Last year’s Latitude festival not only brought together the likes of CSS, Jarvis Cocker, and Arcade Fire but included a film programme of exceptional brilliance.
This ranged from BAFTA’s outside screening of Hitchcock’s The Lodger to a smorgasbord of visual delights in the dedicated film tent, including Daft Punk’s Electroma, Zidane, and brilliant shorts from the likes of Halloween and Future Shorts (who invited the stunning Perico and the Paper Circus).
With this year’s festival fast approaching, Little White Lies talked to Tania Harrison, Arts Programmer for the festival, about this year’s film programme.
LWLies: I know the film programme isn’t finalised yet but can you tell us anything about it?
Harrison: It’s a music and film arena. It’s a really, really interesting arena because it’s where music and dance meet the arts, and its an incredibly creative. There is so much that can go in, yet at the same time there are very few things that meet its brief. You have to have artists in there who cross multiple genres.
There are a lot of things that a lot of the audience will never have heard of. I’m working with Chris Shepherd who is curating a couple of hours on Sunday and we discussed lots of ideas. He is going to talk about things and films that have influenced him, artists and films and creations that he would like to introduce.
Both of us have worked with Johnny Trunk before. Johnny Trunk has something brilliant up his sleeve with Vision On.
I’ve tried to theme the days because then I think it becomes a lot more focused. When you’re programming things that people have never seen before, if they know the idea behind it they can dip in more easily.
For example, I have called Friday ‘Politics of Erotica’. Essentially there were a lot of ideas that came from certain things but there was an article I read about how girls aspired to be footballers’ wives and how women are seen. Then I read in Attitude magazine how people tend to pigeon-hole gay men, what they think and what they think they like. I thought these subjects were really interesting.
So, we have everything from Antonia Quirk talking about how she couldn’t find a real life husband because of the men that she had fallen in love with on screen, like Marlon Brandon, to talks about women in burlesque, to Smoking Cabinet (festival of Burlesque and early Cabaret film), to Darryl’s Hard Liquor and Porn Film Festival. I’m talking to BAFTA, I can’t say what film, but I am talking to BAFTA about a screening of a film about the act of sex.
LWLies: An old film or a recent film?
Harrison: A new film that’s not out yet.
LWLies: Will you have another old film?
Harrison: I don’t know, you know its funny we were looking at something brand new yesterday. We are discussing ideas. You see these collaborations, which is a big issue for music and film. There is so much work that goes into it.
Future Cinema are going to do something further then it’s going to segue into Barry Adamson. Barry works very much with visuals and has an incredible eye for visual as well as being a fabulous musician. Saturday I have Hanif Kureshi starting the day with a Q&A. We’re in talks with a very big music composer about possibly doing something and talking about his work in film. Again BAFTA are doing something, more of a commercial movie on the Saturday. On Sunday we have something influenced by Jeremy Deller’s work and an exhibition I saw of his, I really liked the way he combined visuals with another medium that was incredibly interesting. Which reminds me I forgot to say about the Post Secret thing we are going to do on the Saturday, it’s a concept of art where people send in their secrets on a post card with a picture on the back. We’re going to visualise those and put those into a gallery format and also make it more interactive and ask people about their secrets. I’m going to work with an art student from Goldsmiths on realising that into a physical form.
LWLies: What’s Mark Lamarr doing?
Harrison: Yeah, Mark Lamarr has just finalised his five artists that he has hand picked to go into the music and film arena. He’s chosen Pete Molinari, The Heavy, James Hunter, Eli Paperboy Reed and the True Loves, and the Buzzcocks as his five for God’s Jukebox.
LWLies: Would you say that there isn’t another festival that has a film programme as such a major part of it?
Harrison: A lot of festivals do show films. We do that at Reading and Leeds, which we () also present. I think that perhaps what is different at Latitude is that we do confine the art forms to try to make it more of a live experience.
A lot of the films are chosen very carefully according to their audience. I think our audience at Latitude, I feel that they are very interested in that, Q&As, in the interrupted element. It’s very exciting, our audience don’t tend to just lie back and think of England.
Latitude takes place from the 17 – 20 July at Henham Park, Southwold, Suffolk.
Weekend camping tickets cost £130.
www.latitudefestival.co.uk
