The Bradford International Film Festival is something of a contradictory experience. Somewhat lacking in that all important film festival atmosphere, yet formed from a range of high quality film, the festival marked its 17th year with a programme as diverse as the city in which it takes place.
Running over 12 days, the festival is largely based out of the famous National Media Museum, and saw major retrospectives of the work of Terry Gilliam, Thomas Arslan and Claire Bloom take place. No less than seven strands form the bill, dealing with subjects as diverse as horror films (Bradford After Dark) and the construct of film itself (CineFile).
The diversity of the programme is the festival’s most notable feature, with a great range of new works sitting alongside a wide range of archive screenings. While somewhat lacking in depth, the sheer wealth of range on offer is second to none. Here are our picks from this year’s festival.
You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger
As opening night films go there can’t be many less appropriate than Woody Allen’s latest work. Unfunny, unlikeable, and unjustly positioned to kick off proceedings, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger set a strange tone for the start of the festival.
Combining the general conceit of Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar with Viagra ‘jokes’, alcoholic ‘jokes’ and clairvoyance ‘jokes’, Allen’s latest plays out like some terrible sitcom, ultimately going nowhere. Thankfully, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger proved to be the exception to the rule, and the rest of the festival happened to be a much more successful an experience.
Limelight
The actress Claire Bloom was the subject of a major celebration at this year’s Bradford Film Festival, which was launched with a screening of Charles Chaplin’s Limelight, Bloom’s Hollywood debut.
The story of the relationship between a fading vaudeville entertainer (portrayed by Chaplin) and a suicidal ballerina (Bloom), Limelight fell as Chaplin’s own career was coming to an end (he would go on to make only a further two features).
Recalling Andre Bazin’s notable essays on Chaplin, in which he compared the man to a figure of mythology akin to Roland or Ulysses, Limelight sees Chaplin deconstruct the mythos surrounding his own persona and that of his creation, in a moving and tone perfect manner. Figures from the Hollywood of old make fleeting appearances, in a work that celebrates the changing nature of the film industry.
Meek’s Cutoff
Kelly Reichardt’s follow up to the magnificent Wendy and Lucy follows very much in the tradition of her previous works, slow in pace, and languid by design. Telling the tale of the exploration of the American frontier, Reichardt spares no punches in her explicit and raw portrayal of events.
Michelle Williams, Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy muse, stars alongside Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson and an unrecognisable Bruce Greenwood in an intimate retelling of events so often told on the grandest of cinematic scales. By pulling back and focusing on the most ordinary of events (such as the search for water, an act which spans the majority of the films running time) Reichardt crafts a work ground in the underestimated terror of reality.
Recalling Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, the naturalistic pace of events sees Meek’s Cutoff successfully find its place within the modern wave of neo-westerns (following in the footsteps of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, There Will Be Blood and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada). Beautifully shot in effective 1.33:1 by first time feature cinematographer Chris Blauvelt, Meek’s Cutoff takes the honour of best looking film of the festival.
Cineramacana
Opening the Widescreen Weekend strand of the film festival, Cineramacana is the kind of event that really gives the festival it’s identity. An array of tidbits and snippets form the brunt of what might best be described as a presentation of different film formats, with 70mm film being celebrated alongside 3D tech-demo’s and random B-roll footage. It’s an unusual premise, but one steeped in passion, knowledge and charm.
Opening with an elaborate dance sequence from Bollywood/US crossover hit Never Say Goodbye, the presentation featured a diverse range of clips, including a sequence previously thought long lost from Michael Anderson’s Around the World in Eighty Days, a brand-new time-lapse video from Grant Wakefield and a Movietone report from the British premiere of Chariots of Fire. It’s all very eclectic an experience but oozes enthusiasm and impresses upon the nostalgic.
The Widescreen Weekend strand also saw 70mm screenings of films as diverse as Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s The Dark Crystal, Konrad Wolf’s Goya and a rare collected screening of the three key David Lean epics (Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai), alongside a traditional screening of How the West Was Won on the cinema’s very own Cinerama screen.
For those who don’t know, Cinerama is an exhibition format from the 1950’s, which sees three separate projectors each projecting separate sections of one film on to a special curved screen. The resulting effect is an immersive, almost 3D experience, which effectively sees the audience surrounded by the movie.
Only a couple of films were made in the format, which eventually saw its popularity wane in favor of the more accessible likes of Cinemascope and regular widescreen formats. Bradford currently houses one of only three auditoriums in the world capable of exhibiting the films.
For more information on this year’s BIFF visit nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
Bradford International Film Festival 2011 – Round Up: Part I (text) by Adam Batty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
