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The British Film Institute’s annual festival returned to cinemas for October 2021. Although many pandemic restrictions had eased in the UK at that time, face masks were still mandatory in all screenings.
I’m writing this in June 2022 so my impressions are somewhat hazy! This is intended as a personal record of what I watched ✿
Director: Michel Franco
The Bennett family are on holiday in Acapulco when mother Alice receives a call that necessitates a return home. Only when they get to the airport, one of the party, Neil, notes a problem and returns back to the city while Alice, and her children Colin and daughter Alexa fly home… Sundown is similarly a portrait of a man in crisis, inventing a new existence for himself where he doesn’t have to account for who he is or what he does.
An interesting story but it felt like the filmmaker didn’t know what kind of story he wanted to tell. Ultimately I found the film underwhelming. I mostly wanted to watch this because it starred Tim Roth and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Director: Laura Samani
In an isolated island community in North Eastern Italy at the beginning of the 20th century, Agate gives birth to a stillborn baby. Terrified by being told her child will forever drift in spiritual limbo, she flees husband and family, with her baby’s corpse, embarking on a desperate, dangerous journey to the mountains, where there may be somewhere or someone that can save its soul.
This was fantastic – quiet and lyrical, with beautiful cinematography and strong performances. The unique landscape, culture and languages of Friuli Venezia Giulia, an Italian region that borders Austria and Slovenia, provide a dream-like setting for the film. The opportunity to watch films like this is why I go the festival.
Director: CĂ©line Sciamma
Following her grandmother’s death, eight-year-old Nelly travels to the old woman’s home to help her parents pack everything up. After her mother unexpectedly leaves, Nelly befriends a little girl in a nearby forest – an encounter that reveals a strange and beguiling new world.
I was shocked that the film is only 72 minutes long but it’s all Céline Sciamma needs to tell a perfectly-crafted story about mothers, daughters, grief and time travel. Like in a Ghibli film, the ending manages to be both happy and crushingly sad at the same time.
Directors: Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes
With playful intent, Gomes and Fazendeiro have folded the constraints of working under lockdown into the structure of their film. In its appreciation of nature and the simple pleasures of life – observing the beauty of a decaying quince, or luxuriating in the sheer joy of community – The Tsugua Diaries moves beyond witty meta-fiction and blossoms into something filled with genuine warmth.
I only realised now, seven months after seeing this film, that Tsugua/Ostoga is August backwards. Which makes sense because the film is set in August and the story unfurls in reverse chronological order. I thought it was hilarious, with moments of poetic beauty.
Director: Ana Lily Amirpour
Using her lethal powers of persuasion to escape the psychiatric facility in which she has been locked up, Mona flees to New Orleans where she meets street smart-stripper Bonnie and her wise-beyond-his-years pre-teen son. Excited to exploit her new friend’s talents, Bonnie convinces Mona to swindle the skeezy punters at her strip joint out of their hard-earned dollars.
This was probably the most disappointing film of the festival for me. Although the day-glo look of the film was kind of fun, I was troubled by some seemingly thoughtless decisions about the character of Mona, her race and language. On the plus side, I saw Jason Momoa at the screening.
Director: Wei Shujun
On location in the small town Yong’an, we follow the trajectory of four characters preparing for a shoot: a local waitress, the lead actor returning to her hometown and a director and screenwriter who both hail from Beijing. Over three distinct chapters, the film uncovers each character’s inner thoughts and discrete perspectives on cinema during the typically challenging early stages of filmmaking.
Extremely funny and groan-inducing but maybe not quite as satisfying as Wei Shujun’s previous film, “Striding Into The Wind”.
Directors: Yu Araki and Lu Pan
Lu Pan and Yu Araki share home video-footage of their 90s childhoods in all their funny, celebratory, awkward and banal glory. Edited together remotely during the pandemic, the two artists discuss early home video technology, the social status of this footage in different contexts (both migrated as children), and also how these images were made and circulated. Their playful yet insightful conversation stitches the chaotic footage together and gives new life to a nostalgic form of cinema.
Fascinating and reflective. I thought this short film was so interesting and wished the filmmakers had been available for a Q&A.
Director: Michelle Williams Gamaker
An aesthetically invigorating reworking of the casting process of Sidney Franklin’s The Good Earth (1937), a film notorious for a white actor’s racist portrayal of a Chinese character.
This short was screened along with “Anachronic Chronicles” and its director did a Q&A afterwards, which really completely overshadowed the main film. I thought it was beautifully filmed but it rubbed me up the wrong way for many reasons which I won’t go into here.
Director: Riar Rizaldi
The contested history of Mount Malabar, West Java is unearthed, prompting questions about colonisation, modernity and indigenous communities’ relationship with the land and its spirits.
Interesting short film about Radio Malabar, a radio station set up in 1923 under the Dutch East Indies government, which conjures up the history of the mountain it was built upon and the power channeled through it.