Martin Scorsese's and Francis Ford Coppola's restoration of The Saragossa Manuscript which was first released in 2001, and which enjoyed an extended run at the BFI at the end of 2007, swiftly followed by Mr Bongo's DVD release. Featured in none of the many film books in my collection, it seems like Has has been largely and unfairly sidelined in the history of cinema when, based on the four films I've seen by him, he really deserves to be right up there in the 'canon' of master filmmakers. Split between psychological realism and more surrealist work, his oeuvre seems to be crying out for a true reappraisal and adoption into the ranks of the 'canon'. Hopefully this retrospective (which is also touring to other cities the UK) will help others to discover the work of a filmmaker who has provided acknowledged inspiration for directors like Luis Buñuel, David Lynch, Lars von Trier and Martin Scorsese (all of whom have, at times, described The Saragossa Manuscript as their favorite film). A work of poetic beauty and magical realism, I'd easily also recommend it to fans of writers such as Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges.

The events that I'm mentioning here are, of course, not the only things happening in London film-wise, but with all this going on how can anyone have time to do anything else? Before finishing I'll return (briefly) to where I came in...

The LFF line-up does seem very strong this year. I've managed to get a press pass for the festival and intend to write about everything I see in one way or another, so I'll be posting articles, capsule reviews or links up here as and when I can/want to. A few of the films I'm especially excited about and therefore very much hoping to see are (in no particular order): The Portuguese Nun (because of Kieron Corless' comments in the latest Sight & Sound), Father of My Children (because it's based loosely on the life of producer Humbert Balsan), Alexander the Last and Beeswax (because I like these kinds of films), Laila (because it's directed by George Schnéevoigt, who shot four of Dreyer's silent films), The Informant! (okay, so the trailer is terrible, but Soderbergh is still yet to make a bad film, so I have faith...), The Men Who Stare at Goats (because Grant Heslov did great work on Good Night, and Good Luck and Unscripted), The Road (because The Proposition was a masterpiece), and The Touch (because it's Bergman).

I Am One

Well, this blog is now officially one year old. I'm aware that the frequency of my posting has been up and down over that time, but I'd like to thank everyone who's been reading it – from the official 'followers' to the regular readers to the irregular readers to those who have just stopped by the once. Thanks to each and every one of you for your support and your comments. I hope that you've enjoyed what you've read and that you'll continue to enjoy what I write. Here's to another year!

Quote for the Week

Do you think we're gonna make it? I don't know unless we try
you could sit here scared to move or we could take them by surprise

- Lyrics from 'The Gauntlet' by Dropkick Murphys

The Problem with Listening without Following the Lyrics...

I'm aware it's been a while since my last proper post, and that this post is completely out of keeping with my previous posts. But hopefully this uncharacteristic entry will be considered a brief, amusing, sidestep before normal service is resumed...

I was listening to the radio yesterday when 'I Predict a Riot' by the Kaiser Chiefs came on. Now, the funny thing about 'I Predict a Riot' is that I first became aware of the song when it was played in clubs while I was a student and, not knowing anything about it (not even the name of the song or who it was by), I was utterly convinced that the lyrics to the chorus were, in fact, 'I'm Fully Tourettes, I'm Fully Tourettes'.

Well, what can I say? We've all done it at some point or other.

For the longest time not only myself but also all of my friends held a steadfast belief that the chorus to 'Got It On Tuesday' by The Wildhearts was not 'I got it on Tuesday, just like a cheque in the mail' but was, instead, 'I got it on Tuesday, just like a kick in the nads'. Finally, in a similar vein (somewhat literally), and perhaps most amusingly of all, for some reason I originally thought that the lines 'You got me lying with ease / I'm only keeping the peace' in their song 'Whoa Shit, You Got Through' were 'You got me lying in lenis / I want a kick in the penis'. Which makes no sense whatsoever. So there you have it.

Normal service to resume shortly, you'll be pleased to hear...

Quote for the Week

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents. – Arthur Schopenhauer, On Books and Writing.

A Response to the Kid In The Front Row: What impact can we have as filmmakers? And with impact, do we have responsibility?

Over on his blog, the Kid In the Front Row has written a post entitled 'What impact can we have as filmmakers? And with impact, do we have responsibility?', in which he asks the following questions:

What is the maximum impact we can have as filmmakers? Can films really change lives? Can they make us act for social change? Can they change us for the better?

As the post has been written to encourage debate, I thought that I would write a post detailing some of my own thoughts in reply to these questions, as well as commenting briefly on The Kid's own post.

Essentially, The Kid's answers to these questions (as I understand them) focus on how films can change people in the sense of our political and social ideas, or, in other words, the way that film can affect us (or indeed manipulate us) to change our views in a somewhat 'practical' sense. To put it another way, The Kid is, whether intentionally or not, discussing the role of film as propaganda. Personally, I do not believe that audiences are necessarily susceptible to indoctrination (for want of a better word) through cinema, but I do believe that 'campaign' films can be dangerous if they go unchecked, especially when they offer very biased views. To take a recent example, there was a Channel Four documentary which put forth the idea that climate change doesn't exist, a view which was readily adopted verbatim by several people I know. So here is a practical example of a film (or, in this case, a television documentary) having a direct impact on people and explicitly influencing their views in life, and therefore their behaviour. As I said before, however, I don't necessary believe that films themselves have the power to change people outright, and I would suggest that the people I know who are now so rigid in stating their denial of climate change probably had this belief before seeing the programme. (If they didn't, surely the most the programme would have done would have been to spur them into conducting further research? Though perhaps I am overestimating the strength of the human spirit in my belief that people cannot be so easily influenced!).

For my own answers to these questions, I would take a slightly different approach, and I hope it's not an approach which is at odds with the original questions. To me, film can have a huge impact on our lives in a way which, perhaps, can be referred to as spiritual. I'm not sure that spiritual is a great term for it, just as practical probably isn't the right term to discuss the effects that I've spoken about above but hopefully these terms, at the least, make sense in the context of this post. So, what do I mean by spiritual? Well, I'm thinking of the way that certain films – such as, say, those by Bergman, Tarkovsky, or Haneke – make us think about the world around us, and our approach towards it (for instance, by exploring responses to violence, religion or grief). By making us think about a diverse range of philosophical and ethical concerns, these filmmakers provoke responses which change us as people, and they do so not by propaganda, but by provoking reactions and making us look inside ourselves in order to find new facets of understanding about our existence and our approach towards the world in which we live. In this way, I would argue, filmmakers can have a huge impact on their viewers, and can indeed change them 'for the better'.

So the difference between what I see as essentially propaganda, and what I see as films which can provoke change within us, is that the former promotes a message and tries to persuade us that this message is right, whereas the latter ask us questions which open us up to our own responses and allow us to find our own 'meaning', our own 'message'. As both a filmmaker and a film fan, I would suggest that the latter is a far better – and more morally responsible – way to elicit change within the viewer.

Before finishing, I'm aware that many would argue that a filmmaker such as Haneke should fall into the former category and not the latter, but I would respond that although his films often have a very clear authorial 'message' to them, they convey this message in such a way as to provoke the viewer into her or his own response to the message, rather than simply expecting the viewer to soak it up wholeheartedly and unquestioningly.

Narrative in Cinema

The other day I was out with a friend of mine and I said something rather flippantly, not thinking much of it at the time (it was just a part of our conversation). But having thought about it for a few more days, I wonder if there actually is some truth to what I said. My basic point was this: narrative cinema is dying out because arthouse filmmakers have effectively moved beyond narrative in an attempt to find greater meaning and insight, while mainstream filmmakers have, quite simply, forgotten how to tell a story. Obviously it's a bit of a rash generalisation – and it depends on how you define 'narrative' – but I wonder if there's something to it. Feel free to leave me a comment and tell me what you think.