Unlike last year, we arrived at the End of the Road festival in daylight. And not just daylight but glorious sunshine. The amazing weather lasted all three days, adding to the blissed-out feel of a festival located in the amazing Larmer Tree Gardens in Dorset, where peacocks strut through the gardens, organic pizza is available night and day, and upper-middle-class families break out the tie-dye trousers.
But while the bands played on the garden stage, the real action was happening in the LWLies Cinedrome where we’d programmed a three-day schedule of indie gems, eco-docs, theatrical previews and popular classics.
We’d moved from the out-of-the-way location we occupied in 2008 into an all new stripy tent slap bang in the middle of the main area. We got straight to work on Thursday afternoon erecting a massive 16-foot by nine-foot screen, and set about the intricate task of hanging fabric from either side. We gave up around midnight to go and have a few beers, but by 2pm on Friday we had everything in place – our hand-built sign was shining bright, the fabric looked good, and the sound system was firing on all cylinders.
ATP kicked us off, with a decent crowd enjoying Warp’s idiosyncratic documentary on this one-of-a-kind music fest. We followed it up with another doc, Three Miles North of Molkom, which was going nicely until… power cut. Boom. Lights out. Projector off. The lights came back on a couple of minutes later, but our projector was down for another 30 minutes, long enough for us to have to cancel the rest of the screening.
Unfortunately this turned out to be the pattern for the next day and a half. Alexis Dos Santos‘ Unmade Beds was another casualty on the Friday, but most annoying of all was when the new Shane Meadows film, Le Donk, cut out with 30 minutes left to go in front of a full house. Thankfully we were able to finish it around 20 minutes later.
Eventually we found out that some douche bag had put the wrong fuel in the generator, and even though it had been cleaned out everyone on our side of the site was having problems. Finally we were put on our own dedicated generator, but not before The Breakfast Club had also been rudely interrupted.
Saturday began with some trepidation then, but our Pixar special went down without a hitch. After screening all the Pixar shorts, a popular vote resulted in Monsters, Inc. being picked as the feature presentation. Although the little girl who bravely voiced her support for Toy Story 2 deserves a shout out. And we ended up showing the Up trailer about four times due to popular demand.
By Saturday evening things were pretty much back to normal just in time for the arrival of Stephen Frears for a live Q&A. As he explained to the crowd, Stephen lives only 20 minutes from Larmer Tree and was at the festival to shoot crowd scenes for his new film, Tamara Drewe. Beyond that he was tight lipped but he did open up about his career as a filmmaking ‘hooligan’, and why he doesn’t regret casting Keanu Reeves in Dangerous Liaisons. The post-Q&A screening of High Fidelity was also well attended.
Saturday night saw the screening I was most excited about – Jamie J Johnson’s Sounds Like Teen Spirit. It suffered a little for going head-to-head with the Fleet Foxes, but those who saw it loved it. And quite rightly too because it’s brilliant. Mesrine Part II drew the crowds back in (Part I had screened the day before).
And that led us in to our second night of Ex-Rent Hell. Ex-Rent Hell is, basically, beyond sensible description and rational understanding. An amazing, homemade 20-minute ’80s mash-up provided the context for screenings of Two Idiots in Hollywood and The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. Beyond that all we can tell you is that you really, really had to be there. Hats off to the ERH guys for their amazing organisational ability though.
Sunday morning began with the second Ghibli screening of the weekend – it was Howl’s Moving Castle the day before, followed by Tales from Earthsea. Unexpectedly (but gratifyingly) both these screenings were totally rammed. Once, The Fall and Encounters at the End of the World all drew good audiences, before Future Shorts took over for a couple of hours with a dreamlike selection of miniatures inspired by the idea of Adventure. The tent was heaving for vampire classic Let The Right One In, before The Cove brought the weekend to a close on a devastating note of dolphin genocide. No happy endings here…
Except, of course, there were. It wasn’t without a few problems, but let’s be honest, we totally nailed it. The LWLies Cinedrome will be back next year and it’s only going to get better so do the right thing and sort your tickets out, like, now…
With thanks to Warp Films, Disney, Optimum, Momentum, Metrodome, Indie Screenings, Soda Pictures, Icon and Warner Music Entertainment for the films.
