Film4 staff

Katherine Butler on what Cannes and other festivals mean to Film4, in 2013 and over the years

Cannes is fast approaching, and very excitingly we’ll be launching two British films there this year – Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant and Paul Wright’s For Those In Peril – which have been selected for Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week respectively.

Both are low budget British films from directors at the early stages of their feature filmmaking careers. Paul is a first-time feature director, recently graduated from the NFTS and with a background in short films, including the BAFTA-winning Until the River Runs Red. The Selfish Giant is Clio’s second feature (and first fiction film) after her critically-acclaimed and award-winning Channel 4-backed The Arbor which merged documentary and actors to ground-breaking effect.

“From first short to international festival debut” 

Cannes can be a great launch pad for British directors, and for first or second-time filmmakers it’s often just the beginning of their story. A big part of our role here at Film4 is to support filmmakers throughout their filmmaking careers: from first short to international festival debut to established British auteur.

Just as our current slate features the next Mike Leigh and Ken Loach films, we are also funding and developing the latest films from other former Cannes debutantes. Lenny Abrahamson, whose second feature Garage won the CICAE Art and Essai Cinema Prize in Cannes in 2007, is currently in post-production on Frank.  Steve McQueen, who followed up the Camera d’Or-winning Hunger in 2008 with the multiple award-winning Shame, is currently in post-production on 12 Years A Slave, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch and Paul Giamatti. In 2012, Ben Wheatley’s murderous caravanners were the talk of the Croisette with Sightseers, Ben’s third feature.  Less than twelve months later he’s finished production on A Field In England, and will later be starting work on US big-budget Freakshift. Casting our minds back ten years, David Mackenzie’s Young Adam played Un Certain Regard in 2003 – he is now in post-production on Starred Up, starring up-and-comer Jack O’Connell alongside Ben Mendelsohn and Rupert Friend.

Beyond Cannes….

However, our festival relationships extend well beyond Cannes. We work hard all year round to make sure each film finds its best possible way to audience and a big part of this begins with finding the right festival home to start each film’s journey. In the past 12 months, we have premiered films at Sundance, Toronto, Telluride, Venice, Edinburgh and played many many other festivals in between. This year will be no different – we have a larger than ever slate of films launching across 2013 featuring  a mix of both new voices and established directors working at all sorts of different levels.

To give you a quick flavour… Jonathan Glazer’s long-awaited third film Under The Skin stars Scarlet Johansson and is based on Michel Faber’s cult novel.  And speaking of cult novels, Kevin Macdonald has brought Meg Rossoff’s award-winning How I Live Now to the big screen with Saoirse Ronan in the lead role. Anton Corbijn’s third film, an adaptation of John Le Carré’s A Most Wanted Man, stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rachel McAdams. And judging by the reaction to a sneak industry preview of a few seconds of footage of Richard Ayoade’s second film The Double, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowksa, the world can’t wait for a follow-up to his first film Submarine.

As if this isn’t enough, we have several more feature debuts in the works including award-winning promo director Daniel Wolfe’s Catch Me Daddy, multi-award winning playwright and Bafta Single Drama winner Debbie Tucker Green’s Second Coming and Yann (Top Boy, Criminal Justice) Demange’s thriller ’71.

This huge wealth of British film-making talent brings a depth and breadth of vision and audience appeal which shows us what rude health the home-grown industry is currently in. Our Cannes debut film-makers Paul Wright and Clio Barnard epitomise the kind of talent we are honoured to work with here at Film4. Instinctive British filmmakers with truly distinctive voices, making films that are both intimate and cinematic, exploring stories that are of a certain place and time and yet speak to us all. Their films are beautiful, moving, powerful, poetic – more than that, they could only have been made by British filmmakers. Or rather, British auteurs. We feel very privileged to be premiering these two films in Cannes, and look forward to seeing the other British films playing there (Ruairi Robinson’s The Last Days On Mars, Mark Cousins’ A Story Of Children And Film, and Andrew Kötting’s Swandown). And here’s to a whole year of premieres across many different festivals with a superb slate of British talent.

This is the first of our blogs from the Development Team here at Film4, where we give you a bit of an insight into what cultural things we’ve seen and been impressed by over the past few months – this one covers the year so far, but we’ll aim to bring them more regularly from now on…

Since January we have watched a swathe of exciting new plays and films, and consumed copious amounts of new literature (at the London Book Fair). Other than our films (of course!), our British highlight of the Sundance Film Festival was Metro Manila directed by the brilliantly talented Sean Ellis. The film follows a young Filipino family from the countryside in the Philippines trying to make their way in the bustling metropolis of Metro Manila and is a deeply unexpected story that is as heart breaking as it is gripping. Fortunately, Sundance festival-goers felt the same, and gave it their audience award. Metro Manila recently had its UK premiere in Sundance London and similarly wowed audiences.

In this year’s Bafta nominations, we loved the hidden gem, I Am Nasrine directed by the supremely talented Tina Gharavi. The film tells the story of a young girl leaving Iran, and finding a new life with her brother in the UK. For those with a phobia of British Social Realism, this is not your average piece of small British cinema. This is heart breaking stuff that makes the most of the broad canvas of cinema, and Tina is a hugely exciting new talent.

On the theatre side, we all raved about Complicite’s new and most ambitious production to date, The Master And Margarita, based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel of the same name. The production, staged at the Barbican, is a work of overwhelming brilliance that combines video art, music, daring performances and choreography to extravagant and sublime effect. It was a triumph of the stage finally capturing the polyvalent nuances of one of World Literature’s most beguiling works. At the Royal Court, we all loved Bruce Norris’ The Low Road – a witty and audacious exploration of the impact of Capitalism. Dominic Cooke’s final production at the Court as Artistic Director bristles with vibrancy and dynamism. On the new writing front, we enjoyed Arinze Kene’s new play God’s Property at the Soho Theatre. Arinze presents a bold and original look at race relations in 80s London, realised with humour and raw performances.

At the NFTS (National Film and Television School) Show, we enjoyed new shorts by Gabriel Gauchet, Cathy Brady and Louis Paxton. Gabriel Gauchet’s Z1 is a darkly compelling story about an unconventional family had us gripping the arms of our seats. Cathy Brady’s Wasted has beautiful performances as well as a strikingly heart wrenching story about a young girl lost in her life. Louis Paxton’s Musical Star was nothing short of a treat at the end of the day; the NFTS’s first musical in 20 years. The NFTS consistently is the home of exciting new filmmakers coming through the UK. We are or have worked with so many of them over the years: Yann Demange, Clio Barnard, Sarah Gavron and Paul Wright to name but a few…

The literary world is a breeding ground for new and original writing talent for adaptation as well as screenwriting. This month we headed to the London Book Fair, where we met some wonderful people from Canongate, Random House, Faber and Granta. While the Fair was happening in Earl’s Court, Granta issued their list of 20 brightest young writers. It is a staggering list of brilliant literary achievement. Among them, we particularly love Ned Beauman’s brilliant dynamic new voice as heard in Boxer, Beetle and The Teleportation Accident. Adam Foulds’ first novel, The Quickening Maze, about John Clare’s time in the asylum was a staggering work. Steven Hall’s Raw Sharks Texts is an extraordinary work of the imagination, and conceptual shark making! Zadie Smith of course reappears, but her dazzling voice of wit and piercing insight is very much still alive in her new book, NW.

At Sundance London, our brains were twisted by Shane Carruth’s deeply arresting follow up to his sci-fi classic, Primer. Upstream Color cannot be easily summarised so we will leave it to you to watch and be beguiled. It melds a Terrence Malick perspective with scenes that are redolent of David Lynch. Yet Shane is very much a genius unto himself. Of the Sundance shorts, we completely loved Whiplash directed by Damien Chazelle. A brilliantly contained comedy of desperation in the world of a music college rehearsal room. Obviously, it goes without saying Kibwe Tavares’ brilliant Film4-backed film Jonah was one of the many highlights of the short film section.

Film4 Development Coordinator Hanna Sahloul reports on Adam Buxton’s BUG, and how music videos are the perfect place to try out filmmaking ideas…

Adam Buxton, along with his esteemed team, has been running the incredibly popular BUG show at the BFI Southbank since 2007. Tickets are coveted and the night is always a sell-out event. If you’ve not had the pleasure of attending, they feature some of the most innovative, funny and creative recent music videos, along with some inimitable commentary from Buxton. In this post-MTV era Adam and his team do all the hard work for the music video connoisseur, scouring the internet and pulling out their favourite selections.

Each video is bold and beautiful in its own way and the night is a perfect opportunity to absorb some new visual delights as well as being introduced to great new music. The Film4 development team is always on the lookout for new talent and BUG provides a great platform for some brilliant new directors.

My two favourite videos of the night where the colourful Katachi by Kijek for the singer-songwriter Shogu Tokumaru and Mind Mischief, directed by David Wilson for the Australian band, Tame Impala, the hot new kids on the psychedelic block. The latter, a Mrs Robinson style scenario, features some seventies style trippy animation which lets you in on what may really be going on in the minds of teenage boys. Who knew…

Directing music videos and promos can be a great way for directors to get their work showcased and to be scouted by industry professionals who are looking to commission and nurture new talent.

Music videos, combined with the vast scope of the online world, offer a boundless playground in which to experiment without being limited by certain filmmaking conventions, and are the ideal space to go full throttle with your ideas. Narratives can still work incredibly successfully, as Daniel Wolfe exemplified in Time To Dance, his video for The Shoes, which BUG has also previously featured in its shows. If you haven’t yet seen it, the video features Jake Gyllenhaal in a role like no other, as he channels Oliver Reed by way of Patrick Bateman. Not for the faint of heart!  Daniel Wolfe now has his first feature film in development with Film4 which is currently in prep and due to shoot later this year.

Similarly the visual artists that make up the collective Shynola, famous for their work with the band Coldplay, gave 80s style computer game animation a new lease of life in their work Move Your Feet for Junior Senior. Shynola too have just shot their first short film for Film4 – more news on this soon…

There is a plethora of great directors who have made their name in music videos: Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and partners Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine, Ruby Sparks) to name a few. The imaginative and experimental nature of their work can no doubt be traced back to the ‘anything goes’ space of music videos where they honed their craft.

As well as being a regular BFI event, BUG also tours around the UK.  The next gigs are at Bradford International Film Festival on 18th April and the Crucible Theatre on the 13^th June as part of Sheffield Doc Fest.  Whether you want to discover some new talent or just have an entertaining evening out, I highly recommend it!

 

 

My ‘45, a digital companion for Ken Loach’s new film The Spirit Of ’45, launches today to transport you back to 1945 and reveal what our lives might have been like without the huge social changes of that era.

“1945 was a high point in terms of political ideas, of what people felt they could achieve, of the sense of unity, of working together, of the collective spirit – and that feeling of solidarity sustained people for a decade or more.  And gradually it began to fall apart…”

(Ken Loach, director, The Spirit of ‘45)

In 1945, buoyed by the post-war unity of a nation, a newly-elected Labour government changed the shape of British society, with developments across health, housing and jobs having an impact on all aspects of life. But what would your life be like if those changes hadn’t happened? How many years would you have left to live? Where would you be living? What would your job be? How many children would you have? Would all of them have survived?

At www.thespiritof45.com you can get a sense of how our lives have been individually shaped by those wide-reaching reforms almost seventy years ago, with basic information on your current circumstances revealing how different your situation would be today without them. You can then share your My ’45 results with friends and family across social media.

The My ’45 digital experience also offers exclusive extended interviews and bespoke archive materials, enabling you to delve deeper into the stories of those featured in The Spirit of ‘45, and interactive, visually-led timelines of the key developments in the post-war society.

Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 is released in cinemas on Friday 15^th March courtesy of Dogwoof, with nationwide simulcast event 17th March featuring a panel discussion with Ken Loach and others, moderated by Jeremy Hardy.

My ‘45 was commissioned by Film4.0 and BFI and supported by Sixteen Films, Fly Film, Dogwoof and Creative England. The Spirit of ’45 is produced by Sixteen Films and Fly Film. 

www.thespiritof45.com
@Spiritof45
facebook.com/TheSpiritof45

Channel Editor of Film4 David Cox has been in Berlin, watching as many films as humanly possible at the 63rd International Berlinale. Here, he reports on the prize winners in the festival’s official selection and gives a run down of his personal Berlin highlights.

Having started so strongly on February 7th, the Berlin Film Festival came to a close last Sunday having remained impressively consistent across its entire 10-day span. As rewarding as the Berlinale always is, it’s not regularly a festival that delivers many of any given year’s best films. The 2013 edition – the 63rd in the festival’s history – promises to change that.

The actual awards were, as is the case at most major festivals, something of a mixed bag. The resonant if not particularly galvanising Romanian drama Child’s Pose (directed by Calin Peter Netzer) won the top award of the Golden Bear for Best Film, while the runner-up film award - the Jury Grand Prix - went to Denis Tanovic’s An Episode In The Life Of An Iron Picker, a film which seemed to be treated with respect rather than greeted with much enthusiasm. David Gordon Green – who’s proven himself capable of maturing even when seemingly regressing – was an inspired choice to win the Silver Bear for Best Director (for the film Prince Avalanche) and Jafar Panahi was the recipient of the Best Screenplay prize for his inventive Closed Curtains (a film I wish I’d liked more at the time, and look forward to re-visiting in the future away from festival overload).  As expected, Paulina Garcia won the Best Actress award her performance in Sebastien Lelio’s emotionally satisfying Gloria, probably the best received film at the festival, with Nazif Mujic’s Best Actor triumph making it two major awards for Tanovic’s Iron Picker. Particularly well-deserved was the Best Cinematography win for Aziz Zhambakiyev, whose work helped to make young Kazakh director Emir Baigazin’s assured Harmony Lessons one of the competition highlights.

The prizes above only represent what was happening in the official Competition section of what is a sprawling festival that really starts to pay off the deeper you dig into it. Even having spent seven days there seeing more than 35 films I missed a lot of acclaimed titles, amongst them the aforementioned Iron Picker; the double-winner in Panorama Broken Circle Breakdown; the Teddy Award winner In The Name Of (the Teddy being the festival’s prize for best gay-themed film); Best First Feature The Rocket (a favourite in the youth-oriented Generation Kplus sidebar which won three prizes overall) and new films from Gus Van Sant, Steven Soderbergh and Ulrich Seidl. And that’s just the film that made ‘headlines’.

Still, omissions aside, I came away feeling as if I’d managed to take a reasonably broad sample of what the 63rd Berlinale had to offer. It’s always a good place to go in order to get the new year in film underway – along with Sundance and Rotterdam in January, Berlin is where you really get to see the first batch of major 2013 films and if these ten days are anything to go by we have a bright year ahead. Here, for no reason other than a desire to wrap things up in a relatively labour-unintensive fashion, is a list of best films and personal highlights from my time at the Berlin Film Festival:

OVERALL BEST FILM:

Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, USA, in Panorama): Symphonic science-fiction, with a myriad ideas and emotions nesting amidst its abstractions.

THE REST (alphabetical):

Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, USA, Official Selection/Out-of-Competition): Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke’s walking-and-talking romance gets surprisingly serious in Greece.

Camille Claudel 1915 (Bruno Dumont, France, in Competition): A formidable performance by Juliette Binoche graces this austere but impassioned tale of an artist’s confinement.

Coming Forth By Day (Hala Lotfy, Egypt, in Forum section): A young woman tends to her dying father in Cairo, her every action followed by a patient and empathetic mobile camera. Slow, subtle, with shades of Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Everyday Objects (Nicolas Wackerbarth, France, in Forum section): Confined to a holiday home in the south of France for the summer, a German writer makes some very poor choices as she attempts to make the most of her minimal opportunity for personal expression

Forgetting To Know You (Quan Ling, China, in Forum section): People and place are both beautifully observed in this study of suspected adultery in a small Chinese town, produced by Jia Zhang-Ke.

Harmony Lessons (Emir Baigazin, Kazakhstan, in Competition): A young boy is bullied at a rural school in Kazakhstan, with non-whimsical flights of fancy taking the film into unexpected territory.

I Used To Be Darker (Matt Porterfield, USA, in Forum section): A delicately constructed and realised tale of emotional confusion; a pale Irish teenager goes to stay with her uncle and aunt in Baltimore, a pair of musicians who are splitting up. Patterns emerge from the resulting upheavals but not necessarily any order. More accessible than Porterfield’s previous films Hamilton and Putty Hill but just as beguiling.

In Bloom (Nana Ekvtimishvili, Georgia, in Forum section): A tough and heartbreaking coming-of-age story set in Tblisi, following two teenage girlfriends forced to assume adult roles.  Features one of the festival’s standout setpieces, a perfectly-placed solo wedding dance – performed in a single take with fierce conviction and remarkable concentration – that provides the film with its emotional centre.

Lifelong (Asli Ozge, Turkey, in Panorama section): A contemporary artist is stuck in a marital and creative rut in this cool and clear-eyed appraisal of domestic disharmony.

Prince Avalanche (David Gordon Green, USA, in Competition): Two men – Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch - in the middle of nowhere, trying to make sense of their lives but lacking the necessary skills to do so. Broad comedy and intimate drama, set against a devastated but beautiful rural American backdrop.

 

That’s it from Berlin – hopefully quite a few of the films above, plus others that featured at the festival, will be arriving in the UK before the end of the year. In the meantime, roll on Cannes – the festival in May for once has something to live up to.