Written by David D’Alessandro, John Heffernan, Sheldon Turner, directed by David R. Ellis and starring Samuel L. Jackson. The film finished filming principal photography in September of 2005 including five days of additional re-shooting to raise the MPAA film rating system rating from a PG-13 to an R[1]. It is now unofficially the biggest buzzed film of all time with tremors going back as early, as the Blair Witch Project era in 99. Buzzed is the right word and for once, it is not down to cast, crew or script,…and has anyone approaching the phenomenon quite taken aback by the way it all started. SOAP, as it is now known, started as a quirky little film on a plane, post 9/11. It was difficult for any respectable producer to think about green lighting a high-profile project involving planes flying.

Sam was brought into the picture – ‘because of the title’ – and all of sudden, the producers (Craig Berenson, Gary Levinsohn and Don Granger), realized that they were sitting on a good film. The film’s working title was then changed to ‘Pacific Air flight 121′

Perceptive fans – Hollywood insiders? Outsiders? – picked up on this change of name and started writing poems, songs, bloggs, trailers,…to ‘protect’ the title? Revive it? It started a cult followed by many and like the great men once said ‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few’
How and why it started will remain a webmystery. However, the title has now became in Internet-lingo an explanation for fatalistic feelings ranging from ‘c’est la vie’ to “shit happens.” …

Here is one of those poem by SuperMatricks:

Snake On A Plane or SOAP…

Internet aphorism…
Sentence precluded of any serious meaning
If only the very serious…meaning of life….
Over-reaching the foremost tentacles
Down the deep end of the wide web
Cruising like the riding zeitgeist.

For this is the Google age, we enter a new page
Clicking away at every turning point.
We are mere mortals and should not be on a plane
For this is the moment when running from the joint

The only ghost moved on the femme fatale
She, bless her, decided to refuse the rascal

Fixing up and looking sharp
Holding the mirror like a true lady
I unleashed my lyrics in a welcoming park
I have your snake down in my plane.
I never said it would be so easy
Her smile made you feel alive
Is it possible for a snake to be on two different planes?
Was my opening chat-up line…
I could never see the reality sign
Will Hoxton ever, ever, ever be cool again?
And my head never felt so much pain
I could never, never, see, she was a real dame

And she replies: Are you always so sneaky?
Maybe cheeky, never monkey!

She smirked….almost…
Am I in?
At any cost
Magic grin…I am the boss
Think…positive like a butterfly

She gazes…Make a move?
She oozes…should I fade

I start campaigning…for my own party:
Word flowing like a proper arty..

You are the candidate, of my heart…
I’ll fly your colors to the other end of the earth
…..
.
It’s alright I’ll stay on the plane, for the rest of the flight.
She replied
Tough cookie I thought…
Browne sausage she replied
D’you know a Chinese bookie? I uttered
‘My favorite dish’ she smiled

Like I said, the snake was not for turning…hmmm just maybe for fuming
First the snake then the plane…how did it get sooo lame?
She asked.
My cover was blown ‘pff’ confetti-style…
My pride? Down the sink… ‘Sssh’ Linguini style
I’ve been plucking chicken like you all my life.
I’ve been staring at you all the flight
‘Get your snake out of here!’
The plane was still full …of other Snakes…
END.
As published on the official fanblogg: http://www.snakesonablog.com/Soooo.

Green Light

You saw the movie…liked it? Enjoyed the theater or your home cinema…? Not yet! The only problem is you haven’t seen a single frame of the film so far. The problem is the film has started a bizarre internet fever never seen before in the Google age. The problem is chat rooms, news rooms, blogg, super-community website, fansites alike…are full of it. Full of stories about the filming, the press is at it, and the growing legions of fans as well…to the point where they’ve actually been able to reorder the shooting of a few scenes and the addition of dialogues of their choice to satisfy their browsing egos. To add to the insult, I will therefore write the first review of a movie I have never seen!

Before you asked yourself, is he mad? Remember that some even made a movie of how the audition was conducted, without being there! … So let me now do my mo#*#* fu#*#*#** review!

First let’s command the fine and subtle acting genius that is Samuel Lee Jackson the first, who in his inimitable fashion has been able to deliver a performance of the highest caliber for his legions of admiring fans. Second let us remember the premises of the film: There is a plane full of snake, Samuel Lee Jackson has to save the world, and will he do it? Sure he will, but before that he will have to deliver pin-point sharp one-liners, kick some a#*#* and stutter the sentence: Get the mo#*#*#* snakes out of my m#*#*# plane!
All in the name of poetry then….

What started as a movie made for popcorn lovers – The lead should have been younger; Think Fast and Furious – made in September 2005 in Canada, is now the biggest buzzed film of all time with tremors going back as early, as Blair Witch Project era in 99(post web 2.0 then) Sam was brought in and all of sudden, the producers (Craig Berenson, Gary Levinsohn and Don Granger), realized that they were sitting on a good film. The film’s working title was then changed to ‘Pacific Air flight 121′.

erceptive fans – Hollywood insiders? Outsiders? – picked up on this change of name and started writing poems, songs, bloggs, trailers,…to ‘protect’ the title? Revive it? It started a cult followed by many and like the great men once said ‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few’
How and why it started will remain a web-mystery. However, the title has now became in Internet-lingo an explanation speak for fatalistic sentiments that range from c’est la vie to “shit happens.”

Cut to the chase….
Sam is flying a key witness from Hawaii to LA on a plane. He is an FBI agent. Sam obviously enjoy playing law-enforcement character from Jedi knights, to SWAT team leader, to private eye, to simple cop,…His character is coming straight from the Die Hard book of widow and orphan rescuer, but where Nelville Flynn has the edge on John McLane it is in his ability to deliver badaaasss one-liners while remaining ultra-cool. A ‘tour-de-force’ done effortlessly thanks to the quiet and unassuming action-packed direction of David R. Ellis. D.R.E is known to be a surf enthusiast and was in a previous life stunt coordinator on ‘cult’ films like ‘Invasions of the body snatchers’ (1978) or action 2nd unit director on ‘Patriot games’ and ‘Clear and present danger’ (1994), both with Harrison Ford…

Have you said coincidence?
Woody Allen he ain’t. But that’s exactly the point, for he is well too aware of the danger of letting angst-ridden dialogues taking over the film’s subconscious message: ‘Kill all the muthaf#*#*#*#*# snakes’. A few additional characters complete the casting, sometimes as snakes-fodder like -Tyler (Kennan Thompson) and Ashley, a married couple; Cowboy Rick (David Koechner) from Texas; Cash Money, a gangsta rapper, his bodyguards Big Leroy (Keith Dallas) and Two-Ton; Mercedes, Rachel Blanchard as a Paris Hilton look-alike…some air hostesses, puppeteer (Adam Behr)…etc. And of course the snakes, stars of the films hissing their way through the cockpit with evocative names like Scarface or Hannibal with 20 foot long Kong stealing the show.
We leave you with a few lines dropped from the trailer and hope to hear from you soon:

Nelville Flynn: It’s my job to handle life and death situations on a daily basis. It’s what I do, and I’m very good at it. Now you can stand there and be the panicked, angry mob and blame him, me and the government for getting you into this, but if you want to survive tonight, you need to save your energy and start working together.
Or the most memorable one: I’ve had it with these mother fucking snakes on this mother fucking plane!

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The EMD Cinema in Walthamstow was a celebrated building. It is acknowledged as one of London’s finest art deco cinemas and is scheduled by English Heritage as A Grade 2* Listed Building in recognition of its architectural significance. Built in the 1930s by Theodore Komisarjevsky, the renowned Russian stage designer, the EMD cinema is one of the only venues left in London that is designed both for live performances and film showings.

The cinema’s prominence is further made abundantly clear by the list of entertainment names that have passed into legendary status. Names such as The Beatles, Frank Sinatra, The Rolling Stones, John Coltrane and James Brown have all graced EMD Cinema’s beautiful Moorish/ Spanish interiors with their presence. However, the name most associated with the cinema is none other than film director Alfred Hitchcock who grew up in Waltham Forest.

Sadly, in 2002 the cinema had to be sold and this time the buyer hadn’t had the cinema’s rich entertainment background in mind for its use- The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) plan on converting the cinema into a conference centre and place of worship. This has sparked a debate between the McGuffin Film Society along with the residents of Walthamstow (whom without the cinema will be left as the only London borough deprived of one) and the UCKG on the future purposes of the cinema.

The debate has not been resolved despite Waltham Forest Council earmarking £1 million to assist with the redevelopment of the cinema. As EMD has been one of East London’s most significant arts venues for over 70 years, let’s hope that the decision can be made so that this pillar of our cultural heritage gets restored to its former glory.

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Paulo Gerbaudo looks at the parralels between film and war then and now Loin du Vietnam is both a failure and an inspiring experiment in war cinema. The film – a politically committed documentary dealing with the war in Vietnam – after its release in 1967 proved a commercial flop and was the victim of harsh critiques and early oblivion. One rare copy of the collaborative work of a number of great politically committed directors of the period such as the French Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker, William Klein, Agnés Varda and the Netherland’s director Joris Ivens has been recently screened at Cine Lumiére of the Institut Francais.

The project of the film sprang out of the convulse atmosphere of 1967 during the escalation of military operation in Vietnam, and was the result of incipient ‘68 politics with their stress on participation, assemblies and direct democracy. The film, while dealing with a decisive political issue of the period, also aimed at questioning the French film industry and the one author canon to stress the importance of collaborative work of the film crew and of different directors. On the other hand the challenge was to realise an alternative representation of the war as seen in its multifaceted and often “distant” manifestations.

To do this Loin du Vietnam undertakes an expressive experiment in the documentary format by mixing together heterogeneous materials that compose an instable collage, notwithstanding the intelligent work of Chris Marker in the cutting room. In the film different inspirations and footage, documentary and fiction, converge. The long monologue scene by Godard about the political role of the cinematography in face of the war together with scenes from La Chinoise, interviews with Fidel Castro and Ho-chi Minh sided by brief visual clips and other cinematographic virtuosities. However some of the best moments of the film are the ones that stick more directly to documentary cinema, such as the war and everyday life in Hanoi under American bombings filmed by Joris Ivens and his wife, William Klein’s documentary footage about demonstrations in the United States and Lelouch’s sequences from an American carrier.

The film represents the war in Vietnam in the form of a historical tragedy staged on different scenes. Not only battlefields, but also North Vietnamese villages, American barracks, occupied cities, TV sets in living rooms, and demonstrations in the streets of Europe and America. Hence war emerges not as a simple military confrontation but rather as a mechanism of violence and conflict spreading its tentacles through supply lines, news programs, minds and hearts.

The two themes, evoked in the film’s title, Vietnam and distance, grasp a pair of great ideas which is what the film is all about. First of all, Vietnam within this film is not just a name for a particular country in South East Asia, 10 000 miles away from American shores, but also the name for a particular political, military, social and cultural conflict, characterised by harsh oppositions both in national and international politics. Thus the film represents Vietnam not only as a war between nations but also as a civil war, as any modern war has to be. In a long sequence by William Klein in front of Wall Street, during a huge peace demonstration in New York, a group of brokers shout “Bomb Hanoi! Bomb Hanoi!”. Demonstrants engage along the march path in harsh verbal confrontations with war supporters. New York appears kidnapped by a vibrant hysteria.

The film then slides along a theatre of operations that spans through the globe. Going from the streets of Paris crowded by demonstrants and policemen to a village in North Vietnam where people are assisting to a theatre show blaming Johnson and United States, to a paddy field where a unit of the National Liberation Army is training in hiding, to the mountains of Cuba. Distance, in turn, can be read as the description of the condition of civil populations in western country during such a war and its being exposed to a mediated war fought far away but capable, at the same time, of destabilising internal society and politics. As New Yorker reporter Michael Arlen put it, the Vietnam War, was a “living-room war”. Distance is also the principle that underlies the hypertechnological war machine deployed by the U.S. in Vietnam: a system controlling death and destruction from afar. The image that opens the film is a load of bombs being moved from a supply ship to a carrier. Lelouch’s camera follows those bombs while they are stored and eventually armed on the aircraft. In the middle of the ocean, far away from the dead bodies of the American bombings it enables, the carrier becomes a metaphor of a war machine that acts from afar. Distance thus emerges as instrumental to power. A removal of the horror of war through the media and thanks to its being out-of-sight. As one of the demonstrants appearing in the film says “Americans support the war because it is far away. Would they think the same, if their cities were attacked?”. The answer is as elusive today as it was then, best exemplified in the voting patterns of the American people post 9/11.

Notwithstanding the timely political rethorics that in some parts of the film tend to lean towards an apology to Vietnam, the work provides a vibrant description of the conflict in Vietnam and the social unrest that surrounded it. After the release the work was also criticised for its ‘easy ironies’, but it is actually through those ironies that the film shows the hypocritical goodwill justifying a distant war. This is also what the film does through the way it is cut. For example by joining a popular pro-war song with the reality of a Saigon populated by prostitutes, or by showing a speech of general Westmoreland through a damaged TV screen.

Viewing such a film today inspires a reflection about the similarities and differences between the media propagation of that war and of the current one, the war in Iraq in which the U.S. and its coalition are engaging in. Vietnam was a fortunate topic for cinema, and before that, it was extensively and crudely covered by television and newspapers. The American army had, at least initially, favoured the work of journalists and camera men on the front (much more than ever happened before and after that) for propaganda reasons. So Vietnam became the first televised war, and the war began losing consensus when too many dead corpses on the screen began to disgust the American public’s dinner time.

The Iraq war has undergone a more technically developed coverage that pretends to transmit battle images in real time (through embedded journalists) as if it were a football match and always jumps quickly to the site of an attack or a bombing. In this rapidity of news coverage something has been lost. The media war coverage of Iraq has not only censored the images of blood, tortures and body bags. It has also disminished the importance of other aspects of such a war: the conditions of the civil population in the occupied country and the unrest uniting millions of people across the world in the biggest anti-war protests ever. This erasure of such decisive aspects of war is what Au loin du Vietnam tries to overcome by following the many links that the war ties through conflicts and solidarities all around the globe.

Iraq wars have, until now, not been as fortunate as Vietnam in their representations within contemporary cinema. The only fiction titles deserving attention are David O. Russell’s Three Kings (1999), the recently released Jarhead (2005) by Sam Mendes both dealing with soldiers’ stories during the 1991 conflict in Kuwait when Iraq invaded. Also Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and Robert Greenwalth’s Uncovered: The War On Iraq (2003), both documentary films, deal with the current war in Iraq even though focusing on its role in American politics. Moreover all these films and documentaries are somehow limited to an internal vision of war as seen through the individual experience of American soldiers, citizens and their nation’s destiny and fail in providing a radical representation of war in all its complexity.

With its real-time – as much tempestive as anaesthaetised – war representation, television has produced an overload of recurrent images about the war in Iraq, restraining any space for debate, comprehension and radical analysis. In this condition it is hard to develop a committed war cinema without getting lost in easy political pedagogy a là Michael Moore or in rank paternalism in Live 8 fashion. Au loin du Vietnam can, in contrast, be an inspiration for a cinema that intends to observe war and represent what the war in Iraq means not only in terms of military and political experiences and events, but also in everyday life’s impact, in London as in Baghdad. A cinema able to document its incumbence on western countries and its consequences on the civil population of Iraq. A cinema capable of seeing war at a distance.

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Director:
Sam Raimi

Trailers:
Spiderman3 trailer / teaser

Synopsis:
A specimen from the moon gives Spiderman new powers and a black suit, while Spiderman must battle the second Green Goblin, Sandman, Venom, and other dangers. Harry Osborn’s insanity drives him over the edge and transforms him into the Green Goblin. In an effort to destroy Peter Parker he hires Flint Marko to aid him in his quest. Meanwhile Peter must balance his relationship with Mary Jane and the arrival of a new love interest, Gwen Stacy. The final showdown then pits former best friends against each other as a new villain looms on the horizon.

Trivia:
The release date for the film was set before Spiderman 2 (2004) was even released.

John Dykstra, who won an Oscar for his work as visual effects supervisor on Spiderman 2 (2004), had declined to work on the third film. Instead, Dykstra chose to work on Hot Wheels (2007). Scott Stokdyk took over as visual effects supervisor.

Topher Grace left “That ’70s Show” (1998) to star in this movie.

The over 600 latex “web” balloons in the celebration scene had to be hand-painted with a Sharpie marker.

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Meeting at the UK Pavilion. Dealing with passes and accreditations. Sorting out the usual mumbo-jumbo required to cruise through the festival.

‘Volver’ from eternal ‘enfant-terrible’ Pedro Almodovar is on show and has the usual red-carpet treatment. Penelope Cruz – gorgeous in a white Balanciagga dress, or is it? – and Carmen Maura, the co-stars are with him. Penelope returns to our first director and says: “There is one and only one Pedro, he is my priority in all fields. He writes for women who are 14, 35, 50 or 80 years old, this film is perfect example; there are lots of female characters of all ages in his films. I’m sure that my career wouldn’t have been the same without Pedro, my life wouldn’t have been the same without him. I hope that in the future that this will continue. I am very grateful to possibilities given to me somewhere else, it is interesting, one can learn a lot, but I worked in the United States for seven years, and in Europe for about fifteen, but Pedro still remains truly exceptional for me.

As for Pedro Almodovar. You can’t help but feel that each film is a complex description of his obsession for his mother…A bit like Woody Allen and his New-York or Spike Lee and…well New-York too… This is what the master had to say: In Volver, I speak of the women around me when I was a child. I was brought up by women, the men being in fields, whom I practically never saw. Volver speaks of the way I grew up, listening to these women. I would hear them singing whenever I went along the riverbanks with my mother; I accompanied her from my very earliest age. That’s how I learnt a lot about dramatic art, there are many roles that I have written which were inspired by my sisters or my mother, by characters firmly anchored in reality, even if they belong to the realm of fiction. They are characters who spin extraordinary tales, which has always immensely impressed me.”

Another Palme d’or favorite is: Fast Food Nation which casts a critical eye on the fast food industry in the US, via the destinies of three main characters: a marketing executive of a fast food chain, an employee of the same chain, and a clandestine immigrant working for slaughterhouse. For this movie, Richard Linklater has been able to recruit A-list cast with Ethan Hawke, Greg Kinnear, Patricia Arquette, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Patricia Arquette and Bruce Willis.

Apparatchiks aplenty in sight for the tribute paid to Russian filmmaker Sergei M. Eisenstein yesterday with the screening of two of his films – Bezhin Meadow and October – Headed by the Cannes Film Festival President Gilles Jacob, the director of the Russian State Archives for Literature and the Arts Tatiana Goriaeva, the director of the Eisenstein Memorial Naum Kleiman, and the vice-president of the Russian Film Festival Kinotavr, Igor Tolstounov, a stellar night devoted to the director of the masterpieces The Battleship Potemkin and Ivan The Terrible.

20th & 21st May

We have been given a lot of business cards and collected a more impressive number. As always in Cannes, during the festival, we have late, late nights and early mornings (12:00 AM). The mix of sleep depravation, the crowd, the expectation, open the floodgate to a huge array of emotions from fascinating to scary, to fun, dull, exciting all in one. The mood changes minute by minute. Survival is the key here.
Samuel L. Jackson was dining in the Majestic on a table next to us. Al Gore on the red carpet… Otherwise you do see lots of people you think might be someone but you can never really be too sure. But that is not why we are here: We have to sell our projects and establish contacts/bridges with the industry.

The first French Film in the running for this year Palme d’Or, was Charlie Says It does re-introduce us to the films of filmmaker-actress Nicole Garcia, who was a Jury Member in 2000. Nicole Garcia returns to an essentially male world, twelve years after having directed the trio Gérard Lanvin/Bernard Giraudeau/Jean-Marc Barr in The Favourite Son. This time, the film revolves around a quartet of actors – Benoît Magimel, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Benoît Poelvoorde and Vincent Lindon – and a child – the famous Charlie embodied by the young Ferdinand Martin – whose destinies appear to criss-cross on screen. Not in a ‘crash’ way as Benoit Poelvoorde will put it: “This film is so ‘Nicole’. She is the one who entirely carries the film, the actors are relieved of any pressure. That’s why we clown around!” – Benoit stole a few grins with that one.

Nicole has made over the years, her business of filming complex male interactions and stories. Charlie Says could be another stone brought to her body of work:

“Men have this photo genius, this blend of robustness and fragility which fascinates me. They bear in them contradictions which make us wonder what they are going to become. It is these contrary tendencies which interest me. In Charlie Says, it is a question of variations on various kinds of men, about corpulences and various psychologies. This is a territory which I wanted to explore.”

After Wesh, Wesh (2002), a highly remarked debut feature film, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche introduces us to ‘Bled number One’ in the section Un Certain Regard, the “follow-up” (or prologue) entitled Bled Number One. “The end of Wesh, Wesh,” he explains, “ends with a shot of a pond after a car chase between a cop and Kamel. We then hear a gunshot but we don’t know if Kamel has been killed or not. The only thing which I do know is that Kamel was a victim of the double punishment, therefore we could make a second film: double punishment, double film! We already foresaw a follow-up by making Wesh, Wesh. Whether it takes place before or after is of little importance. Why always consider time as something purely chronological?” Kamel is barely out of prison and is expelled to his country of origin, Algeria. This forced exile obliges him to cast a critical eye upon a country in full effervescence, transformation, torn between a youthful desire for modernity and tradition.

Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche wanted to show: “The energetic manner of filming can recall that of documentary cinema, but it is true that we aren’t for all that dealing with current events. It is another relationship with time, when it isn’t necessarily a question of filming some immediate reality, in realistic way. It is simply a proposal, just to present things, not to bear judgment. (…) To write Bled Number One, I didn’t return at all to Algeria to capture something about today’s youth there. I wrote this story based my holiday memories. But it is also because I felt that things hadn’t really changed, that time passes differently there. You have the time to reflect and be, faced with the elements. (…) A film is a gesture, a burst, a job, an enterprise, an action. An action in life, a pure lesson of life. It is here that we seize something alive. For it is necessary to remain alive, no matter what happens.”

Which leads us to what Cannes, has been famous for the world over; Parties…’Snooty’ French can do parties too: The Cannes Mix program has a DJ set headed by Fred Elalouf at the Beach Cinema.

The Menu? :

- Soundtracks of French films of the 60s and 70s
- Made in Bollywood

This didn’t give us enough opportunity to find our beds. We swapped showers for after-shaves and headed the next day. – After a brunch at the Majestic….always Brunch there if you can afford it! – for the international village, where we crossed the borders from Maroc to the Netherlands and back again. It reminded to some of us, the town of Basel in Switzerland where you can cross three borders within walking distances (France, Germany, and Switzerland). We also saw a film by Daft Punk. Very interesting.

We were also moved by Nanni Moretti’s The Caiman…Great filmmaker always seem to have that obsession, they tend to film time and time again. Nanni is no different. He again speaks about politic and democracy, but avoid acting in it, which is a first, five years after having won the Palme d’Or for The Son’s Room. It’s his 10th feature film, and the 5th presented in the Official Selection. Released in Italy in the middle of the controversial elections, a few days before Romano Prodi’s victory, The Caiman is the story of a young filmmaker (played by Jasmine Trinca, also in The Son’s Room) who wants to make a film about Silvio Berlusconi, and appeals to a producer in crisis of serie “Z” movies (Silvio Orlando, Moretti’s old buddy) to finance her movie. Moretti says: “The Caiman is a love story, a homage to cinema and a political films,” resumes the director, who clarifies his intentions: “I tried to tell, using the means of the motion pictures, a reality which we are no longer able to see or perceive. I think that our problem is one of habit: we’ve become used to characters and situations however truly incredible for the sake of democracy.’

Another particular highlight of the day was the last piece of a trilogy about China The Orphan of Anyang (2001) and Night and Day (2005). This time, the filmmaker allows his camera in the life of a schoolteacher close to retirement, who set out to search for his son. His wife, gravely ill, would like to see their son one last time before dying. He hasn’t given any news for a long time. The father will be welcomed by his daughter who does shifts as a hostess in a nightclub…Brace yourself for a solid family drama with confrontations aplenty.

“Luxury Car,” explains Wang Chao, “falls within the continuance of the reflections and criticisms already expressed in my first two films, on the reality and historic and political allegories of contemporary China. Here, the gap between the rich and poor, the distance which separates people from happiness, the contradictions between the social system inherited from past and the burden of the present are so many problems which I myself, as a full-fledged member of the people, feel all the weight and intensity. That’s why it made me decide to shoot the picture.”

On the party radar, at the Cannes Mix. The new wave soundtracks are honored. Can’t wait for my suit and sunglasses and rehearse my JL Godard ‘A Band apart’ moves…Which implies another night without sleep. I know, I know…

22nd & 23rd May

The ‘babe’s battle’, Halle Berry and Rebecca Romijn: Sublime visions of nature’s most famous achievement on the red carpet. For your eyes only…Their presence allegedly being required for the promotion of the third X-Men movie… As for the film, wait for the DVD release, or PSP, or Podcast, or Palm, or…On a more serious note, ‘Bamako’ by Abderrahmane Sissako. Born in Mauritania, raised in Mali, read film at the prestigious VGIK in Moscow before releasing his first work in 1990 (Le Jeu). After string of international awards (Fespaco, Perugia,…) Cannes awaited to be seduced in 2002 by Waiting for Happiness. ‘Bamako’ is out of competition…As is the seminal film about French ‘demi-god’ Zinedine Zidane. Helmed by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, acted by none other than double Z or ‘ZZ’ himself. The film celebrates the bizarre cult of Zidanemania, shot in real time during a Madrid game supported by no less than 17 high-tech HD cameras, aimed solely at the artist Thierry Henry refers to as ‘the man who do stuff with his foot, you could only dream of doing with your hands’…It’s a pity the film didn’t really try to develop a narrative we would follow but rather lays on the technological foundations pitched to us beforehand. But if you enjoy seeing master at work, be my guest!
To the International village and another trip to Germany and Canada, then South Korea…That’s where the buzz is at the moment…
Kidulthood by Menjah Huda from the UK was also screened over there at 12:00 PM…Couldn’t make it, but should be up for DVD viewing, back in London…

ON THE PARTY RADAR: For two nights, the Didier Riey Group, a gypsy jazz collective will take over the Cannes Mix programme opening for the outdoors screening, made of a selection of twelve animation-shorts by Canadian Norman McLaren, featuring Horizontal Lines, Stars and Stripes, and The Grey Hen. On Wednesday, The Holy Mountain a tale about a quest for immortality by Chilean director/artist Alejandro Jodorowsky. A student of the mime Marcel Marceau (other prestigious alumni include Michael Jackson….), friend of the surrealists Topor & Arrabal. ‘El Topo’ his first mainstream movie, became a cult classic in 1970. When work dried out in films for the Chilean director, he went into comic books, working with fellow cult author Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud – Lieutenant Blueberry, adapted for the silver screen by Jan Koonen of ‘Doberman’ fame in 2004 – Van Hamme, Gal,…achieving cult-status within the comic book fraternity when releasing l’Incal and working on its follow-up: ‘The Meta-Barons saga’. If you want to grasp his influence in modern western comic-books, you would have to speak of him in the same breath as a Hayao Miyazaki(Nausicaa), Akira Toriyama (Dragonball), Katsuhiro Otomo, (Akira) or a Chris Claremont (X-men)…

24th & 25th May

TELEGRAM:

Was in Monaco. /Stop/ couldn’t be bothered to be in Cannes. /Stop/ had a few business dealings to handle. /Stop/. Didn’t have time to blog lately, sorry. /Full Stop/

Telegram, heh? What a funny thing…How many of you remember what it was to send a telegram at the other end of the world? Here we are taking this world for granted. Anyone who’s been on the French Riviera during that period of the year is aware of the fact that we are reaching the high points of the season with the Monte-Carlo tennis tournament, the Cannes festival, the Monaco grand prix, then Avignon festival in Provence, (equivalent to the Edinburgh theater festival…) and so on…We stopped in Grace and St-Tropez too…bumped into Michael Stipe, Robin Aubert, the director and lost our lawyer inside a casino…in Monaco…also known as the ‘Millionaire’s playground’ …
Formula One is the toy here…The noise, the smell, the gas, the sheer pollution it creates and with the little amount of overtaking opportunities, due to the tight confines of the roads, the Monaco Grand Prix must be an ecologist idea of hell.

With preparations in full swing it is quite difficult to drive through the city. Remember, the Monaco grand prix is the last of its kind, as the race track is made of the principality’s own streets. It’s the world’s most famous street track…

An open city as was Rome in January 1945 when the remnants of the German army occupying the ‘eternal city’ are about to surrender …A priest and a communist worker, the two pillars of post-war anti-fascism in Italy will join together to defeat Nazism. The movie buffs among you will recognize the pitch for ‘Rome, open city’ and the birth of Italian neo-realism. Black and white movies, with strong ‘real’ characters shot in the streets, as Cinecitta the babylonesque studios built by Mussolini had been bombed during the war. Serge July, editor of left-wing daily newspaper Liberation, directed a short-documentary called ‘Once upon a time…Rome open city’ showing in Cannes…

Another graceful vision, Barbie Hsu. Her sensual and timeless interpretation left very few moviegoers untouched. The actress is the lead in ‘Silk’ by Taiwanese director, Chao Pin Su: “We tried to make the best possible feature film on all levels,” explains the director. “Usually, in all Taiwanese films, the action is relatively slow and the atmosphere rather dark. I believe that we impose limits on ourselves due to various points of view, even when due to creative talent. This time, we had the good fortune of securing solid financing, which allowed us to develop our ideas with complete serenity. The entire crew is very satisfied with it. This picture is really different from the rest of Taiwanese productions.”
As for Barbie: “It was a true challenge to take on this character, I had a lot of fun playing her. Furthermore, there are terrible deaths in the film, which I greatly enjoyed from this point of view. Not to mention the end, it really touched me.”

Another timeless vision, but this one celebrates a movie dynasty. Like the Douglas, the Van Peebles, etc…Here come the Coppolas! Sofia, the daughter of Francis is back in Cannes with Marie-Antoinette (Her third movie after ‘Virgin Suicides’ – Director’s fortnight – and ‘Lost in translation’). The film charts the life of. ..’Marie-Antoinette’, queen of France during the 1789 revolution and famous for answering to a starving crowd asking for bread: ‘Let them eat cake!’
For me, Marie Antoinette has remained, first and foremost, the symbol of a totally decadent style. I didn’t realize to what point these people, who were called upon to govern a country, were in point of fact no more than teenagers. Daily life in the Château de Versailles is also, for these adolescents, a form of apprenticeship set in a tense, difficult environment. It is this position and the complexity of the character of Marie Antoinette which interested me.” (Sofia C.)
A few recognizable faces in the casting like Steve Coogan (yes…I know!), Marianne Faithfull, Kirsten Dunst and Aurore Clement…However, Sofia is adamant she never tried to make a political statement: ‘I wasn’t making a political movie about the French Revolution, I was doing a portrait of the character Marie Antoinette and my themes are in the film. She was a symbol of decadence. It was very interesting to read and research more about Marie Antoinette, more about the human experience of this young girl who went to Versailles when she was 14 and how she developed in the Cour de Versailles. I thought she was an interesting character. I have always been attracted to the 18th century in France. I knew so little about the personal side of her. The story is about teenagers in Versailles so I wanted it to have the energy of youth, a teenage feeling to it.” I am making one if I tell you that the movie is adapted from a book written by Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham also known as CBE lady Antonia Fraser…?

Anyone who’s been on the French Riviera during that period of the year is aware of the fact that we are reaching the high points of the season with the Monte-Carlo tennis tournament, the Cannes festival, the Monaco grand prix, then Avignon festival in Provence, (equivalent to the Edinburgh theater festival…) and so on…We stopped in Grace and St-Tropez too…bumped into Michael Stipe, Robin Aubert, the director and lost our lawyer inside a casino…in Monaco…also known as the ‘Millionaire’s playground’ … Formula One is the toy here…The noise, the smell, the gas, the sheer pollution it creates and with the little amount of overtaking opportunities, due to the tight confines of the roads, the Monaco Grand Prix must be an ecologist idea of hell.

With preparations in full swing it is quite difficult to drive through the city. Remember, the Monaco grand prix is the last of its kind, as the race track is made of the principality’s own streets. It’s the world’s most famous street track…

An open city as was Rome in January 1945 when the remnants of the German army occupying the ‘eternal city’ are about to surrender …A priest and a communist worker, the two pillars of post-war anti-fascism in Italy will join together to defeat Nazism. The movie buffs among you will recognize the pitch for ‘Rome, open city’ and the birth of Italian neo-realism. Black and white movies, with strong ‘real’ characters shot in the streets, as Cinecitta the babylonesque studios built by Mussolini had been bombed during the war. Serge July, editor of left-wing daily newspaper Liberation, directed a short-documentary called ‘Once upon a time…Rome open city’ showing in Cannes…

Another graceful vision, Barbie Hsu. Her sensual and timeless interpretation left very few moviegoers untouched. The actress is the lead in ‘Silk’ by Taiwanese director, Chao Pin Su: “We tried to make the best possible feature film on all levels,” explains the director. “Usually, in all Taiwanese films, the action is relatively slow and the atmosphere rather dark. I believe that we impose limits on ourselves due to various points of view, even when due to creative talent. This time, we had the good fortune of securing solid financing, which allowed us to develop our ideas with complete serenity. The entire crew is very satisfied with it. This picture is really different from the rest of Taiwanese productions.” As for Barbie: “It was a true challenge to take on this character, I had a lot of fun playing her. Furthermore, there are terrible deaths in the film, which I greatly enjoyed from this point of view. Not to mention the end, it really touched me.”

Another timeless vision, but this one celebrates a movie dynasty. Like the Douglas, the Van Peebles, etc…Here come the Coppolas! Sofia, the daughter of Francis is back in Cannes with Marie-Antoinette (Her third movie after ‘Virgin Suicides’ – Director’s fortnight – and ‘Lost in translation’). The film charts the life of. ..’Marie-Antoinette’, queen of France during the 1789 revolution and famous for answering to a starving crowd asking for bread: ‘Let them eat cake!’ For me, Marie Antoinette has remained, first and foremost, the symbol of a totally decadent style. I didn’t realize to what point these people, who were called upon to govern a country, were in point of fact no more than teenagers. Daily life in the Château de Versailles is also, for these adolescents, a form of apprenticeship set in a tense, difficult environment. It is this position and the complexity of the character of Marie Antoinette which interested me.” (Sofia C.) A few recognizable faces in the casting like Steve Coogan (yes…I know!), Marianne Faithfull, Kirsten Dunst and Aurore Clement…However, Sofia is adamant she never tried to make a political statement: ‘I wasn’t making a political movie about the French Revolution, I was doing a portrait of the character Marie Antoinette and my themes are in the film. She was a symbol of decadence. It was very interesting to read and research more about Marie Antoinette, more about the human experience of this young girl who went to Versailles when she was 14 and how she developed in the Cour de Versailles. I thought she was an interesting character. I have always been attracted to the 18th century in France. I knew so little about the personal side of her. The story is about teenagers in Versailles so I wanted it to have the energy of youth, a teenage feeling to it.” I am making one if I tell you that the movie is adapted from a book written by Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham also known as CBE lady Antonia Fraser…?

Left the sea, s… and sun…for gritty, rainy London. But Cannes is not over yet. I have to give you a few tips for the ‘Palme d’Or’ …This year’s festival has been very ‘serious’ and has featured movies with ‘gravitas’. The president of the jury is Wong-Kar-Wai filmmaker renown for his uncompromising style. Two films spring to mind, when thinking about the Palme d’or or Jury’s prize. The two have wars at their core: ‘The wind that shakes the barley’ by Ken Loach and the excellent ‘Day of glory’…

The movie is about the Algerian, Moroccans, and Tunisians, Senegalese soldiers or goumiers dead and forgotten during the Second World War, who liberated France from Nazism. The director, Rachid Bouchareb, has assembled a stellar ensemble cast, made of some of France’s finest actors: Sami Bouajila, Rochdy Zem, and the two icons of French’s suburbs youth culture, Sami Naceri (Taxi 1 to 3) and Djamel Debbouze (Amelie…).

Rachid Bouchared, the director knew straight from the get-go what would be the major stumbling block for such a movie and forecasted it in his approach: the cinema is a vehicle for encounters and emotions, perceived by audiences first as feelings, even if it gives them more to discover. It was only in this way that I could carry the story and creates a tie with the audience,” he adds. “I didn’t want to be didactic, which serves nothing. We developed the screenplay over two and a half years. We needed 25 versions to be able to step beyond history and concentrate on the human subject matter, on all the tiny details of daily life which reflect life far better than any speech.”

Sami Naceri as always very intense, took the bait with hesitation first, before putting ‘a lot into this film, to the point of even learning Arabic. I literally charged into the story. It isn’t a vindictive picture, nor political. But those in school should learn that these North Africans were the first to fall under German bullets for the liberation of Marseilles, Toulon and Corsica.” Djamel Debbouze, who is considered as one – if not the one – of the most bankable actor in France at the moment had to chip in to get the project going: ‘On the one hand, we come up with budgets in the several million euros to produce comedies where audiences want to see me slipping on banana peels, and on the other hand, I see that a project such as Rachid’s which was non-stop revised downwards. France still has difficulty in coping with its own past.”

Djamel Debbouze, the actor has fulfilled most of his dreams emerging as a disabled kid from the suburbs to one of France’s most recognizable face but the producer was looking for a strong project to sink his teeth in, refusing the usual farces, he is now renowned for: ‘ After Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, I received a multitude of scripts of the kind Asterix vs. the North Africans or Rabin Hood, and I was extremely skeptical. While Rachid’s film presented pleasant and noble challenges to be defended. It was therefore perfectly normal and logical to go all the way for such a film. As co-producer, I am proud that Days of Glory is presented at Cannes, it’s all the better for us. To put together funds for this film, I was even compelled to go meet Sarkozy, which really taught me a lesson!”

R. Bouchardeb went one step further, by asking rai icon Khaled (worldwide hit, ‘Didi’) to score the music for the film, despite early reservations: ‘in normal times, I sing of love and peace, so I was somewhat taken aback when Rachid suggested to me working on the music of a film about war. He then explained to me that it wasn’t really a war picture, its goal was rather to honor those people who helped lead to the Liberation and who brought us the joy of doing certain things. It is out of respect for his people who died for us that I joined Rachid.”

From one master to another: Sydney Pollack, the American director and actor with more than 40 years in the trade and 20 films under his belt. His filmography includes ‘Out of Africa’, ‘Three days of the condor’ and as an actor, the last Kubrick’s work ‘Eyes wide shut’. The night is called ‘A Film master class with Sydney Pollack’. His first words were: ‘I just have to say that anything I am presenting that has the name” master class ” is enough to ring every alarm bell in my brain,”. A master-raconteur, Sydney Pollack cruise through the night dispensing words of wisdom like: To be absolutely honest, I don’t think of myself as a visual director. That’s an area that I work very hard in because it’s my weaker muscle. My stronger muscles are with performance. Because I feel that I am stronger in performance, I try to concentrate as hard as I can on the visual aspects of the movie because it isn’t my forte. There are great visual styles that I admire immensely like Bertolucci. The danger with somebody like me who comes from the theatre as an actor is to follow along with two-people talk scenes and I like to do those. My films are full of them.” Sydney Pollack was also presenting out of competition ‘Sketches of Frank Gehry’, the patron of the arts and founder of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao among other things…

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The Live8 concert in July this year, in London’s Hyde Park was set up to raise awareness about the Black continent issues, but before the first guitar riffs, the gig highlighted one single home truth: Africans should do it for themselves! The lack of performers from Africa in the initial line-up raised eyebrows on every side of the argument.

Cue Ligali, an east London organisation whose role is to monitor the media, act as complaint body, be active in the educational field and raise awareness on the issues that plague black communities up and down the country: gun crime, rebellion against authority, stop and search…On the same day, a day of African remembrance was staged at the Hackney Town Hall and the day-long event put together by Ligali is a “positive day to remember the struggle against slavery, our ancestors and their sacrifice in what is widely considered as an holocaust,”‘ according to Emma Pierre-Joseph, spokesperson for the organisation. She also told CEN Magazine that it is “a forward-looking day to provide a platform of reflection for the whole community and its future.”

The centrepiece of the event is the screening of a newly released DVD on the African slavery trade, the shameful human trade officially abolished in 1772 in the UK and its empire. Liverpool was the unofficial capital of the slave trade with more than 10 millions souls from the continent‘s west coast (Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal) transiting there, on their way to build the new continent, America. Other towns throughout Europe, shared that infamous tag Bordeaux, Nantes, Bristol in France, Lisbon in Portugal, Barcelona in Spain and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Winner already of the best documentary prize at the Pan-African film festival and Bridgetown film festival and with testimonies ranging among others, from Dr M. Karenga, Amira Baraka, Desmond Tutu, Dr Helena Woodward, Shaykh Muhammad Shareef and Trevor Marshall. The film, is a compelling compilation of testimonies, voices and opinions gathered around five continents and more than 20 countries on the subject. “‘We went to universities as well as into the neighbourhoods to talk to the common folk,” says Asante Jr, the talented scriptwriter and poet, who was a first year media graduate at the time when he started working on the project.

HIV/AIDS, crime, drugs, low expectation, and underdevelopment plague most people of African origin throughout the world. 500 years later, after slavery, colonialism, the cold war and subsequent neo-colonialism, daughters and sons of the continent are still suffering and cannot enjoy basic freedom or wealth. Told from the continent vantage-point, the film scrutinises the holocaust and subsequent uprooting of Africans from their homeland and culture. In the words of producer-director, Owen ‘Alik’ Shahadah, “500 Years Later chronicles the struggle of a people who have fought and continue to fight for the most essential human right: Freedom.”

Owen used to produce a stylish work of art and set up a website www.500yearslater.com to foster and further the debate, knowing that the film has already garnered interest from education bodies throughout the world, willing to use it as a teaching method.

That might be exactly what African communities in the UK need, as reveals Asher D, the rapper and member of the So Solid Crew collective in his subsequent Channel 4 documentary aired in November 2004, surfing on the same subject, but neighbouring issue of the ‘N word’ (nigger/ nigga).

“It’s definitely an issue that people of my generation don’t know enough about black history and that’s a point I raise throughout the programme.” He finishes with “when it comes to the teaching of black history, there is none” and for the first time, our rulers seem to agree with him, as Liverpool’s Riverside Labour MP Louise Ellman called for the Blair-Brown government to introduce teaching slave trade history in British schools and asked for a national day of remembrance. 117 MPs across the chamber joined her and settled for the debate to take place in the commons, during Black History month in October this year. However, on the question of responsibility, which could trigger lawsuits and potential reparations, the government washed its hands of the problem, stating that it “cannot take responsibility for what happened over 170 years ago” even if it recognizes that “the slave trade is one of the worst examples of man’s inhumanity to man” and added that it wasn’t an unlawful act at the time the British government condoned it. 500 Years Later the film’s sequel will be released in 2006, focusing on AIDS/HIV, the colonisation of the African continent, neo-colonisation, the ill-effects of globalisation with a chapter on Bretton-Woods institutions like the World Bank and the IMF.

The film has an obvious quality, for its combination of thoughtful photography signed by the director Owen, retrospective voices and using a multi-media platform to get its point across, which could see him becoming a benchmark in filmmaking history. Although filed with facts, it relies on a gripping narrative infused by the flavour and a soundtrack for poetical freedom and liberation. Showing the chains that tied their ancestors and contemporaries, it also offers a serious path outside of the plantations.

Scriptwriter, Asante Jr is a poet master with an interesting ability to transfer its art from the written/spoken word to the screen and his influence transpires throughout 500 years later. “To have people be so receptive and come up to us crying and embrace us after seeing the film is just amazing,” reveals Asante Jr. “We worked on the project for two and half years, and you just don’t know if people are going to like it; you are just going on passion and what you think is right.”

Right he surely was.

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The story is an old one, the thought of a mother marrying her son and bearing him children is difficult to swallow, as is humorously portrayed by Alaka (Nick Oshiklanlu) in his cries of “pray woman let me eat in peace.” The horror of discovering that the wife you loved is in fact your mother is a burden too horrific to bear, King Odewales frenzied paranoia is an anguish to watch. The suffocating pain of the Queens sobs as she realises the husband she married is in fact her son and her silent, resolute exit from the room heightens the sheer force of the drama enfolding. Even through this most shocking of stories there is humour, in the tradition of Shakespearian tragedies, pathos is found. We laugh at the King and his Yoruba proverbs handed out in copious amounts, for instance “is it not ignorance that makes the rat attack the cat?” Led by Mo Sesay playing King Odewale the cast gave tantalising performances. The intimacy of the Arcola theatre, the still, stifling heat did not detract from the dynamic, energetic performance. The lilting, soul stirring chanting and melodies composed by Akintayo Akinbode evoked the senses and helped transport the audience to another time in a Nigerian place.

All great stories are timeless, as is this one. Rotimi was a master storyteller, cleverly placing the Oedipus Rex tragedy in Nigeria where it easily lends itself to the nuances and intricacies of the plot. Having written the play in the 1960s, Rotimis’ essential message is emphasised in King Odewales’ emphatic reply, “no, don’t blame the Gods,” to his brother, Aderopo (Kwaku Ankomah). It was an allegory to the devastating Nigerian civil war that Rotimi, writing in the 1960s was referring to, but the message is just as potent today: we are masters of our own destinies.

The Gods are not to blame: 8th June – 2nd July 2005 Arcola Theatre, 27 Arcola St, E8

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Roger Corman’s B-movie factory of the sixties and seventies produced a number of leading film talents like Francis Ford Coppola,Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson and James Cameron who have become big cheeses in Hollywood. They’ve each created large niches for themselves and become marquee names whose presence will guarantee a following. Even more regular cheeses like Joe Dante, Peter Bogdanovitch, and Monte Hellman have become known for their idiosyncratic visions and their adherence to signature styles. Graduates from the Corman studios tended to become iconoclasts, probably as a result of Corman’s high concept, high turnover approach forcing directors, writers and actors to think on the run and be brave with their decisions. Fellow Corman graduate, John Sayles has always been different – one of America’s best independent filmmakers, he has worked with genuine skill and clarity as a writer, director, editor, actor and script doctor for nearly 30 years. What separates John Sayles from his peers is his refusal to play out his work in terms of a simple hero/ villain morality, his refusal of the strictures of iconoclasm.

Silver Star, Sayles’ latest release due out in late July, is three films in one: a detective story reminiscent of Chinatown, a satirical look at the political and intellectual credentials of George W. Bush, and an indictment of the weakness of mainstream journalism in pursuing politicians and their paymasters. John takes us through his gallery of shady deal-makers, migrant Mexicans, leftist bloggers, cynics and the disaffected to delineate his vision of what really has gone wrong with the American political system, using an extraordinary cast headed by Danny Huston (who, after his performances in this and Ivansxtc, is as amiable as freshly buttered toast and should be in every American film made from here on in). The film feels like 70’s conspiracy thrillers in the vein of Winter Kills or The Parallax View with an overriding air of pessimism rather than paranoia – the bad guys can’t be caught, nothing really changes by the end of the film and the only victories are relatively minor human ones.

Silver Star flies in the face of prevailing Hollywood wisdom (leftist documentaries aside), being both political and not particularly heroic. Most, if not all, Hollywood films have a very simple structure: present the hero as someone in whom the hopes and ideals of the audience can be vested, introduce and play out a conflict that the hero must overcome, and finally see the conflict resolved. Simple. Except that life is rarely ever that simple, even if information is increasingly skewed to this model; witness the last Gulf War where first we see Bush and Blair as heroes fighting terrorism introducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction wielded by Sadam Hussain (the pre-eminent bad-guy of our times), secondly the exposition of this conflict through various media, and finally ‘shock and awe’ – roll credits. The good guys win, the bad guys are made to suffer, and we, the audience, are invited to cheer. The duplicity of this structure is that you either go with it or you refuse to suspend your disbelief, there is no active engagement with the scenario and no nuances to discuss or modify. John Sayles’ work displays exactly the opposite sensibility drawing on stories that are as much about the society in which they are based as they are about the people that inhabit them. His work tends to act as a social, political and emotional travelogue rather than a straight-line narrative. The films are all about nuance, all about the compromises that exist between individuals and the society in which they live; points of view being drawn richly, sympathetically and non-judgmentally (he mostly eschews didacticism in favour of letting the audience make up its own mind). Community and social mores emerge as lead characters in his stories and, since changing society is as difficult as twisting a melon, his stories tend to have downbeat or open-ended conclusions.

After graduating with a Psychology degree in 1972, Sayles worked in a series of blue collar jobs whilst penning short stories for magazines and working on novels. He eventually found work with Roger Corman as a writer, producing scripts for Piranha, The Lady in Red and Battle Beyond the Stars (all, quite frankly, derivative of other more successful films but fun with a nice line in characterisation), learning the rudiments of film-making along the way. Using the money saved from writing these films, he made his debut as a director with The Return of the Secaucus 7, a warm, dialogue-heavy comedy of character and connections whose story structure was followed three years later by Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill. The film was a critical success but not a commercial one and John went back to his day-job, writing scripts for films such as The Howling and Alligator (both of which are terrific monster movies, The Howling in particular being a witty and postmodernist update of the werewolf myth and just about the best werewolf film ever made) whilst raising money for his second film Lianna, dealing with issues of sexuality and its social and emotional fall-out. His first studio film, Baby It’s You, again showed Sayles’ ability to write wittily and incisively about personal and social issues with a story about a high school romance that falls apart in the post-school years because the social gulf between them is just too wide. Sayles never worked for a studio again because of arguments over the final cut of Baby It’s You.

His independence allowed him to make a string of American film classics exploring the emotional, social and political landscape of America working with a regular cast of actors including David Strathairn, Joe Morton, Chris Cooper and Gordon Clapp. The Brother from Another Planet looked at Harlem through the eyes of a mute alien on the run from bounty hunters, Matewan used a Western scenario to present a complex look at union politics, Eight Men Out presented the story of a sporting scandal in rich and illuminating detail, City of Hope used a multiple narrative to show the workings of a city bathed in compromise and on the edge of despair, Passion Fish showed the often fractious relationship between two very different women and earned a best original screenplay Oscar nomination, Lone Star distilled issues of community and race from an investigation into a 20 year old murder using multiple narrative and gained another Oscar nomination for best screenplay, Men With Guns was filmed entirely in Spanish and uncovered the harsh politics of an unnamed war-torn Latin American country, Limbo is a parable about three people trapped on an island tinged with ideas about the death of community, Sunshine State was another multiple narrative tale about a real estate development in Florida, and Casa de los Babys which was a study of six women who travel to South America in the hope of becoming adoptive mothers. In between films Sayles works as a script doctor, lending his intelligence to films like Apollo 13 and Mimic amongst others.

A john Sayles film has a ‘no bullshit’ guarantee, he strives as he scribes to find the emotional and intellectual truth in his material with dialogue that is pithy, witty and wise (and often all three at the same time). Like Mike Leigh or Ken Loach, his films are heart-felt and humanist, although he tends not to involve caricature as much as Mike Leigh and works on a broader canvas than Ken Loach. Like Robert Altman, Sayles’ technique of using multiple narratives offer the opportunity of looking at a subject in different and sometimes contradictory ways but unlike Altman, whose approach produces a compendium of short stories, Sayles uses it more as a novelist would, to deepen and enrich the story. John Sayles may well be the most politically aware director working in America who has pursued his writing career with a blue collar work ethic. He is a true individual, telling complex stories with precision and, in turn, should be seen as a real icon.

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Of special note are three documentaries screening at City Hall telling the migrant stories of the first Chinese settlers in east Londons Limehouse Basin in the very first China Town. The film explores their views on British life and eventual settlement here. Memories of the genuine children of Limehouse Chinatown is an informal documentary film capturing the historical experience of Connie Hoe, Leslie Hoe and Leslie Heng, now in their eighties and nineties who take you on a journey to the Limehouse Causeway and Pennyfields area of east London, before the second world war. Reminiscing about their Chinese fathers from Hong Kong and Shanghai, their historical east end upbringing, the Blitz, all the fairy tale myths that have sprung up about the Chinese community and how they have integrated and settled in London, Connie Hoe, Leslie Hoe and Leslie Heng will also be available to talk to at the end of the screening. Whispers of Time charts the lives of London’s elderly Chinese people who have settled in Britain since the 1950s. They discuss their life stories, childhood experiences, the war years, marriage in China, migration their early impressions of Britain, settlement, achievements and the next generation.

The National Portrait Gallery screens two striking romantic films from prominent filmmaker Zhiang Yimou, The Road Home and Happy Times. Yimou is an internationally acclaimed director and after graduating from the fifth class of the Beijing Film Academy in 1982, along with classmates such as Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuang, became known as a Fifth Generation filmmaker alongside his peers. Together they produced a new Chinese cinema rejecting the politicised angst of national survival in films of the first half of the 20th century and the class heroics of socialist realist cinema under Mao Zedong after 1949. Two decades on, Zhang Yimou is one of the most versatile and significant of these Fifth Generation directors.

The National Film Theatre also hosts Jiang Wen in conversation with Anthony Minghella. Wen is a celebrated Chinese actor and director whose film Devils On The Doorstep (2000) was a winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, but was never distributed in the UK. Anthony Minghella is one of the UK’s most outspoken and respected film directors and is also the Chair of The British Film Institute.

Shanghai on Screen: Various venues

Museum in Docklands
No 1 Warehouse, West India Quay, Hertsmere Rd, London E14 4AL
www.museumindocklands.org.uk

National Portrait Gallery
Ondaatje Wing Theatre
2 St Martins Place, London, WC2H
www.npg.org.uk

City Hall
The Queen’s Walk, SE1 2AA
www.london.gov.uk
National Film Theatre South Bank
Waterloo, SE1 8XT
www.bfi.org.uk

Vue West End
3 Cranbourn Street, Leicester Square, WC2H 7AL
08712 240240
www.myvue.com
www.london.gov.uk

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‘Catalyst’ is a collaborative mix media project based around poems by London writer and visual artist Cat Miranda aka Cat Catalyst. Cat’s poetry explores spiritual and humanist concepts, embracing emotion and looking for a deeper meaning.

Choreographer Briar Adams creates the movement and composer Danbob Clarke contributes electronic beats, with lyrics by director Cat Miranda.

In addition to Cat Catalysts poetry, there are special guest appearances from active poets David J, Tim Wells, Ramshackle Event, Salina Saliva, Baden, Pom Pom Poets and more.

Rhythm Factory
16-18 Whitechapel Road
London E1 1EW
020 7375 3774

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