We caught up with Dan Paolantonio the chugging carbon-neutral engine behind the Flipside Film Festival in Plymouth, between May 21 and 31, to find this exciting alternative film event.
“I’m hoping that the festival will serve to open up people’s eyes beyond the usual multiplex and popcorn fare,’ Dan told D+CFilm.
“Plymouth doesn’t have a themed film festival as such, and although I do love what Motion Plymouth are doing and have achieved with their festival, I did feel as though there was room for one which had a more independent vibe.
“I hope that it will act as a platform for the sharing of views and experiences of our world which are under-represented by mainstream media; exploring the creative possibilities of ‘endangered’ media technologies and practices and films which allow the viewer to experience our world from different and unfamiliar visual perspectives.
“I hope that it will be distinctly cinematic and free of the usual trappings and bluster of more mainstream events. We’re the flipside to all that!
“The Open Call response has been great and truly global, reflecting the festival’s international flavour, with notable entries from Japan, Chile, Canada, Ireland, Japan, US, Spain and even ‘ol blighty! We’re still keen for more entries - they should respond to one or more of the Open Call themes, detailed on the site. The closing date May 14.”
Stay tuned to D+CFilm everyday this week for more on the Flipside Film Festival
The final day of Plymouth’s Flipside film festival (May 21-31) will be devoted to the work of legendary filmmaker, DJ, author and cultural alchemist Don Letts.
The afternoon will feature screenings of two of Don’s feature films at the Plymouth Arts Centre. Groundbreaking drama Dancehall Queen will be followed by his Grammy-winning documentary Westway To The World.
There will also be a panel discussion of Don’s work and plenty of opportunity to pose your questions to the man himself. Don will also be giving readings from his bestselling autobiography Culture Clash: Dread Meets Punk Rockers.
An inspiring and fascinating fella, Letts came to notoriety in the late Seventies as the DJ who single handedly turned a whole generation of punks onto reggae.
He adopted the punk DIY ethic to make his first film, The Punk Rock Movie, which was (and is) the only documentary on the UK punk scene, featuring the Sex Pistols, The Clash and loads of others.
He currently presents a weekly radio show on 6 Music and still DJs nationally and internationally.
Tickets for the afternoon shenanigans cost £6 / £4.50 NUS & Unwaged.
The evening event is Flipside’s closing party at Bar Favela on Mayflower Street in Plymouth (yknow, where Good Companions used to be).
Don Letts will headline a DJ set, with support from DJs Crusty and Dirty Arry.
Tickets for the closing party cost £5, or £4 with a ticket stub from the afternoon event.
Ten per cent of the proceeds from the closing party will be donated to the Bristol Computers for Palestine charity.
Check out D+CFilm over the next few days to find out about some of the other filmmakers involved in the Flipside festival.
Yesterday, we told you about Plymouth’s forthcoming Flipside film festival (May 21-31). Today, we’ll tell you how you could show your flick at the event.
Entries can be of any genre or filmmaking style, although should explore one or more of the following thematic areas:
The View From Here: Films which provide the audience with the opportunity to ’see’ our world from different and unfamiliar visual perspectives, achieved by manipulating ‘the real’ with various cinematic techniques and technological trickery.
View Point: Films which celebrate non-mainstream / non-traditional and minority viewpoints and experiences of our world - especially political / spiritual / ideological viewpoints and experiences that are under-represented by mainstream broadcast media.
4:3 ReView: Films which creatively embrace ‘endangered’ media practices, processes and technologies, featuring everything in the 4:3 aspect ratio, from Super8, Standard 8, & Standard 16mm film, to analogue & pixelvision ‘toy’ video.
Entries can be accepted in VHS / miniDV / DVCAM / HDV / DVD-video (Region 2 or Region 0) / standard 8mm / super8 / standard 16mm / super16.
Other media formats can be accommodated by an, ahem, ’special arrangement’. Nudge nudge. Wink wink. Etc etc.
The deadline for entries is May 14 so you’d better head over to the Flipside website immediately to download an application pack.
Check out D+CFilm over the next few days to find out about some of the filmmakers involved in the Flipside festival.
And here’s one of the films in View Point section, Behind the Mask, an everyday tale of animal rights activitists.
We’ve been so excited about Plymouth’s forthcoming Flipside film festival, we’ve forgotten to tell you anything about it. We bad.
To make amends, D+CFilm (one of the sponsors of the fest, doncha know) is bringing you a week of Flipside goodness and taking a closer look at the most-excellent stuff in store.
But first things, as they say, first - what the heck is Flipside?
Well, the event is the brainbaby of Dan Paolantonio, film lecturer at Plymouth College of Art and Design and D+CFree chairman at the Two Short Nights festival (we sponsored that one, too) back in December.
Running from May 21-31, Flipside will showcase both feature-length and short movies, exploring alternate, unorthodox and under-represented views of our world.
In addition to programmed screenings there will also be a whole buncha film workshops, Q&A sessions and special events.
Needless to say, being right-on and strictly non-hierarchical, the festival will also give emerging filmmakers the chance to show their work alongside the more established names.
Indeed, the emphasis is very much on furthering cinematic debate and celebrating diversity of experience in film - which is why D+CFilm was so bloody keen to throw it’s weight behind the event.
Stay tuned over the next few days to find out which filmmakers will be appearing at the festival, how you (YOU!) can get involved and why Flipside will have a cinema in a shed.
Meanwhile, here’s a clip from She’s A Punk Rocker on at PCAD cinema at 5pm on Friday, May 23. Free entry.
Welcome to part two of our Daniel Craig weekend. This is a Q&A that we are desirous to share with all and sundry. And here’s a bit of a behind the scenes video.
Q: What was South Africa like?
A: Wonderful. I love that part of the world. The first job I ever did was in Zimbabwe on The Power of One, that was 90, 91 and we couldn’t shoot in South Africa and there was discussions going on about somebody on the film who had been known to work in South Africa and there was talk of sacking him because the Zimbabweans wouldn’t put up with it. it was still very touchy. I did I Dream Of Africa a few years ago with Kim Basinger, wonderful. So I love the place, I’ve got a real affinity to it and I love going back. It was the first time I’d been to Cape Town and it’s beautiful, an unbelievable place. South Africa has its problems but if they can sort it out it will do the rest of Africa a lot of good.
Q: Are you pleased with the film?
A: I am pleased. I think it’s really beautiful. The story is really simple. It’s a story about dealing with the past and taking care of business. I think Baillie has done an amazing job. And what comes through is the humour in it, which is really important. I read the script and thought ‘there’s no way we can touch this; we have to keep it true to the script. It will either work as a piece or it won’t work.’ And it was important when we gave it to the actors that they were taken by the script and they were taken by the fact that they would get to say these words so everybody who came in gave it what they had. And the story worked because of that and you can’t try and screw around with it because they would have ruined the movie.
Q: Did you keep tabs on the film as it was in progress or did you see it for the first time as a finished piece?
A: Well, Baillie is a close friend so of course I kept tabs on it as he was going along - we were on the phone to each other constantly. But I left him alone with it. The first time I saw it I was bowled over. And filming in South Africa was just essential, it looks like another land, to state the obvious, but what it hopefully looks like is that endless summer that we all remember from when we were growing up, the one that lasted forever – I’m not sure about that much sex, though (laughs). I don’t think that ever happened. Maybe in my mind.
Q: Is it a story about remembering where you came from?
A: Definitely. What’s interesting is that this guy, my character, has everything – he has the best Mum and her close friend who brings him up. It may be a slightly dysfunctional family but it is also a good, solid family and everything is there and that’s the big tragedy. And later on in life he’s got Eve (Ophelia Franklin) who is probably the love of his life, who is standing there and saying ‘I will be there forever even though you are a mess…’ But that’s the tragedy. It’s a way that when he was 16, the one thing, the child getting killed, so deeply affects him that it sends him off on to that destructive path and I can personally relate to that, not in such an extreme way but if you go off on that wrong path and don’t deal with it and don’t address it, it will find it’s way back to you. It’s also about how important those years are. The young Joe is such a bundling ball of energy and hormones and every experience is so vivid. And that’s why filming in South Africa worked for that sequence so well because when you remember those times everything is so bright and so colourful, basically because your hormones are going through the roof.
Q: Is it important for you to take on projects like this alongside doing Bond?
A: It’s absolutely not a conscious decision to react to something. I did it because I believed in it and because I believe in Baillie. He needs to make movies and I felt that was important. But Bond does help. I would be lying if I said it didn’t. And doing films like this makes me remember why I do what I do. And also being a producer on this is like basically what I have to do is speak to people and say ‘I believe in this, spend some money.’ And it’s a step because that was somebody else’s job - that was my bosses’ job, they did all of that and I turned up and did the acting. But now it’s me who has to say ‘I really believe in this, please spend some money.’ And actually following it through and getting the movie made was very rewarding.
Q: Was it difficult to raise the money for this?
A: You know, thank God for Buena Vista and the other investors because we did get the money together. It was a struggle but it always is. It’s a struggle on a Bond movie to a lesser degree, there’s always a budget issues here and there but I’ve kept myself out of that as much as possible but over the past couple of years I’ve tended to be more involved in conversations about finance and locations and stuff. And if I’m going to be dragged in I might as well get a credit for it! (laughs).
Q: Baillie said that there were some parts of Joe’s wardrobe that were your own clothes. What was that about?
A: It was all my own, it was that kind of movie. (laughs).
Q: Was that just for convenience or were you playing a version of yourself?
A: No, the way that Baillie did it was that Joe was in a shirt and a pair of jeans, or something, and it’s hardly a difficult wardrobe to get together. But it’s something that I wear and he just said ‘I want you to wear that’ because for him it was an image that worked. It was just a simplistic thing. And it was that kind of production.
Q: So is there anything of you in the character?
A: Well I grew up by the sea, as Joe does. And Baillie did too. He was the kid at the back of the waltzers (fairground ride) that made you sick. He was the guy inside the ghost train who squirts water at you and touches the back of your head to make you jump, that was Baillie’s job for a while, so that’s all his. I grew up in the North West (of England) and New Brighton was the place that I used to go to which is not unlike that kind of place in the film, the funfairs and arcades, it might have been a bit smellier I think!
Q: Was music important to you?
A: Oh yeah. I mean, I never had a jacket as good as that and I never had the blue eye shadow (which young Joe wears in one scene in the film) but music was a very important part of my life. I do think that Harry (Eden, who plays young Joe) is very good in this, in fact all the kids were absolutely spot on. We lucked out with them really, and that was a very important part of it.
Q: Because he’s playing a young version of your character, did you have any conversations with Harry about how to play it?
A: I kind of left him alone with it really. It’s not like I was playing my character with a hump and a pair of false teeth. And the fact that he’s 16 and I’m 40 in the movie, that’s a lifetime. The person that you were then is different. I mean, obviously there are physical similarities but the people who you would meet from your school days now, they have changed – they’ve been around the world, had families, a lot of life has been lived, and you become a different person. So no, I just said to Harry ‘you do it exactly as it should be done’ which is that boy at that particular time in that seaside resort with those people, that’s the way it should be.
Q: The film is quite scathing about Hollywood. Where did that come from?
A: Well it is scathing but it could be any business really. It really could. But the key in was to be a movie star was a good connection to make. And you could have some fun with it. I mean, Mark’s character (Mark Strong, who plays Joe’s agent, Manny Miesel) is great, we can relate to that. But really it’s about laying down the truth of the story and how his mother would describe it would be to say that he’s got himself in with a bad crowd. But there’s plenty of lovely people in this business, it’s just who you choose and you’ve got to choose. And if you just let your life run away with itself you end up surrounded by a bunch of **** and that’s a choice and Joe has made that choice. He has made that choice to be where he is and all of his good friends have gone. In fact, the one person, Eve, who is there is the one person keeping him alive. And hopefully by the end of the movie he begins to realise that, because that’s the woman he should be running off into the sunset with.
Q: You mentioned that you were into music as a teenager, who were you listening to?
A: It’s funny, Roxy Music and David Bowie have always been there but it wasn’t a huge influence on me, it was more punk and then I went through a deeply kind of heavy metal period which lasted for a couple of years, which was one of those things, really (laughs). And then I came out the other end of that. It was all about the artwork, which was what appealed to me, because I was studying art at the time and I liked the album covers. You drew album covers and therefore you listened to the music. Blue Oyster Cult! I can’t listen to them now..(laughs). But that was part of it. But someone asked me ‘Bowie or Roxy?’ I mean, how could you choose? One compliments the other. And that piece of music (Roxy Music), If There Is Something, is what Baillie based the movie on, that’s where the movie came from.
Q: Have you still got friends from your teenage years?
A: I’ve got one friend that I still keep in touch with from then. But a bit like Joe I left home at 16. Obviously not in those circumstances, but I’ve lived my life down here (London) and so this is where my family and friends are. But I’m connected to it because my mother is still there. It’s a strange one, but you move on.
Q: In the film your character’s mother keeps his bedroom exactly the way he left it as a kind of shrine..
A: My mother stopped doing that a long time ago, thank God. For a while she did, but she’s moved house a couple of times since then and slowly my possessions have gone down to one box which is the same with everybody.
Q: When you go back there now is it different because you’re perceived as a movie star?
A: I kind of keep myself to myself. I don’t go out. I’m lucky with the place I come from, maybe it’s just the North West but people do tend to keep themselves to themselves. I’m lucky I can go to the shop without any problems, people say hello but that’s it.
Q: What can you tell us about the story?
A: Nothing really (laughs). The story continues where we left off. In Casino Royale we saw that there is an organisation that is trying to destabilise the world for it’s own gains and that is still there and I’m going after that.
Q: Is it true that it starts two minutes after Casino Royale?
A: Well, it might be five minutes or maybe ten! (laughs). But yes, pretty much after the last one. We shooting in Pinewood and then we’ll be doing Europe and South America.
Q: Does it feel good to be back in the role?
A: I feel really good. Up until Christmas it was a bit kick, bollock and scramble because things were coming together, but now the tipping point has come, we’re all in and we just have to get on with it. Any problems that we had or thought we had have gone now and we’ll have a ton more to deal in three months time. We have Matheiu Amalric in the film and I don’t know if you’ve seen The Diving Bell and the Butterfly but he’s fantastic and we’re just blessed to have him. He’s great. Olga (Kurylenko) is now on board which is great, that’s all sorted and we can get over that stuff and nonsense. You forget that the casting process can be so crazy, everybody gets mobbed. Olga’s parents and Gemma’s (Arterton) parents have been mobbed but that will all die down soon and we’ll get the movie out.
Q: Is it very character driven?
A: Yes, but don’t worry we’ve got plenty of explosives (laughs). We have Dan Bradly shooting second unit and he had just finished shooting Indie 4 (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) and he did the Bourne movies, so we’re in good shape.
You’d expect China to put on a big festival, and China Now claims to be the UK’s largest ever festival… of Chinese culture. It lasts six months and includes more than 800 events, one of which is a showing of Delamu (Angel of Peace) at the Exeter Picturehouse, April 30, and May 1.
Apparently Delamu (Angel of Peace), directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang, is ‘an extraordinary glimpse of a remote corner of the world and of its people’. The documentary follows the Tea-Horse Road that climbs through the Himalayas into Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan.
Tour will visit 17 theaters throughout the country and show 10 films, including local bows for Luxury Car and Crazy Stone.
Meanwhile, here’s the trailer of another Chinese film Cure of the Golden Flower
This weekend we thought we’d share with you a bit of Daniel Craig, whose Flashbacks of a Fool is currently doing the rounds. Tune in tomorrow for part two, a Q&A with the man himself.
Daniel Craig is likely to play down his dual role on Flashbacks of a Fool. Ask, for instance, what it was like producing the film as well as starring in it, and he quips: “I’ve tended to be dragged in to those conversations where decisions are made about finance and locations and stuff.
The truth is that Craig was absolutely crucial in getting the film made and took his role as producer very seriously indeed. He has known director Baillie Walsh for more than ten years and had always encouraged him to make a feature.
“I just felt that he should be making movies,” says Craig. “And I’ve always felt that way. He’s a fantastic storyteller and this is what he should be doing. Baillie did a documentary a few years ago (Mirror, Mirror) and his music videos with bands like Massive Attack and INXS were the benchmark in that genre.
“And then he wrote this script about five years ago with me in mind and said ‘I want you to do it one day’ and I said ‘absolutely, we’ll do it.’ And that’s how it started.”
It was to be a bumpy ride. At first it was difficult to secure funding for the film, even with Craig’s name attached. But then Craig took on the role of James Bond in Casino Royale and his stock, and power, within the industry rose even further.
Casino Royale scored that elusive double whammy – it became a huge box office hit as well as gaining rave reviews all around the world – and in turn helped Craig and Walsh get Flashbacks of a Fool into production.
“I did it because I believed in it and because I believe in Baillie,” he stresses. “He needs to make movies and I felt that was important. But Bond does help and I would be lying if I said it didn’t.
“Doing films like this makes me remember why I do what I do. Being a producer on this, basically what I have to do is speak to people and say ‘I believe in this, spend some money.’
“And it’s a step up because (in the past) that was somebody else’s job, that was my bosses’ job, they did all of that and I turned up and did the acting. But now it’s me who has to say ‘I really believe in this, please spend some money.’ And actually following it through and getting the movie made was very rewarding.”
In Flashbacks of a Fool, Craig plays Joe Scot a British born actor living in Hollywood whose once glittering career is going downhill fast, thanks to a hedonistic lifestyle of booze, drugs and womanising.
When he hears the terrible news that his best friend from childhood, Boots, has suddenly died, it forces him to reassess his life and go home to England and confront the past that has haunted him since he was a 17 year old living in an idyllic seaside town.
“I think it’s really beautiful,” Craig says of the finished film. “The story is really simple, it’s about dealing with the past and taking care of business. I think Baillie has done an amazing job.”
It unfolds in two time-frames – present day Los Angeles where Scot holes up in his hi-tech soulless luxury cliff top house – and back in the 1970s when the teenage Joe was on the verge of manhood, happily enjoying a golden summer with his friends when events conspired to change his life forever.
The young Joe (played by Harry Eden) falls for the beautiful Ruth (Felicity Jones) and earns a date with her, much to the envy of his mates. But at the same time he becomes the object of a bored, lonely housewife’s (Jodhi May) frustrated sexual desires and when she seduces him it triggers a chain of events ending in the tragic death of her child.
“The child getting killed so deeply affects him that it sends him off on to that destructive path and I can personally relate to that, not in such an extreme way but if you go off on that wrong path and don’t deal with it and don’t address it, it will find it’s way back to you.”
Both the LA sequences and the ‘golden summer’ from Joe’s teenage years were filmed in South Africa and Craig believes that the surprising location worked particularly well for the film.
“It’s also about how important those (teenage) years are. The young Joe is such a bundling ball of energy and hormones and every experience is so vivid. And that’s why filming in South Africa worked for that sequence so well because when you remember those times everything is so bright and so colourful, basically because your hormones are going through the roof.”
Craig was born in Chester, England, and grew up near Liverpool. He attended the National Youth Theatre at 16 and then Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 1996 he starred in the highly acclaimed BBC drama Our Friends In The North, a corruption and crime saga rightly regarded as one of the best television dramas of recent times.
As a result, Craig found himself in great demand and was inundated with offers of more television drama; instead he opted to work in small independent movies like Hotel Splendide, The Trench and Obsession.
The gamble paid off and Craig was cast by Sam Mendes to play the psychotic son of Paul Newman’s character in The Road To Perdition and later, poet Ted Hughes opposite Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath in Sylvia. He has worked with director Roger Michell twice; as the young man who beds a grandmother and her daughter in The Mother, and as Joe, a writer who attracts the attentions of a stalker, in Enduring Love.
He starred in the hit British gangster movie, Layer Cake and Steven Spielberg’s Munich. In Infamous, he played killer Perry Smith, who, along with his accomplice, developed a close friendship with the writer Truman Capote as he researched his book, In Cold Blood. He recently played Lord Asriel in The Golden Compass.
He will be seen in the Ed Zwick directed World War Two epic, Defiance, shortly and in January started filming the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace with director Marc Forster.
Word has reached our shell-likes (that’s ears to anyone under 25), that there are moves a foot to get movies shown in Cullompton, and it’s all down to a communal love of film.
Ray Weinstein, local councillor and chairman of the Devon Gateway Trust, has come up with the idea of a not for profit cinema. After the Tivoli Tiverton closed down the good burghers of the Culm Valley (25,000 souls, all told, apparently) have to travel to Exeter or Taunton.
Where the commercial Tivoli struggled a community enterprise might flourish and Ray is asking for volunteers and anyone interested in film to get in touch with him on 01884 32489.
T’has often been said, there’s madness in his method, we don’t expect the Lee Strasberg approach in the acting skills workshop that’s on offer from Josephine Larsen and the Exeter Phoenix media center from Saturday (April 26), but what we do know is acting is an important part of filmmaking (like duhh).
On offer is a day workshop and a short course in film acting skills from the redoutable Josephine Larsen, who’s been strutting her stuff on film, tv and stage throughout the world these past 30 years, working with Ian McNaughton, Vladek Sheybal, Marianne Segenbrecht and starring in the cult film Clementine Tango.
This news is through from the Exeter Phoenix, ‘if you are interested in seeing locally produced films this screening is your chance to see this year’s Phoenix Media Green Light film commissions as well as a selection of short films from this year’s Phoenix Media Short Film bursaries.’
Films start at 8pm and tickets are £3 or £2.50 for concessions
Of course, the Cornwall Film Festival is pushing the Cornish film scene, and the whole CFF crew is keen to big up movies where at least one of the creative team (wrier, director, producer) is resident in Cornwall.
Meanwhile, here’s the trailer to An Jowl Yn Agas Kegin (that’s The Devil In Your Kitchen, to you), and we’re not talking about that department store film for the little knife that does everything.
We’ve all been there - you’re doing a report for TV with a cameraman and things go horribly wrong. Check out the [REC] website for what happened to one young presenter, and count yourself lucky you didn’t land that job.
It’s Earth Day today, and if you fancy something a little more stimulating than just lying on it you could pop along to the free screening of Escape from Suburbia tonight at the Jill Craigie Cinema in Plymouth University’s Roland Levinsky Building.
It is billed as a ’sobering yet vital and ultimately positive exploration of what the secnod half of the Oil Age has in store for us’.
Doors open at 6pm for the 6.30pm start (running time 95 minutes)
Get a taster of what the Escape from Suburbia people were up to in California, above.
The Another Country International Short Film Award is open to filmmakers from towns, villages and rural areas, in all genres (including savannah and sci-fi) and there’s even a £1,000 prize.
Films should be under 10 minutes long, and shortlisted films will be screened in communities throughout Cornwall, where audiences will vote for their favourite film. A final shortlist will be screened at Cornwall Film Festival and the winner decided on the night.
The film must have been completed after January 1, 2007, and there is a maximum of five entries per person.
In the meantime, watch Grotesque Birds, one of six short films made for o-region’s 2006 Big Pitcher challenge, in which contestants were given a budget of just £100 to make their short film after a live pitch event at the Cornwall Film Festival.
Get your filmy skates on and head off to Heathfield, near Bovey Tracey, tonight to get involved in a new film project for teenagers.
Film company The Media Workshop will spend a month with the town’s 13-19 year olds to help them get to grips with the filmmaking process, and they want teenagers to come up with idea for film to be shot in and around Heathfield.
The project starts at the Heathfield Community Centre at 6.30pm tonight (April 21) with a film night of films made by other young people in the area.
Next week (April 28), there will be a camera session at the centre to teach shooting skills, after that the organisers hope a regular group will form to make a film on asubject or story developed by Heathfield teenagers themselves.
Participants will work alongside professional camera operators, script developers, editors and sound engineers on the project to develop their ideas.
“It could be a skate film, a BMX film, a comedy, romance, documentary or action movie,” The Media Workshop filmmaker Tim Dollimore told D+CFilm. “Whatever the group decides to do is what we will be trying to get on film.”
And while you’re pulling on your socks to hot-foot it to such a great opportunity, let’s watch South Devon band Start Me Up in the video for Project Funkenstein, which we believe Mr Dollimore had a hand in, along with those filmsters Blind Ditch of Vanland fame.
