We round up short film seasons and special events around the UK.
1 - 31 August
SEASONS
Experimenta
(Various Venues)
Showcasing the best in international artists' film/video and experimental cinema from the 2004 London Film Festival, the Experimenta tour will visit venues across the UK, including the Arnolfini, Bristol, the Sheffield Showroom, the FACT Centre, Liverpool, and the Edinburgh Filmhouse.
The pick of the programme is undoubtedly the extraordinary documentary, Los Angeles Plays Itself, in which Thom Andersen visits such legendary movie sites as Laurel and Hardy's steps from The Music Box, the Spanish Revival house in Double Indemnity and the Bradbury Building from Blade Runner. He also charts the city's 'secret' history through the likes of Chinatown, L.A. Confidential and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Jessica Yu takes a journey through the mind of outsider artist Henry Darger in In the Realms of the Unreal, in which illustrations from his bizarre 15,000 page fantasy about the evil Glandelinians are animated to unsettling effect.
The shorts selection includes work by such major avant-gardists as Robert Breer (What Goes Up), Peter Kubelka (Poetry and Truth) and Bruce Connor, whose film Luke reworks Super8 footage featuring Dennis Hopper and Paul Newman filmed on the set of the 1967 prison classic, Cool Hand Luke. There are also tributes to painter Alfred Leslie (The Cedar Bar) and the late, great Stan Brakhage, who is represented by the 2000 trio, Water for Maya, The God of Day Had Gone Down Upon Him and Persian Series #9.
****
Until 31 August
ITV50
(Various Venues)
ITV celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and the BFI marks the event with a touring programme recalling some of the shows that have gone down in the British collective memory. The comedy selections hark back to such popular sitcoms as The Larkins, Nearest and Dearest and Man About the House, while also chronicling how sketch humour changed from the music-hall and postcard antics of Arthur Haynes, Benny Hill, Tommy Cooper and Stanley Baxter to the surrealism of A Show Called Fred, At Last The 1948 Show and Do Not Adjust Your Set. There's more nostalgia in the clips from such kids classics as The Adventures of Robin Hood, Zoo Time, Magpie and Tiswas, and from variety vehicles for the likes of Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole and Bobby Darin, as well as the once unmissable Sunday Night At the London Palladium.
On the drama front, you can relive a pair of Harold Pinter rarities - The Lover (1963) and The Collection (1976) - along with Alun Owen's Lena, O My Lena (1960) and Robert Muller's extraordinary Night Conspirators (1962), which imagines what might have happened had Hitler survived the war. There's also another chance to see such seminal ITV stand-alones as Jack Gold's The Naked Civil Servant (1975), Alan Clarke's Made in Britain (1982) and Paul Greengrass's Bloody Sunday (2002). But there's also plenty of cult action telly on display, with gutsy crime shows like Gideon's Way and The Sweeney contrasting splendidly with the mischievous escapism of The Avengers, Danger Man and The Saint.
****
Until 31 August
Mama Africa
(Various Venues)
Mounted in conjunction with the BFI's Blackworld initiative and African Film Tour, the Mama Africa tour programme includes a selection of shorts from around the continent - Riches (Zimbabwe), Hangtime (Nigeria), Histoire de Tresses (Rwanda) and Kounandi and Close Up On Bintou (Burkino Faso), and The Sky In Her Eyes, Body Beautiful and A Red Ribbon Around My House, from South Africa. It also offers a chance to see Cathy Henkel's disturbing documentary, The Man Who Stole My Mother's Face (2003), in which she returns to her Johannesburg home to investigate why the police have made no progress in catching the man who brutally raped her mother 14 years earlier.
Music plays a key part in two of the tour's three feature dramas. A singing chorus comments on the action in Moussa Sene Absa's Madame Brouette (2002), in which a strong, independent woman, who has persuaded many in her Senegalese shanty settlement to resist the bullying of their menfolk, falls for a charming policeman and discover that it's not always possible for women to practice what they preach. A middle-aged seamstress, whose sexuality is reawakened while working in a Tunisian belly dancing club, learns much the same lesson in Raja Amari's Satin Rouge (2002), after she discovers that her teenage daughter is dating the same musician who seduced her. Finally, an African-American psychiatrist makes an equally disturbing discovery while treating a reticent Tanzanian patient in Martin Mhando's intense study of myth, spirituality and kinship, Maangamizi: The Ancient One.
****
1 - 31 August
Robert Mitchum & Michael Powell
(National Film Theatre, London)
The NFT concludes its tribute to Robert Mitchum with a second look at the laconic tough guy image that made him one of Hollywood's most appealing, but enigmatic stars. There's plenty of noirish unease on display here - in the likes of John Farrow's Where Danger Lies (1950) and His Kind of Woman (1951), John Cromwell's The Racket (1951), Josef Von Sternberg's Macao (1952) and Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza (1975), as well as some uncompromising action, in Robert Wise's Blood on the Moon (1948), Richard Wilson's Man with the Gun (1955) and Robert Aldrich's The Angry Hills (1959). But this selection also reveals Mitchum's willingness to take chances, as he demonstrates his softer side in such charmers as Rachel and the Stranger (1948), The Red Pony (1949) and Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (1957) and his talent for dark drama, in My Forbidden Past (1951), Home from the Hill (1960) and Secret Ceremony (1969).
This year marks the centenary of Michael Powell, who bridged the gap between the silent era and the decline of Hollywood UK. He had already established his reputation for creative independence with the Scottish drama The Edge of the World (1937) before he forged a partnership with Emeric Pressburger on The Spy in Black (1939) - the first of several war-themed features that sought to alert the nation to the danger of the enemy without resorting to flagwaving propaganda. But while Contraband (1940), 49th Parallel (1941) and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942) delighted the Ministry of Information, Winston Churchill himself was in favour of suppressing The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) for its negative depiction of British fighting forces. Even though it was selected for the Royal Command Performance, A Matter of Life and Death (1946), similarly rattled cages, with Washington perceiving it as anti-American. The Archers opted to aviod controversy with their colourful ballet pictures, The Red Shoes (1948) and The Tales of Hoffman (1951) and the highly stylised dramas Black Narcissus (1947) and Gone to Earth (1952). But Powell further enraged the establishment with his self-reflexive chiller, Peeping Tom (1960). He wound down his career with Age of Consent (1969), a wry portrait of Australia's expatriate community that demonstrated as sure a grasp of place as such earlier, offbeat gems as A Canterbury Tale (1944) and I Know Where I'm Going (1945).
****
EVENTS
Until 8 August
Hunger: A Knut Hamsen Season
(Filmhouse, Edinburgh)
A season devoted to cinema inspired by the writing of Knut Hamsen opens with a rare chance to see two classic silents - Gunnar Sommerfeldt's forest tale of love and envy, Growth of the Soil (1921) and John W. Brunius's rousing fishing rivals drama, Strong Wills (1923). It concludes with a double by Henning Carlsen. Hunger (1966) follows an author around 1890s Christiania (now Oslo) in search of food and inspiration, while Two Green Feathers (1995) traces the relationship between almost hermitic fisherman Lasse Kolsrud and Sofie Grabol, the daughter of a northern trading magnate.
****
Until 22 August
Italian Cinema of the 1960s
(Chichester Cinema, New Park)
The allure of the French New Wave remains undimmed some 45 years after the event. But Italian cinema also experienced an unrivalled period of auteur ingenuity in the 1960s, as this Monday night season recalls. Each of the masters of the Italian Film Renaissance is represented here. Federico Fellini's deliciously decadent La Dolce Vita (1960) gave the world the term `paparazzi', but the flip side of modern living is laid bare in Michelangelo Antonioni's first colour feature, The Red Desert (1964). The ravishing Technicolor only adds to the lustre of Luchino Visconti's glossy Risorgimento drama, The Leopard (1963), while Pier Paolo Pasolini's compositions in Mamma Roma (1960) recall the work of Old Masters like Caravaggio. But there's a grim monochrome reality about the dystopic bourgeois domesticity depicted in Marco Bellocchio's abrasive drama, Fists in the Pocket (1963).
There's a little more Italian magic on view in the brief Opera on Film strand. Pasolini is on typically combattive form in Medea (1970), which starred Maria Callas, whose extraordinary life is the inspiration for both Tony Palmer's biodoc, Callas (1987), and Franco Zeffirelli's fantasy, Callas Forever (2002). Completing the quartet is Benoit Jacquot's adaptation of Puccini's Tosca (2001), with Angela Gheorghiu in the role that Callas made her own.
Finally, anyone who enjoyed Silvio Soldini's Bread and Tulips won't want to miss his latest offering, Agatha and the Storm, which previews 16-18 August. Set in a Genoa bookshop and dealing with a yuppie's discovery that his real parents were peasant farmers from the Po Valley, this is a charming situation comedy that boasts a fine central performance by the inticing Licia Maglietta.
****
1 - 31 August
War in the Pacific
(Imperial War Museum, London)
The war in the Pacific and the dropping of the atom bombs are commemmorated at the Imperial Museum this month. The pick of the programme of newsreels and shorts about the conflict with Japan are Burma Victory (1945) and The Forgotten Army (1965), while the 1970 actualities Birth of the Bomb and Hiroshima and Nagasaki August 1945 are complemented by interviews with the crew of the Enola Gay, which led the most shocking raid in military history.
Younger viewers will also enjoy a special Disney weekend (20-21 August), in which the feature classic Fantasia (1940) is accompanied by the little-seen short, The Thrifty Pig, a promotional film for Canadia War Bonds.
****
5 - 21 August
Ozu Centenary
(Showroom, Sheffield)
Hou Hsiao-hsien dedicated his latest feature, Café Lumiere, to the Japanese master, Yasujiro Ozu, on the occasion of his centenary. The Showroom's run of Hou's offbeat romantic drama is, thus, accompanied by a trio of Ozu classics, all of which echo the disjointed family theme of the Taiwanese film - Tokyo Story (1953), Floating Weeds (1959) and (1961).
****
6 - 31 August
Project and Survive
(Cornerhouse, Manchester)
It's 60 years since the world entered the atomic age and this excellent season reflects cinema's response to both the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the arms race that held the planet hostage during the Cold War. Most affecting are the Japanese contributions, which range from Ishiro Honda's seminal creature feature, Godzilla (1954) - which is showing in a new print - to Akira Kurosawa's I Live in Fear (1955) and Mori Masaki's Barefoot Gen (1983). But the psychological impact of the assault can also be felt in Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1958). The emphasis shifts to the threat of nuclear holocaust in Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove (1962), while the imagined horrors of the conflagration are explored in Val Guest's The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), Mick Jackson's teleplay Threads (1984) and Jimmy T. Murakami's adaptation of Raymond Briggs's graphic masterpiece, When the Wind Blows (1986).
****
8 - 12 August
Piping Live!
(Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow)
As part of the Piping Live festival, there's a chance to catch a new print of the classic Vincente Minnelli musical, Brigadoon, which is set in a fictional Highland village that awakens for only one day every century. The film's stars, Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, can also be seen in Singin' in the Rain and The Band Wagon, which show in a double-bill on 21 August. There's a touch more local colour, as Laurel and Hardy team in Bonnie Scotland - which screens with the 1935 documentary gem, Night Mail - on 13 August, and, the following day, in Michael Powell's I Know Where I'm Going and Alexander Mackendrick's Ealing comedy, The Maggie.
www.gft.org.uk
www.pipingfestival.co.uk
****
13 August
Stan Brakhage
(City Library, Leeds)
One of the masters of avant-garde film, Stan Brakhage died in 2003. This tribute focuses on three films from his later years. Water for Maya is a hand-painted homage to the great film-maker Maya Deren; The Day of God Had Gone Down Upon Him completed the `Vancouver' trilogy and marked a rare return to photographed film; while Persian Series Nos. 6-12 reflect on the miniatures that provided Brakhage with endless inspiration.
****
13 - 19 August
Jersey Film Festival
(CineCentre Cinema, Jersey)
Whether you're a local or a holiday-maker, don't miss the musical extravaganza that is this year's Jersey Film Festival. Why not go and sing-along at the kid classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or treat yourself to a little nostalgia with Singin' in the Rain or Grease? If you prefer more modern fare, there's always Chicago, Moulin Rouge and Phantom of the Opera - and all in the great outdoors!
****
15 - 21 August
Framing the Past
(NMPFT, Bradford & Showroom Sheffield & City Screen, York)
Three of Yorkshire's leading cinemas have teamed up to present this series of snapshots of the county's cinematic past. The programme on view this month concentrates on Newsreels to provides a chronicle of the weekly movie gazettes that not only allowed audiences to put faces to the people who made the news (and, thus, helped foster today's cult of celebrity), but also enabled the producers to impart their own spin on the important events of the day.
www.nmpft.org.uk
www.showroom.org.uk
www.picturehouses.co.uk
