Bang! Sunday 24th April @ Broadway Cinema Now in its seventh year and recently twinned with the Venice Beach Film Festival (California no less) Bang! is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you're gonna get! This was certainly true last night as the lights went down for our first taste of Bang! of ’06. Horror shorts First up was Owen Davies' refreshingly nutso "Hiss in the Wind", confirming what we all suspected about swans – namely that their aristocratic, whiter-than-white exterior hid a sinister secret. With overtones of "An American Werewolf in London", "Hiss" is an accomplished little horror-comedy boasting a seemingly huge number of extras, timely subject matter in these times of bird-flu paranoia and a disquieting performance by Roger Knott-Fayle! New work was on display with Mari King and Lisa Bamford's eye-popping "Vacant/Engaged", dazzlingly shot and cleverly cut to disorienting effect. Also of note was Simon Ellis' "A Storm and Some Snow", a simple enough premise, speeded up back-garden footage of a lightning storm and a fall of snow, but crucially sprinkled with Bang! regular Ellis' magic; superbly edited to well-chosen music. Strong animation Strong animation was also on show – Shaun Mechen's brilliant CGI romp "Baby on Board" featuring some staggeringly photo-realistic car graphics, along with the sublime "2 Camels" by Simon Ralph, imparting some vital information! "Deliberate Death of a Postman" appealed to this reviewer's rather horribly skewed sense of humour as an impatient malcontent takes umbrage at Postie's failure to deliver giro, with hilarious albeit murderous consequences. Some great performances and nifty dialogue elevate Scotty Clarke's tale to cult status. First class. Other noteworthy work included Dee Kalikoti's hard-hitting "Short Sharp Shock", an intelligent and revealing account on gun culture, and newcomer Cheryl Marshall's tight farce "A Relatively Close Call", a new talent to watch out for. Oscar winner Finishing up with a right old coup, Bang! screened Martin McDonagh's Oscar-winning "Six Shooter". A pitch black epic (at a whopping 27 minutes) and with an even more whopping budget of €200,000, the film features a restrained central performance from character-stalwart Brendan Gleeson (recently seen in "Kingdom of Heaven" and the last "Harry Potter") as a recently widowed middle-aged man who encounters a singularly disturbed young man on a train. Both leads give very different performances, Gleeson restrained and understated while Ruaidri Conroy as the young man is all manic, edgy energy. Wildly unpredictable with the spectre of death hanging heavily over the piece from the outset, "Six Shooter" ended Bang! with a very dark bang indeed. For the first time ever Bang! was completely sold out; a measure of the growing respect the festival has within the local community. As Chris Cooke mentioned in his introduction – this is your festival. Bang! is an inclusive, non-competitive event and it's all the more popular for that. The festival runs three times a year, each event featuring a main programme and a young filmmakers programme, each programme featuring 90 minutes of film mixing no cash raw talent alongside big money slickness, documentaries and drama, comedy and musical, experimentation and madness ... You make it: they show it at Bang! Next festival by Bang! will be Mayhem horror short film festival on Sunday, 28th May 2006. Deadline for submissions by end of April. Please Contact Donna Bowyer on 07763864057 for more details. For tickets and more festival information contact the Broadway Cinema on 0115 9526611. | 
