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EIFF 2026 – The Arrow at Rest At Every Instant of its Flight

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EIFF 2026 – The Arrow at Rest at Every Instant of its Flight,
Directed by Theodore Schaefer,
Starring Constance Shulman, Daniel Zolghadri, Gus Birney, Jack Haven, John Early, Roberta Colindrez

The 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival – the oldest, continually running film festival on the planet – kicked off late this week, as Edinburgh embraces its traditional August festival frenzy (the International Festival and Fringe are already going, the Book Festival opens this weekend, it’s insane how many shows and events there are in our compact city in August). Late last night was my first screening for the 2026 edition of the EIFF, and it was a world premiere, no less! Theodore Schaefer brought us a hugely enjoyable Indie flick, with a very long title: The Arrow at Rest at Every Instant of its Flight.

That mouthful of a title likely refers to one of Zeno’s paradoxes (recorded by Aristotle), which considered the flight of an arrow, something seemingly swift, but, he argued, at any given instant that arrow occupies a fixed space and therefore, within that instant it is not really moving. Given Arrow’s Raymond Carver-style series of individual short narratives, which then start to overlap, this seems appropriate, as, through the various characters and their individual narratives we are seeing individual slices of time, moments offered up for observation, but also, of course, able by the end to see an entire tale, like stepping back from a close look at a detail on a tapestry to take in the entire thing.

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(director Theodore Schaefer, co-writer Patrick Lawler, and actor Jack Haven, talking with the film fest crowd after the screening, pic from my Flickr, click for the larger versions on my Flick stream)

There are three main stories here, at first seemingly not connected, although eventually we will see the threads pulling them together. The woman with a suitcase (Constance Schulman), is possibly the closest to the philosophical arrow of Zeno, in that we glimpse her repeatedly throughout the film, starting with confusing glimpses of her in various spots around the city. Sitting on a bench, by the river, passing a building. Each time, to her shock she sees someone else – passing in a car, leaning out of an apartment window – who looks exactly like her. These form the opening, intercut with rapid scene changes, interspersed with fast-moving glimpses of New York, set to a jazz score, mirroring the Suitcase Woman’s own confusion at what is going on, and reinforcing the central idea that what we interpret as a grander narrative is really made up of frozen moments of time (not unlike analogue film itself, single frames, each capturing a split second of time, then run at speed to create what we see as a moving image).

In the main strands we see a pair of younger people, including Violet (Gus Birney), bored with their lack of prospects, working in an arcade, dreaming of some way out, even if it involves committing a crime, while in another, we see a woman, Sinopia (Gus Birney again), a professor, in the middle of an affair, but questioning her life and her choices, especially of her committing to her fiancée for a possible wedding. The final main strand sees Jade (Birney again, really earning her pay here!), this time a hustler, a gambler and a pickpocket, but one with a conscience – after picking some wallets in a busy bar she finds one with a suicide note in it, and follows the person she lifted it from, in an attempt to help.

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Arrow is one of those films where summarising some of the plot really doesn’t do it justice, however. This is one of those little jewels that Indie cinema sometimes offers up to movie lovers, it’s a film to experience. Not that the overlapping structure of the stories isn’t important, but it’s more about experiencing it and the way the different angles of the different stories keep changing our expectations and our notion of what is happening, which I found very satisfying (I’m sure some might find it annoying, but it worked beautifully for me).

Director Schaefer, co-writer Patrick Lawler and actor Jack Haven (who you may recall from the excellent I Saw the TV Glow, which I reviewed here previously), were on hand to chat to the audience after the premiere, and their talk reinforced the impression I had from the film itself, that this was a labour of love. Shot on 16mm film stock, giving it a grainy edge with its black and white film, and the jazz score, the fast-moving intercut scenes of the city between events, it reminded me very much of a lot of avant-garde films from the 1960s and 70s, when film-makers were playing with what you could do with the medium.

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And indeed at the after-film talk, Schaefer confirmed that they were very much inspired by those older films from the 60s and 70s US indie scene, French New Wave and especially some from Eastern Europe, such as the Czech New Wave, while the choice of analogue 16mm, black and white film with the jazz score just suits the New York location perfectly. An absolute delight for Indie film fans.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Oh, Canada

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Oh, Canada,
Directed by Paul Schrader,
Starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, Jacob Elordi, Michael Imperioli, Victoria Hill

Adapted from the novel Foregone by the late Russell Banks, this is the second of the author’s works Schrader has spun a film from his friend’s writing (the previous one being Affliction). We have Richard Gere, playing an acclaimed American-Canadian documentary film-maker, Leonard Fife, now reaching the final stages of his life. Gere, known, of course, for his leading man looks, here starts off as far from that image as possible: Fife is dying, slowly, of cancer. We see him being woken by his much younger wife and former student, Emma (Uma Thurman) and his nurse, his face sunken, his strength mostly gone, his hair sparse on his head, his face unshaven, totally reliant on the help of others now as the end closes in. They are readying him for a final documentary.

However, this time, as Fife himself tells the camera, while looking directly at it, after a career spent encouraging others to open up and tell him things they normally never would, it was now, finally, “his turn”. His former students, Diana (Victoria Hill) and Malcolm (Michael Imperioli), with their younger assistant Sloan (Penelope Mitchell) arrive at his grand Canadian residence, rolling up a thick carpet, moving decorations, including a Christmas tree, in a large, oak-panelled room, setting up cameras and film lights.

Malcolm and Diana have talked him into being the subject this time, a final documentary for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company), which they assure him will cement his already formidable reputation among cinephiles for documentary movie making (Fife, we learned, earned that reputation exposing secret shames of the country, such as the vicious seal clubbing trade, which those of us of a certain age will recall with horror, and the way the children of indigenous peoples of Canada had been treated by parts of the school system to “fit in”). And it appears he wants this, not so much as a last piece of his legacy in cinema, but more because he is a dying man and welcomes the chance for a final confession before the final curtain. The camera will be his confessional priest, his wife he wants nearby as his witness.

It starts in a fairly standard manner, Fife talking to the camera about his early life before we cut to seeing it in flashback, with Jacob Elordi playing the younger Gere, taking us back to the US in 1968. Fife’s wife, daughter of a wealthy businessman, is pregnant and we see a touching scene of him reading to their first child and whispering to her baby bump, it all seems ideal, but also far removed from the old man we saw at the start of the film who is a respected documentarian.

Fife finds himself faced with choices – he has been offered a teaching job at a small but respected college he and his wife plan to move to, which would support them while he tries to write his novel on the side, but his father in law also offers him an incredibly generous and lucrative deal to be a part of his multi-million dollar business, which would set up his young family for life. There is also the looming threat of the draft, this being the era of Vietnam. In the end Fife chooses to run away from both obligations and to Canada, while along the way we see him indulge in numerous affairs.

This, understandably, upsets his loyal wife, Emma – he insists he is not being cruel, but she should know the sort of man she has been married to these last several decades, a man who ran away from his marriage, his children (his estranged son will turn up later and also add his voice to the narration). She, however, was never sure this documentary was a good idea, given his illness and medication, and believes that those are confusing him, that he’s not confessing buried truths but half-remembered other stories or wholly invented ones, and that the filming should stop, while Malcolm and Diana insist this is what Fife wanted and agreed to (we get the impression that despite their respect for his position, there’s also a distinct tension between Malcolm, Diana and Fife).

As I mentioned, Schrader does use Elordi for the younger Fife in flashbacks, but this, however, is not exclusive – there are scenes which start with Elordi as young Fife, such as the one I mentioned earlier with his pregnant wife, which then cut to Gere himself (as he is now, not as the older, dying version of Fife) playing his character. This happens several times throughout the film, while other flashbacks show Emma, Diana and Malcolm in their days as Fife’s students, but played by the same actors, only styled more for the period. It’s an interesting visual device, and a signal that Fife is a very unreliable narrator.

As the stories continue, Emma protests more, Fife insists he has to continue and that he is finally telling the truth, but there are moments when someone comments that couldn’t have happened when he said it did because he was known to be elsewhere at the time. Then he we see him stumble, confused, wondering where he got to in his narrative, losing his own thread in the labyrinth of his memory, that labyrinth not a solid, permanent structure, but a crumbling and shifting edifice. How much is real, how much is age, illness, the medication, a dying man who feels guilt for something, but what is real? Which of these sins did he really commit, if any?

Some of the film, notably those scenes with the dying Fife, are not only about a documentary being filmed, they use some of the conventions of the documentary film-maker, such as the subject, head and shoulders, talking directly to the camera (a trick we are told Fife used often himself as a way to get people to open up and talk). Those of us familiar with documentary film are almost pre-conditioned to accept that style as a form of verite, but here Schrader is playing with it undermining that filmic convention, reminding us even the realism of a documentary is artifice, it is choices, cuts, edits, omissions, inclusions, prejudices (conscious or otherwise), it is, in short, a constructed media, not reality, even if it is attempting to reflect it.

This confusion and tension builds through the film – did Fife really have this secret life before fleeing the draft to Canada? Did he really abandon a marriage and children his current wife had no idea about? The appearance later of his estranged son seems to confirm at least part of that, but by this point it is clear we can’t really take anything we see in the flashbacks, or what Fife tells the camera, as gospel. This will likely frustrate some viewers, which I can understand, but at the same time, to have then come out with a “this is what really happened” approach later would, I think, have betrayed the film.

An older man, full of regrets, seeking some sort of absolution, is, of course, not new territory for Schrader, so while this ay not be novel, it is however interesting, with the unreliability of what we are hearing and seeing leaving the viewer to make up their own mind about truth, reality and memory in the film (and by extension, in our own lives and in any other media). The actors give their all, especially Gere – this was the young, handsome, leading man who played the Gigolo for Schrader way back in the day, and while the flashbacks to Fife’s many youthful dalliances hint at that, the present day, weak, ill, dying, worn Fife, is in total contrast to that, and Gere plays it straight to the camera, documentary interview style, a brave move and a powerful one.

Not for everyone, but anyone who has followed Schrader’s career most likely knew that going in.

Oh, Canada will be available from Blue Finch on streaming platforms in Britain and Ireland from January 12th.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews : A Desert

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A Desert,
Directed by Joshua Erkman,
Starring David Yow, Kai Lennox, Sarah Lind, Zachary Ray Sherman, Ashley B. Smith, Rob Zabrecky, S.A Griffin

Alex Clark (Kai Lennox) is a middle-aged, fine-art photographer, an artist who had some success with his work earlier in his life, but is now struggling, both to recapture that success, but also to tap once more into that spark that he thought made younger him a better photographer. Leaving his wife Sam (Sarah Lind) behind, he drives off solo into the Great American West, taking in those huge, sun-baked, geologically rich landscapes that have inspired so many film-makers, from the classic John Ford Westerns to contemporary road movies.

Many of the places he passes through suit his melancholy, reflective mood – few communities, just the odd scattered dwellings, lots of empty remnants of previous human habitation, such as long-abandoned cinemas, workspaces, old , ruined homes and more, which he explores, and photographs with his large film camera. He seems almost as lost as the abandoned places he visits and shoots – like them he once had purpose and drive, now he is struggling to see if he can recover those aspects of himself. Lennox plays this weariness, but subtly softens it, with the occasional glimpse or fleeting expression crossing Alex’s face as a particularly photographic scene or beautiful view presents itself, and we see him brighten momentarily.

Phoning home, he leaves a voice mail for his wife saying what he had been shooting, adding that for a change he took a portrait of a local, and that perhaps one of his problems is he usually focuses so much on landscapes, not people. Unfortunately he’s not going to get much time to see if he can modify his approach to life and his work, because he encounters Renny (Zachary Ray Sherman) and Susie Q (Ashley Smith), who are in the motel room next to his. An encounter leads to them inviting themselves into his room, and right from the start you know this is not going to well. Smith gives Susie a constantly amused but dangerous look, like a cat playing with a mouse who doesn’t even realise it’s in any peril, while Sherman’s Renny just drips menace, all skinny, wiry muscle, greasy hair, dangerous eyes, radiating a look that is like a mix of young Ethan Hawke crossed with Charles Manson.

Minor Spoiler Alert: this next part happens fairly early on in the film, and is integral to the later events, but you may not want to know before seeing it, as it involves something happening to a major character.

If you’re still with us after that spoiler warning, there’s a major shock as Renny, exuding a simultaneous mixture of chumminess and threat (some excellent acting by Sherman), takes Alex to an abandoned home he claims he was born in, that he may want to photograph, before suddenly turning ferociously violent, stabbing him again and again and again. The switch from almost laid-back, semi-stoner slouch to vicious murderer is a huge shock to the system, especially given the slow-burn pace of the film until then (it’s also a film that, especially in the first third, lets the cinematography do most of the talking, with very little dialogue). And of course, that’s part of the point, and damn, it is effective.

It also suddenly pulls you away from what you thought was one of the lead characters – now his wife becomes involved, hiring a private eye Harold Pallandino (David Yow), a man almost the epitome of the rumpled-suit, down on his luck Shamus. Despite his shabbiness, he does succeed in tracing Alex’s steps to the motel he took a room in, and several of the locations he visited, before giving into some of his own, old vices (the type, we learn from another detective, that got Harold kicked off the police force years before), leading Sam to head out to the desert to investigate for herself, but this will lead her into the very same danger her husband found himself in…

However, this neo-noir storyline, interesting as it is, is really only a part of the draw of A Desert – the visuals are as important here, and there is some gorgeous cinematography from Jay Keitel. As you’d expect, some of this takes the shape of the rich landscapes and colours the desert towns and their surroundings offer (and the contrast between the few human figures and that vast, beautiful but lonely landscape), but also the more mundane and worn parts of this world are made to look fascinating and beautiful here.

An abandoned cinema looks amazing, both visually intriguing but also echoing that melancholy of Alex, something that has seen better days but once had happy purpose, but retains a certain kind of beauty even in decay. Even a simple night shot, the camera gazing at the motel, the two rooms side by side, Alex in one, Renny and Susie in the adjoining one, a symmetrical pattern of doors and windows, both in their own rooms but watching the same film on TV, the flickering light creating identical patterns on their night-time windows. It’s only a moment, but it’s a beautiful shot and hints at the depth of care lavished by Erkman, Keitel and the rest of their crew on each frame of footage.

It’s a beautifully shot film, that has echoes of some of those 80s and 90s American road movie, Indie films, with elements of the noir, running on a slow-burn, low dialogue approach, which makes the sudden moments of action and violence all the more powerful.

A Desert is available on UK and Irish digital platforms from Blue Finch Film Releasing, from November 24th

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

EIFF 2025 – Redux Redux

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Redux Redux,
Directed by Kevin and Matthew McManus,
Starring Michaela McManus, Stella Marcus, Jeremy Holm, Jim Cummings, Taylor Misiak, Dendrie Taylor

Redux Redux begins as it intends to mostly go on – powerfully. A woman dispatching a man tied to a fallen chair in the desert, by burning him alive. The same woman in a desperate, hand to hand struggle with the same man in a wretched looking shack of a home, until she finally gets the upper hand and dispatches him again, violently, shooting him through a mattress. In between we see her searching a small box the man has hidden, finding a lock of hair with the number “12” on it. These are the trophies of a serial killer.

We soon realise the woman, Irene (Michaela McManus) is not only hunting this serial killer, Neville (Jeremy Holm) to take brutal revenge, she is killing multiple Nevilles across parallel dimensions. Neville abducted, tortured and killed her daughter, and she has never even managed to have the tiny bit of closure that at least finding a body would do. “Where is she?!” she screams at one Neville, before blowing his brains out all over a wall. This is a woman on a missions, powered by raw grief and rage.

Between each killing and the subsequent escape to the steel coffin-like box that transports her to the next dimension, we slowly get more of Irene’s history. She’s been doing this for quite a while, and each universe is very similar, so certain points bring her back time and again. Not just the obvious target of her rage, Neville – and after so many times, she now knows his patterns, making him much easier to track and kill – but her former family home, abandoned in most realities, nobody wanting to buy a home steeped in such tragedy (not only the loss of her daughter, but other versions of Irene later ended their own lives). In some ways the anger and retribution, along with a diminishing desire to find a reality where she and her child are safe and happy (after so many trips, she has never yet found one), are what keeps this Irene going, while the others ended their lives.

Up till now you might be thinking nice idea, little bit Terminator / Sarah Connor, perhaps, but then she finds something new when hunting another Neville: Mia (Stella Marcus). Another victim of Neville, she finds her in his lair and rescues her while taking care of this Neville. A kid who has been in and out of care homes – sadly with little actual care – and was caught by Neville while running away from her latest place, she is distrustful, wary, and combative with Irene, but you already know there’s going to be something developing there.

And yes, you can feel that coming, but here that’s no bad thing, because you want to see these two grow closer together. When Mia goes from disbelief to seeing proof of Irene’s dimensional travelling, she decides she too wants revenge on Neville for nearly killing her (and all the other hers across different worlds), but an almost broken Irene tells her no, how even though this hunt keeps her going, it has taken all her humanity from her. The loving parent has disappeared under a vengeful woman with no mercy, committing brutal death after death after death, with no end in sight.

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(actor Stella Marcus, who played Mia, talking to the audience in the Filmhouse after the film festival screening of Redux Redux, pics from my Flickr)

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Mia’s arrival signals the start of a disruption to this seemingly endless pattern Irene has trapped herself in, unable to stop or walk away, but hating herself for it. It also ups the emotional level – the smaller glimpses into the magnitude of what was done to make her this way are replaced by a much deeper emotional awareness growing. Along the way we also get some exceptionally fine and tense action scenes – sneaking at night into the decrepit hovel Neville lives in is reminiscent of Clarice in Buffalo Bill’s basement, while other sequences are straight-out action, with multiple cops chasing Irene.

Yes, there are a few moments where you can guess which direction this is taking, but when it does it is actually normally satisfying, the growing emotional aspect draws you in (McManus and Marcus, in her first feature role, really sell the damaged souls slowly finding something more), while the tense and action filled scenes give you some serious spectacle too. An absolutely excellent slice of action-SF, with an emotional core.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Cielo

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Cielo,
Directed by Alberto Sciamma,
Starring Fernanda Gutiérrez Aranda, Carla Arana, Juan Carlos Aduviri, Luis Bredow, Sasha Salaverry, Fernando Arze Echalar

Sciamma’s Cielo is a wonderfully unusual piece of film-making, and one which does not fit easily into any particular category (which is no bad thing, in my book). Young Santa (a remarkable performance from young Fernanda Gutiérrez Aranda), lives on a remote farm with her warm, loving mother, Paz(Carla Arana), and her violent, thuggish father (Juan Carlos Aduviri), on the high Altiplano of Bolivia. Maltreated by the father, the young daughter and her mother secretly plan to escape, but this is no ordinary escape from a bad domestic situation, they intend to follow the stars to Heaven (literally). It’s a long journey across some truly remarkable landscapes, and young Santa will meet – and change – a number of people on her voyage.

However, this simple synopsis really doesn’t do Cielo justice – this isn’t a film you follow in the normal, narrative manner (although there is a narrative there), this is more a film to be experienced. That story is there, but it is also filled with some fable-like, fantastical elements – in many ways it reminded me of some of the great literature that has come out of Central and South America in the last century, where the everyday and a sort of magical realism often intertwine. Unusual imagery is conjured – in a very early scene we see our young girl scooping a fish from the nearby lake, then carefully swallowing it whole, and the fish symbol will recur throughout the film, as will other seemingly magical or miraculous events (a dead condor being brought back to life, for instance, or a wound healing).

But if some of Cielo is indeed a fable, it also has much in common with the older versions of fairy tales, before they were tidied up and sanitised for children, in that these magical moments are also interspersed with moment of sudden violence and even death, all the more shocking after the more magical moments, and the absolutely beautiful cinematography. On that latter note, props must be given to Alex Metcalfe’s gorgeous cinematography – his camera takes in those amazing landscapes, filmed in some beautiful compositions that fill the screen and the eye, while smaller, more personal scenes, such as Santa and her Mother together are composed with equal care and an eye for strong visuals (even simple elements like the colours of the clothes on the girl and woman in that bright, Bolivian light, were quite lovely, this really is ravishing filmic visuals to drink in).

This is a journey that takes in a fish in a bucket of water (which Santa talks to on her travels), a local police chief who is troubled and emotional behind his macho moustache, and even a group of travelling Cholita female wrestlers, all of whom end up helping Santa, and being changed by her, while flashbacks show her birth and first few years, and again some possible miracles and little bits of magic around her, which she and her mother share (the father scoffs and then returns to his drink and his violence, his eyes closed to everything else). Is Santa actually creating little (and sometimes not so little) miracles, or are people seeing what they want to (a village priest, Father Jaime (Luis Bredow) tells her mother at one point how many times someone tells him of a person in a nearby village who can work supposed miracles (but can’t).

The film offers up the scenes, but leaves it open to the audience to interpret; it is perhaps not really a film about religion per se, but more about the nature of faith itself. Santa has a faith that carries her on a long journey, so sure she will find her way to Heaven, drawing people along in her orbit. Cielo is a visually rich, beautiful-looking film, with a stunning performance from its very young lead. This is a film you could easily lose yourself in.

Cielo has its UK Premiere at the SXSW London festival, with screenings on June 6th and 7th.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

 

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Short Film Competition

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I always find the live action and the animated short film section of the festival to be a fascinating one. The short work is often where you find new or different talent, starting to spread their wings, and that’s something any art form needs to encourage (I also find it heartening that that film festival has a number of these mostly-new film-makers present to talk about their works, which are often very personal). All of the works in this strand were in competition for The Thelma Schoonmaker Prize for Short Filmmaking Excellence, named for the acclaimed, Oscar and BATA winning editor, renown for her collaborations with Martin Scorsese. As with any collection of short works, it’s a varied mixture. Some will connect more with one viewer, others with a different viewer, but regardless of who wins, hopefully exposure at this sort of festival event helps boost the creator’s signal and get them noticed in the wider media sphere (and perhaps even help in opening other doors further down the line, always a constant struggle for any artist in any artform).

There was a pleasing diversity on offer here – one audience member who stood at the end of the Q&A with the creators summed it up nicely when he thanked them for making us cry and laugh. We moved from friends creating music and celebrating a birthday (Argentinian entry Shoal) to a special anniversary for an elderly couple, the wife in the grips of dementia, her erratic memories bursting forth in the form of animation created using napkins (Wilma Smith’s The Jubilee), to a monochrome homage to the golden age of silver screen monster movies in a world where werewolves are real (Manny Wolfe), to exploring family memories and exploding houses (Liberty Smith’s My Exploding House) , father and son relationships (My Dad and the Volcano by Scottish creator Gavin Reid, who, it turned out, once worked in the Cameo Cinema where the films were being shown, and Lisa Clarkson’s Paternal Advice, adapted from a story by noted Scots author Janice Galloway), mother and daughter relationships and living on the breadline (Jamie Di Spirito’s Homework), and gender identity (Max Olson’s Nico). It really was a satisfying and diverse selection, from home and abroad. There isn’t time or space to cover each entry – I thought they were all strong in their own ways, but I can’t cover everything, so here are just a few thoughts on some that particularly touched me:

Trevor Neuhof’s Manny Wolfe tickled me in all the right ways – as you may guess from the title, this was the werewolf short film. Lovingly shot in black and white, with that silvery sheen characteristic of those 1940s and 50s horror films, it is also poking gentle fun at Tinsel Town (Manny works as a waiter, but explains he is an actor – a director dining in his restaurant just nods wearily, you and every other waiter in this town, kid). In this world werewolves are real, but they are just people, not bloodthirsty monsters, and while the horror flicks may seem made for him, Manny keeps losing out at auditions because he wants to be a serious actor, not just a howling wolfman. It’s funny and touching, both to fans of classic horror, and also to the struggle everyone who has worked in Hollywood has gone through to make it, that anyone who loves the film medium will be aware of.

Manny Wolfe Teaser from Trevor Neuhoff on Vimeo.

Max Olson’s Nico was a beautifully crafted piece, following a young trans man (Rene Leech); we see them shaving off their longer hair to a buzz cut, breasts bound, a gentleman’s overcoat, but the disappointment on their face when a nightclub doorman refers to them as a woman, and realising that these changes haven’t altered the way many others see them. The actor plays this with such vulnerability and quietness, head always down, not making eye contact, usually on their own in a dark city, alone even in the crowd of the dance floor of the club.

There’s such a fragile beauty to it and vulnerability of someone trying to be who they want to be that you almost want to hug them and tell them if will be alright. The elderly widow in the next apartment sees them in the man’s coat and tells them they look like her late husband, leading to an incredibly touching shared moment between two souls struggling with where life has taken them; ultimately this beautiful short film is about the fact each of us has our own pains and needs, and it is only those precious connections to one another than can really anchor us.

Wilma Smith’s The Jubilee was a mix of live-action and animation, most of the latter created, hand-drawn on table napkins and tissues (the objects themselves, rather cleverly, can become animated too, moving, rolling up to evoke emotions of loss, grief, anger and fear). On those napkins we see a woman, then a dashing man in a suit, who she at first thinks is her father, before realising it is her beloved husband. A cacophony of voices can be heard in the background, commenting about her condition, about her not having one of her good days, and to any of us (far too damned many of us) who have had loved ones slowly consumed by it, we will recognise this quickly as someone with dementia.

The Jubilee (2024) Trailer from Wilma Smith – Film Director on Vimeo.

Smith uses this simple animation medium (all done in her garden shed, cold in winter, roasting in summer) to great emotional effect; the feelings of disorientation, of knowing something is wrong, something is missing, but not knowing what or why, and the panic it brings, then the sudden bursts of memories that do remain, suddenly vivid for a brief spell. The final moments are live action, a family gathering for a special wedding anniversary, the live footage the real world we see, the animation the interior life of a mind and memory failing itself and trying to find the thread through an impossible labyrinth.

I think the thing that struck me with all of the works here isn’t just how well-crafted they were, it is also how wonderfully personal they clearly are to the filmmakers. Yes, of course, you can have a lot of personal elements in a feature film as a writer, director, actor, but I think perhaps with the short form it is more concentrated, you can feel the emotion in it, and that always enriches your viewing experience. From the short Q&A with the creators after the screening in the Cameo Cinema, it seemed even clearer that each of them had indeed brought a project that was very dear to them emotionally, and for my money that’s a good thing – any artistic endeavour that doesn’t elicit an empathic or sympathetic emotional response isn’t working for me, and these all touched me in different ways.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh International Film Festival – Animated Shorts Review

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Edinburgh International Film Festival – Animated Shorts

The Edinburgh International Film Festival was much shorter than usual this year – given last autumn we thought we had lost it along with the Edinburgh Filmhouse when the charity running both went into administration (see our report here) though, I was just grateful the world’s longest, continually running film festival was still going. We didn’t have the annual McLaren Animation Awards this year, but I was relieved to see that the EIFF programmers still made space for the animated short films, with a mix of familiar faces and new talent, with a dozen films, taking in a diverse array of subjects and styles, from hand-drawn to using found objects, stop-motion, even fragments of vinyl album sleeves to create their worlds.

I will hold my hand up here and admit my bias – as readers of our previous years of EIFF coverage will have gathered, the short animation strand is pretty much my favourite art of the film festival. In one screening it encapsulates – at least for me – what these festival should do: expose the viewer to a mixture of established and emerging talent, give them that important showcase, and take in a variety of styles and subjects. Isn’t that part of what we want at a film festival? That chance to explore works we might not otherwise see?

Jenny Jokela’s Sweet Like Lemons, a play on the old “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade” phrase, used a colourful, hand-drawn style to explore issues of toxic relationships, and trying to extricate yourself from them. We see hands trying to write an email, constantly starting the message, then deleting it, starting again, and again, because she’s trying to find the determination to break free from a cycle of behaviour and find herself. The artwork veers from colourful and beautiful to the suddenly threatening, mirroring such controlling relationships, and felt very from the heart.

Sweet Like Lemons (2023) – Trailer from Jenny Jokela on Vimeo.

Some of the other works were also clearly drawing (sometimes literally) on personal experiences, using the animation medium to explore their own emotional history and experiences, articulate them, perhaps learn and grow beyond them, or at least have some closure and ownership over those issues, instead of letting those issues own them (not to mention sharing with others, some of whom may have experienced similar, and may gain recognition and strength from the sharing, never a bad thing).

On that score, I thought Holly Summerson’s Living With It, and The Perpetrators by Richard Squires both used animation as a way to explore their own lives and struggles. In Living With It, another traditionally, hand-drawn animated work, Summerson takes the reality TV show idea of the home makeover, except in her case her home and world are run down and in need of an uplift because she lives with a chronic illness, manifested as the character Bug. It’s a brief but emotionally effective glimpse into a life too many have to cope with.

Living With It – Trailer [CC] from Holly Summerson on Vimeo.

Perpetrators mixed live action footage with animation, exploring how it was to grow up as a gay man in the hostile environment of the 1980s. The framing device is using changing medical and psychological definitions of homosexuality (still on the books as a mental illness until just a few decades ago). The pain and shame of having to be hidden, not to be able to declare who you are to friends or even close family, is palpable, the institutional nature of the bigotry shameful to modern eyes (consider how similar tropes are deployed today in the debate around trans rights). But Squires also deploys a lot of humour here, using tropes from the much-loved Scooby Doo cartoons to inform his animation. I suspect that streak of humour was, for him, as for many of us, part of how he coped (what would we do without that sense of humour? How much darker would our lives be?).

Tanya J Scott’s The Wolf of Custer was a beautiful piece, exploring the power of folklore and myth, as a hunter, reminiscent of Quint in Jaws, listens to the people of a small town tell tales of a giant wolf that can devour entire bisons (the smoke and flame of a fire and the shadows in the room all morph into flowing, dream-like images of the magical wolf as they tell their tales). Arrogantly he declares where would we be if we believed such native folklore nonsense, and that he will set out to kill their wolf. As you may imagine, as his journey through the vast wilderness progresses, and he catches glimpses of the wolf, then images of it carved and painted into the rocks of the very land, he slowly comes to realise and respect why we have such creatures in our stories, why they are important to us.

Jordan Antonowicz-Behnan’s A Taste For Music dealt with living with a seriously ill loved one, in this case his father. It captures that frustration at seeing them being weakened and unable to do things they want, and is also quite honest about the anger and resentment that comes along with this as it grinds on (many of us will have been there, with the best will in the world there’s a moment where you just become so angry at the situation, the disease, even the person). Through it though is a shared love of music, drawing – quite literally here, the animator drew on record sleeves – on his father’s extensive vinyl collection as a way of connecting, something the illness could still allow him to do, while the use of record sleeves gives the visuals a distinctive flair.

A Taste For Music (Trailer) from Jordan Antonowicz-Behnan on Vimeo.

I was also delighted to see BAFTA-winning Ainslie Henderson return. I’ve seen Henderson several times at the McLaren Animation strand at the EIFF over the years – his film A Cat Named Dom won last year’s McLaren gong at the festival (see our report from the 2022 EIFF here on LFF), and am always looking forward to any new work. Shackle is a stop-motion piece (I love all animation, but have an especially soft spot for stop-motion work), with a couple of small woodland creatures, taking everyday forest objects such as apples and pine cones, then making art and music with them, while a more frightening version of these endearing creatures lurks in the dark version of the forest, looking on greedily and coveting what they have.

I don’t really have time to dive into every film screened during the Animated Shorts, but these are some of the ones that especially caught my eye. Again I am grateful the animators get a chance to show these in a cinema setting, with an audience, and talk about their works – we used to have the excellent Four Mations on Channel 4, and BBC2 used to do late night animation strands, years ago, something that seems to have vanished from media schedules these days, despite the phttps://www.liveforfilm.com/roliferation of more channels and the fact we’re still seeing new and established talents creating new, interesting works, but the main broadcasters seem to ignore them, which, I think, makes the film festivals all the more important as a chance to wave the flag for this time-consuming and inventive form of film-making.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Edinburgh Film Festival – Superposition

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Edinburgh International Film Festival 2023 – Superposition
Directed by Karoline Lyngbye,
Starring Marie Bach Hansen, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, Mihlo Olsen
(Danish language, with English subtitles)

Stine (Marie Bach Hansen), a frustrated writer, and her partner Teit (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), a broadcaster and podcaster, have decided to quit the rat race of life in urban Copenhagen, and are moving with their young boy, Nemo (Mihlo Olsen), to try living for a year completely isolated in a designer cabin, near a lake in the Swedish forest, with Stine planning to use the peace and space to get back to her novel, while Teit is recording regular podcasts on their experiences, although since they are too remote for any web access, he has to put his shows on a USB drive then mail them to his radio station and the people bankrolling their lifestyle change. It will not surprise anyone to learn that their plans to not go quite as expected, and they start to learn more about one another than they anticipated – in a rather unusual way.

Right from the beginning there’s a lovely visual style to Superposition by cinematographer Sine Vadstrup Brooker, with a view of the calm lake waters, the line of the opposite shore bisecting the middle of the screen, the water reflecting the trees and the clouds above, but tilted ninety degrees to the side, slowly rotating back to the more normal viewpoint; a beautiful image, but also one that whispers of something not right, something being out of kilter, in this remote location.

At first they settle in quite happily, exploring the very cool, designer cabin and surrounding woods and lake, their wee boy and dog, Tarzan, happily running around while they settle in. As Tein sets up the microphones for his first recording, however, the cracks start to appear, as an at-first genial discussion between him and Stine about why they came here and what they hope to get out of it, produces answers Tein isn’t too happy with. Stine points out that they agreed to be honest in these recorded discussions, something he likes to pride himself on, but we can already see that actually he’s quite sensitive to honesty when it concerns him.

This is all handled in a nice, quiet, intimate manner between the two characters, no histrionics, no shouting. It’s also a nice bit of storytelling economy – we get the gist of their relationship and troubles (he had an affair, cheating on her, she resents giving up her plans to be the Great Young Novelist she was earmarked by the writing establishment to become in favour of raising a family) in one short scene, along with the obvious fact that both are also creatives and seem a bit competitive on that front as well as on their personal relationship. It’s deftly done, no flashbacks or long expositions, we get it all in this quiet, neat way, letting us into the characters and their lives.

So far you could be mistaken for thinking this is going to be one of those films where people with troubles escape into nature and find the struggle to live in it helps them put their personal problems in perspective, and overcome them. But this is more “glamping” than really back to nature, whatever the pair of them think (fancy cabin, electricity, computers, music, wine, hardly roughing it). And there is something else going on – they glimpse another family of three, on the far shore of the lake.

This surprises them as the location was sold as being totally remote, with no-one else near them. Stine in particular seems very put out by this (given the vast spaces around them, it’s hard to feel any sympathy for her here, she seems more petulant than anything else). They try to avoid these others, which should be easy as they are away on the other side of the water, but of course, we know sooner or later something will bring them in contact with one another. And when they find these others are, well, them, they are understandably confused. Why are dopplegangers of them here in this remote forest? Where did they come from, what do they do?

Edinburgh International Film Festival - Karoline Lyngbye 02
(Director Karoline Lyngbye, on the right, talking to the film festival audience, pic from my Flickr)

Although you can see little hints of the likes of Peele’s Us, this is a different beast, and uses this encounter to further explore the damaged relationships between the main couple in a rather novel way. Starting as a drama, Superposition mixes in elements of science fiction, thriller and horror into its DNA, and combines it with some lovely cinematography (riffing cleverly on reflections and duos), while scenes with the characters interacting with their duplicates are very well done (the director explained they had some of the visual effects team on hand during the actual filming to make sure it was done right, a laborious task involving multiple takes of scenes).

An intriguing, clever and beautifully shot piece of cinema from Denmark.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Camera Man – the remarkable Buster Keaton, celebrated

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Camera Man, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century,
Dana Stevens,
Atria Books

“I count the years of defeat and grief and disappointment, and their percentage is so minute that is continually surprises and delights me.”

I’ve adored Buster Keaton for as long as I can remember; when I was very young, the films of Buster, Harold Lloyd, Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy were a staple on television, often put on during the school holidays, and were the gateway into that long-ago era of early film for me (and for many others, I would think). I watched them with my dad (who would delight in telling me how he actually saw Laurel and Hardy when he was young, his father taking him to see them on their final UK tour – clearly love of this kind of humour runs in our family). Actually we still watch them together to this day, enjoying them as much, if not more, than we did when I was just a little boy. I imagine this is a scenario more than a few of you will recognise and likely share – not just watching these films and loving them, but sharing them with someone important to you (which always makes them better and even more special).

So, as you may guess, I was more than delighted to be sent a copy of Camera Man by Dana Stevens, film critic at Slate and also a lifelong admirer of Keaton’s work. I was even more delighted to find this is far more than a biography; yes, it does, as you would expect, contain a lot of biographic information, from Buster’s early days as a child star on the vaudeville stages with his family, performing unbelievable – not to mention dangerous – acts and stunts (that would stand him in such good stead when he moved to film), through early exposure to film work, finding his feet in the new medium, the changes as the years pass, the downs as well as the ups, his later life.

Yes, that’s all here, and it is fascinating. However, Stevens also does something far more interesting – she discusses what is going on around Buster as his life and career unfolds across the decades, in popular culture, society and in technology. This means not only taking in aspects of Buster’s world you might expect, such as how the new-fangled moving image (born in the same year as our man, 1895) would start to encroach on the older forms of popular entertainment, such as the vaudeville circuit Buster’s family operated on, or how the introduction of sound, or the emergence of the large studio systems, replacing the many small, independent, seat of the pants production companies, and how this affected Buster, determined his choices and options.

(Above: very early Keaton, from around 1917, working with Roscoe Arbuckle. Below: from both their late career stage – Keaton and Chaplin in Limelight, from 1952)

But it also takes in the wider world around him – we see an early American movie industry where many women held senior positions such as producers and directors, as well as being on-screen talent (sadly something that changed to the still too familiar patriarchal system with the coming of the big studios), we see early experiments in a totally new medium, artists figuring out what they can do with this flickering image, pushing what can be done on film. We also see the wider world around it – the “new woman” of the 1910s and 20s, the multiple connections across all levels of society (one early film critic, a great supporter of Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton’s art, would also become a speech writer for Franklin D Roosevelt), we see the emergence of that gloriously hedonistic 1920s Hollywood (so recently celebrated in the film Babylon), where a newly flush Buster buys a big home, with near neighbours like Valentino, and Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks (whose Hollywood mansion boasted a lawn so big the Goodyear Blimp could land on it!). Changes in gender relations, race relations and more as society alters and changes, it’s all in here.

It all serves very effectively not only to give an overview of Buster’s life, his craft and his body of work, it gives it all so much more context, placing it in the world he was in at each moment of that remarkable life, which is vitally important, because it’s all connected, it influences everything. Stevens doesn’t shy away from discussing aspects such as race – a common “minstrel” trope of the period, involving black face and a parody of an African American that is very hard for a modern viewer to watch is discussed, for instance, while she also notes the shoddy treatment Mabel Normand, one of the biggest women in film of her time (and so sadly often overlooked today) received (Keaton’s contemporary, Chaplin, was especially singled out for his chauvinistic stance to taking orders from a women director, despite her having far more experience than he has, just starting out in film). And, of course, it explores the darker moments – the marriage failures, the terrible time lost to alcohol abuse.

However, the main focus here is clearly in celebrating one of the most remarkable figures of early cinema, and rightly justifying why he is important, not just specifically in the history of comedy, but also in film history in general, for his innovations and techniques, his eagerness to embrace new technologies and see what he could do with them, and, most importantly, how he could use them to create a good gag and make people laugh. And there is a lot of laughter to be had here, rather fittingly – it’s hard to read some descriptions of moments from making those films and not to start giggling away with laughter. Frankly, I sat there with a big smile on my face for a lot of this book, pausing now and then to put the book down and then go and watch some of those films (fortunately so many available online now). In fact I think this is a book that encourages you to stop reading periodically and go and watch some of the films it is discussing.

Kudos also to Stevens for using the latter segments of the book to bust (bad pun intended, sorry) some of the myths about Buster’s later life – many still think he made just a handful of films after sound came in, then spent the rest of his life in the shadows of his former reputation, drinking away. And while he did go through some very rough times and a long, dark night of the soul, that’s far from the full truth. Stevens takes us through the 1940s, 50s and 60s; we see Buster still writing, still performing, on stage (at a sadly now gone famous Parisian circus post-war, where he was rightly acclaimed as a great artist) and then getting himself involved in another emerging new medium – television.

Yes, Buster had his own show for a little while in the early days of TV broadcasting in the US, and he found a new outlet for new gags and pranks to delight a new audience. This new medium – whose emergence so frightened Hollywood at the time – would also be a major part of the reason his and other performers from that era had their reputation and place in film history cemented, because some of those old films were unearthed and shown on the new “boob tube”. In much the way it did with Universal’s famous monster movies of the 30s, so long out of fashion, the TV screenings made them new to a different audience – performers like Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd, Lugosi, Karloff, they all had a renaissance in popular culture this way, and that’s never truly gone away. The book also touches on the first stirrings, decades on from the Silent Film era, to find and preserve that rapidly disintegrating treasure trove before more of it was lost for all time (for which I imagine many of us are profoundly grateful), along with a cultural reevaluation of the importance of those works. He was still working away on new ideas and projects pretty much until the end.

A few years ago I went to a Keaton screening at my beloved Filmhouse in Edinburgh (home to the Edinburgh International Film Festival – sadly closed suddenly last autumn, you can read my report on that sad news elsewhere on LFF). It was a weekend matinee, the cinema actively encouraged family groups with children (with very low ticket prices too). The screening was a bunch of Keaton shorts, then an interval, and the second half was the feature, Steamboat Bill Jr- yes, the one with the front of the house falling on Buster, who emerges unscathed through the window frame (this was all shot for real!). That was also his last independent feature; after this he was folded into the new studio system, working for MGM, who removed his artistic freedom and ruined what could have been good films (sadly a tale many artists in many a medium are too familiar with to the present day, the Suits telling the Talent what works).

A couple of rows in front of me was a man with his two wee boys, maybe around six and seven years of age. They laughed with their dad all through the endless gags of the short films. I found myself wondering how they would react to a feature length silent in the second half; I needn’t have worried, the little boys sat spellbound at Buster’s athletic stunts and laughed and laughed. I include this little personal moment here because it illustrates something Stevens does so well with this book – Buster is as wonderful and funny to new audiences as he was in his 1920s silent-era heyday, and he’s always being discovered by someone for the first time, just as I first found them when I was a kid, watching with my dad, and here I saw that process taking place again. More importantly I got to sit in a cinema, watching a man long dead, restored to life by a magical, flickering beam of light, and that man made people smile and laugh. What a wonderful gift and legacy, one rightly celebrated in this book.

Camera Man is published by Atria Books, out now in hardback, with the paperback release this April.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Film remembered

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Nice, short video from TCM, remembering many of the film people we lost in 2022 (so sad that I have to add my beloved Filmhouse and Edinburgh International Film Festival to that list – see here):

The Filmhouse

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Oh, where to start with this? Like many in the film world, especially in Edinburgh, I am still reeling from the shock of the sudden closing of the city’s wonderful Filmhouse cinema, home also to the Edinburgh International Film Festival, also shuttered. The evening before the news broke, I was booking a screening for the weekend. In fact, I am writing this piece at the time I should be sitting in screen one of the Filmhouse to watch a tribute to the late Jean-Luc Goddard, with a screening of A Bout de Souffle (Seberg in that fabulous pixie haircut, the irreplaceable Belmondo, sigh). And then I should come out of the theatre, a satisfied smile on my face, and head into the Filmhouse’s lovely cafe-bar for a post-film relax, drink, chat, food and just plain sit there and enjoy the atmosphere.

It’s not a newsflash to say cinemas have been struggling – we all know it, I’m sure most of us who read LFF are worried about it and trying our best to support our local cinemas, especially the independent and arthouse theatres like the Filmhouse. But the suddenness of the Centre for the Moving Image (CMI), the charitable body that runs Filmhouse, declaring itself in administration has taken all of us by surprise. Only a few weeks ago I was busy filing reports from the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) right here on this site, waving the flag for interesting new films and new movie makers. I’ve been going to that festival for thirty years – this year the film festival, the oldest continually running film fest on our planet – celebrated its 75th birthday.

Filmhouse at night

Filmhouse 01

And now this.

Many in the arts are struggling right now – Covid, of course, put a huge torpedo beneath the waterline of many arts organisations and venues and creators on a global scale. The final weekend before that first Lockdown, I was going home from visiting a friend, knowing it may be my last chance for a while (we had no idea just how bloody long then). I passed the Filmhouse about 11 on a Saturday night. Cinemas, theatres and bars had already closed before the Lockdown. The street was deserted save for a couple waiting at a bus stop. City centre on a Saturday evening on a street with theatres, cinemas, bars and restaurants, dead. It was a chilling omen.

Filmhouse Noir

As restrictions have eased, and cinemas returned, then had to close again, then re-open, and the struggle to get studios to get the big film content back out on schedules again so a reluctant, scared audience had more reason to go out to the cinemas again went on (thank you, Chris Nolan for sticking to your guns and supporting cinemas for your release of Tenet), we’ve seen audiences come back, but often not in the same numbers as pre-Covid. It’s a pattern I have seen repeated all over the arts, even here, in the arts festival capital of the world. The Fringe was busy this summer, but nowhere near old levels. It was wonderful to be back to a couple of weeks of film festival, but while I saw good audiences, few of the screenings were quite as busy as before. I’ve seen similar even at book events, from in-store, small scale events to the big Edinburgh International Book Festival (some big crowds for certain names, but again that feeling that the same numbers are not coming back).

Between this and the huge rise in the cost of living, with the worst of the energy price rises looming, it was too much for an organisation that had already suffered through two years of hell nobody anticipated. How many businesses and venues have had the same problems?

For me, personally though, this is a wretched blow. I first encountered the Filmhouse when I moved to Edinburgh as a student in the autumn of 1991. The generous student discounts helped me go see more films, and as film was a part of my college studies, I could bunk off classes to go to the cinema and pretend it was research (any excuse). The lovely cafe-bar has long been one of my Happy Places, one of those spots where I can go when I am having a rough time, and always feel better just being there, even if I’m not going into a film. And, of course, after making it a second home for three decades, it is packed with memories for me.

I met new friends there – the former Filmhouse education officer (outreach was always an important part of their community-minded remit), Shiona, who was a guest lecturer at my college, and who became a friend (taken far too soon from us, but I still feel her presence every time I am at the FH). I felt encouraged to try films I may not otherwise have seen, at least not on the big screen (where the experience is always different). From new European and world cinema that nobody else in town was showing, to classics , from Buster Keaton to a 70mm print of 2001. I went with friends to the film study courses during the winter night, a screening then a lecture, then, of course, a good discussion about it all in the FH bar afterwards. Again it often opened me up to film-makers I may otherwise never have encountered.

And then there’s the film festival, headquartered in the FH’s19th century building. The buzz in the FH cafe-bar at 1am, coming out of a late night festival screening was something else, often some of the film-makers would be hanging around happily chatting to people over a drink, nobody wanting to go home, all on a festival high. At a festival retrospective on the works of Powell and Pressburger, I took a dear friend to see A Matter of Life and Death, which she had never seen. Just before the film, the festival announcer produced a surprise: a very frail, elderly man walked slowly onto the stage; it was Jack Cardiff, Powell and Pressburger’s now legendary cinematographer.

He told us of being given his break by them, of working on those movies – surely some of the most beautiful British films ever made – and I swear this very old man grew straighter and younger as he talked to us of those days of post-war British film-making. Remarkable experiences like that happened at the EIFF. Ray Harryhausen chatting to an audience, Dame Evelyn Glennie coming out after a documentary about her, to entertain the audience with a solo music performance using only a single snare drum, French actor Dominique Pinon in conversation, Karen Gillan using her post Doctor Who fame to help get her own Indy film made and then screened at the festival.

Dominique Pinon at Edinburgh Film Festival 05

Kevin Smith at Edinburgh Film Festival 05

New talent like Gareth Edwards standing on stage with his actors at one in the morning after screening Monsters, long before Lucasfilms would tag him to direct Rogue One, young animators at the McClaren Animation strand, quite a few of whom would go on to BAFTA and Oscar glory later with the films they showed us and talked to us about afterwards. Sir Sean Connery, a long-time supporter of the festival, waving from the red carpet at the opening gala, at a venue that was just a few moments walk from the streets where he delivered milk as a boy, before global stardom (often wondered what went through his head when he was back in that old neighbourhood). Kevin Smith running well past his allotted speaking time after a late night screening, and nobody cared because we were all sitting there with Kevin Smith. One year I even got invited into the projection booth and met Sid and Kenneth, the venerable cine- projectors (FH being one of the few places still with trained projectionists and the ability to show actual celluloid); the magic lanterns behind the curtain.

Magic lantern 03

late night at the film festival

The people who worked at the Filmhouse and the Festival weren’t just working there -like many of us who work in arts-related fields, they were there for the love of it all. Most were well-educated and could find much better-paying jobs, but this was a special place, warm, welcoming, inclusive, and the shared love of the medium shone through it all. Being made redundant is hard enough, as I’m sad to say I know too well; the shock, the up-turning of your regular existence, the awful worries about loss of income and how you can afford to live, how hard it may be to get another job. And if it is somewhere like this, that is compounded by the sudden loss of your surrogate family, a place where you didn’t just work, you liked being there, you liked what you did, you cared about the medium, about the people , the audiences, who came to share in it. All suddenly taken from over a hundred staff, just like that.

I really don’t know what the answers are here – we’ve lost a number of arts venue in the last couple of hard years, and I think we all fear losing more. These places enrich our lives, our culture – Filmhouse and the EIFF have been a vital part of my city’s cultural life, their demise is noted on the global scale, with even Variety and Hollywood Reporter lamenting on the sudden closure. And how many other venues are wobbling right now, how many may be finished off by the surge in prices this coming winter? I wish I had a Great Idea to fix it all, but I don’t . All I can say is when you have places like the Filmhouse or events like the film festival, cherish them and support them as much as you can; just like supporting your local, Indy, neighbourhood shops, if we don’t, we lose them, like we lost the Filmhouse, and we have damned well lost enough these last couple of years.

There is a public outcry for something to be done to save both the Filmhouse and EIFF; I don’t know if they will be saved, or if they are, in what form. Fair to say the entire arts community here is still in shock at it all, and there’s no indication yet of what, if any, help may be available, we can only hope. Meantime an online petition has been started asking to save both the Filmhouse and the EIFF; fellow movie lovers sharing the link and signing it would be very much appreciated.

This article was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Witch Hunt

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Directed by Ella Callahan,
Starring Gideon Adlon, Elizabeth Mitchell, Abigail Cowen, Christian Camargo, Echo Campbell

Ella Callahan, who both writes and directs here, delivers a compelling take on witchcraft that explores its historical overtones, rooted in men’s fear of powerful, independent women and their compulsive need to control and dominate them into submission. While the Witch Hunt is set in contemporary America, and touches on modern issues, it also traces its lineage back the days of the early colonists, long before America was a nation, opening with a highly disturbing sequence – in this new land of growing intolerance it isn’t enough simply to persecute any woman who shows magical abilities, to deny them the normal rights of any citizen, they can and are subject to the barbaric, monstrous death sentence passed down through history for witchcraft: being burned alive.

Right from the start Callahan shows us this repressive, brutal society in action, a red-haired woman tied to a public stake, the looming figure of the Witchfinder, seen at first only from behind, clutching the burning torch, the flames lit and rising, the desperation on the woman’s face, then the screaming as the heat, smoke and flames reach her, her skin burning as she is forced to endure this utterly horrific, violently painful and prolonged death. The god-fearing citizens watch the spectacle, among them her own two young girls, the older sister Fiona (Abigail Cowen), and her much younger sibling, Shae (Echo Campbell), forced to watch their mother’s death, powerless to help, aware how easily the crowd could turn on them for being “different”.

This isn’t even a society where witches are hunted for practising dark magics on anyone – simply being born with magical ability is enough. The magical beings are all women, the witch hunter force we see are usually male, lead by Christian Camargo’s officer, who proudly explains that his family have been witch hunters for generations. To him this is a matter of honour for his family, but in reality it simply shows how the same lies, fears and bigotry are perpetuated endlessly through the generations and years. This is a US with border wall to stop women fleeing to sanctuary in Mexico, where schools indoctrinate the students into unquestioning belief in the constitutional amendment that covers the witchcraft persecutions. Schoolgirls are routinely subjected to medical tests for “witch marks”, those who do not pass are given a modern form of the medieval “ducking”, strapped to chairs, dunked into the school swimming pool to check if they are witches or not (something which can obviously go horribly wrong).

Martha Goode (Elizabeth Mitchell) is a single mother, bringing up her teen daughter Claire (Gideon Adlon) and her two smaller boys after the death of her husband, in a large, remote old farmhouse. She is also a part of a modern day “underground railroad”, which, like its predecessor before and during the US Civil War in the mid 19th century, uses a network of safe houses to transport and hide victims before smuggling them to safety. Of course this comes with enormous risk – the authorities are now pushing not only for more sanctions on witches but to also impose them on the children of anyone found guilty of witchcraft, regardless of what they have or have not done.

Claire doesn’t understand why her mother risks them all for strangers – she and her teenage girlfriends have been brought up to accept the witch hunting as necessary and required, so she is already suspicious of these desperate women (in much the same way the Nazis ensured all levels of society were given the same brainwashing of anti-Semitism in the 1930s), and being a teen she also resents the fact that this means she doesn’t get to do regular teen stuff like have her friends over (obviously impossible in case they saw one of the hidden witches in the house). When Fiona and little Shae wash up on their doorstep and a breakdown in the usual underground chain means they have to stay longer than usual, it puts the family at far more risk, but also means Claire starts to get to know the similarly aged Fiona, and this begins to change things.

This is a fascinating and disturbing film – it harks back to the earliest histories of Europeans in the Americas, with the bloody, violent witchcraft persecutions of innocent women (even Martha’s surname Goode, could be seen as another nod to that terrible time as several women famously accused during the infamous Salem trials were from the Good family), but it also draws heavily on the modern day. The large wall along the southern border and the callous men of the witch hunting department who patrol it has obvious echoes in the recent Trump era in the US, while the fact that, as with earlier historical cases, this modern witch hunting uses society and law to police and control women, keep them in their place, with men ensuring the laws are carried out without mercy. It partakes as much of Atwood’s superb Handmaid’s Tale as it does historic abuse of women for witchcraft, touches on the #MeToo era movement, the slavery era, even the Suffragette era (as with that time, many women have been conditioned by their society to believe and support these laws which harm other women), and draws in feminist iconography from pop culture, such as Thelma and Louise.

I suspect this is one of those films where the more you think about it, the more you will see in it – it’s a gripping and frequently disturbing narrative in its own right, not least with Camargo’s witch hunter who is so matter of fact about the rightness of his brutal repression and the almost powerlessness of the women caught up in this system, but there are so many elements to think about here that it will resonate in your head long after viewing. Forget that pretty generic poster and cover artwork, this is a far more complex and mature work than it would suggest, and well worthy of your time.

Witch Hunt is released by Signature Entertainment on DVD and digital platforms from July 5th

This review was originally penned for Live For Films